Blind Contour selfies – due January 18th

Joanne has come up with a super fun challenge for us in January.

We’re going to create self portraits using the “blind contour drawing” technique.  If you are not familiar with this technique, you look at yourself in the mirror, plop the pen tip down on a blank piece of paper, and draw yourself without either looking at the paper, or lifting your pen from the page.  Here are some examples Joanne created:

In her words:  “These should go fairly quickly, and be enormously goofy, as I'm sure mine will show. In part, the results are about not taking either yourself or your art too seriously, but the end product can both look like the artist, and produce a fairly decent piece of art at the end. “

Read more about blind contour drawing:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_contour_drawing

You can send the drawing as it is, or you can turn those drawings into mixed-media postcards like Joanne did here:

I decided to give this a try myself and the results were hilarious.  Picture me in my bathroom mirror at about 6:30 AM, stifling my giggles so I didn’t wake my sleeping teenager in the next room.  Here’s my favorite of the bunch.  I look very grouchy - perhaps because my face is falling off my head….

Your turn to try!

The cards can be anything as long as there is at least one element with a one-line, blind-contour selfie.  You can create as many as four cards and mail them to Joanne by January 18^th.

  

Important reminders for a successful swap:

It’s a sad thing when you put a ton of time and effort into creating your art for a swap and you don’t get something in return.  Our hosts are diligent about getting all the postcards back out in the mail to their new owners, but sometimes postal mishaps occur and items get lost in the mail.  There are several things YOU, the artist, can do to prevent this:

·      Put proper postage on your postcards before you send them to your host.  If you’re going to use a postcard stamp (currently $.35) you card must not be larger than 4”x6”. This is important - please don’t just estimate this.   Get out your ruler and measure your card.  If it’s bigger than 4”x6” you need a “forever” stamp ($.49)  Insufficient postage is a short road to the dead letter office.  Make sure your mail is deliverable and take the extra moment to measure your card size. (And if your card isn’t a rectangle -if it’s square or round or another funky shape - you’re going to need $.71 postage.  No joke.)  You can find all the US postage rules and a handy postal calculator here: http://postcalc.usps.gov/

When in doubt, add more postage! 

  

·      It’s incredibly helpful if you put your return address on the cards you create.  That way, should there be a postal mishap, your card will come back to you instead of being lost and undeliverable. 

  

·      Your host will send these postcards to their new homes “naked” (without an envelope) so make sure they are not too thick or lumpy and make sure everything is glued down securely.

  

·      Include address labels in the envelope you send to your host– these will be used to mail your new cards to you.  This way your host does not have to read your handwritten address and write it on the cards (increasing the possibility of an address error).  Plus, it saves your host a ton of time.