Challenge #6: Postcards. Whether you are traveling abroad, to the museum in the next town over, or just feel like adding an element of the exotic to your daily routine, writing a postcard to someone (even yourself) is a great way to capture your thoughts, document the moment, and connect.
With this as your touchpoint, this week take the time to write and send a postcard to someone (or yourself). If you are traveling this week, take the time to pick up some postcards as souvenirs and send them to a friend back home, or use them as a posted travel journal. Writing and sending a postcard from a local museum or attraction can make the difference between day trip and memorable adventure.
Postcards are also a great way to document artist dates, and I encourage you to send a postcard to yourself sharing what you did—through words, a sketch or even an idea. If being a homebody is in the weekly plans, use a postcard you have on hand and send it to someone who you have been thinking about (it will make their day). Whatever you choose to do, make sure to record in your sketchbook any inspiration, ideas, illustrations, or thoughts—then share here on The Paper Compass.
If summer was a piece of stationery it would be a postcard.
Short and sweet, rich with vivid imagery and a snapshot of vibrant thoughts, the postcard in all its casual practicality is the embodiment of summer. Filled with sentiments such as wish you were here, thinking of you, or the itinerary of travel, the postcard is a perfect vehicle for capturing and sharing your thoughts within a specific moment, whether mundane or memorable.
One of the things that I like best about postcards is that while letters have an illustrious history, the postcard has a slightly checkered past. It is believed that in 1840, the first postcard was sent by British writer and infamous rake Theodore Hook. Addressed to himself, from himself, and containing a caricature of workers at the post office, it is believed to be a practical joke on the postal service. As Hook was also known for the Berners Street Hoax, this sounds completely feasible.
Postcards as a popular form of souvenirs or for sending short messages began to catch on in Europe in the 1870s. By the late 1880s and early 1890s, images of the newly built Eiffel Tower at the World’s Fair and the exhibits at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, would ushered in what is known as the Golden Age of Picture Postcards.
While the postcard is most closely associated with souvenir images of tourist and architectural attractions, any illustration—from flowers to advertisements—could (and did) grace the front. By the 1930s, the “saucy postcard” was in its heyday with cartoon illustrations of bawdy imagery, and the use of text filled with innuendos, double entendres and bawdy images.
Postcards to this day remain an important part of the souvenir industry, but more importantly, they have come to embody the mythos of a person abroad, exploring, looking for themselves through the experience of new places. For author and prize-winning journalist Alice Steinbach, postcards became a key element of recapturing the narrative of her life as she traveled through England, France and Italy on a journey of personal discovery and reconnection. These postcards, sent to herself, make up the backbone of her book Without Reservations: The Travels of an Independent Woman. In the well-known PostSecret project, the mythos and public nature of the postcard is taken one step further to anonymous confessions that connect us with others and the complexity of our own humanity.
All of this is inspiration for the sixth summer challenge: postcards. Whether you are traveling abroad, to the museum in the next town over, or just feel like adding an element of the exotic to your daily routine, writing a postcard to someone (even yourself) is a great way to capture your thoughts, document the moment, and connect (or reconnect).
With this as your touchpoint, this week take the time to write and send a postcard to someone (or yourself). If you are traveling this week, take the time to pick up some postcards as souvenirs and send them to a friend back home, or use them as a posted travel journal. Writing and sending a postcard from a local museum or attraction can make the difference between day trip and memorable adventure.
Postcards are also a great way to document artist dates, and I encourage you to send a postcard to yourself sharing what you did—through words, a sketch or even an idea. If being a homebody is in the weekly plans, use a postcard you have on hand and send it to someone who you have been thinking about (it will make their day). Whatever you choose to do, make sure to record in your sketchbook any inspiration, ideas, illustrations, or thoughts—then share here on The Paper Compass.
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