Free Print: Shark Zine

I made a full color painted + digital zine that you can print for free. Sharks are amazing and many of them are dangerously close to becoming extinct. Any animal population that is under 1,000 individuals is in great danger. Humans are the main thing killing sharks and we need to care about their survival.

Shark Dreams is a one-page mini zine that follows the folding and cutting instructions posted here. I plan to do some full-color, full bleed, professionally printed laser copies. I recommend last prints for their superior color and clarity. Color printing gets expensive quickly, so that I why I am letting people to print their own copy. I could never afford to print as many as I want to send to mail art pen pals and traders.

This zine is available for education and personal enjoyment. I retain the copyright; please contact me if you want to use this zine for mass printing or fundraising purposes. Please donate to an ocean conservation group, even if it is as little as $1 or $5. We need to stop our fellow humans from wiping out more species.

PDF print copy:
Sharks Zine

PNG 600 dpi print copy:

 

 

Make an Urban Mailbox Flag

Folks in the country have it so easy. They put up the flag up on their mailbox and the postal carrier takes their mail. In the city, you have to drop your mail in a corner box (which sits out on the street in the snow and rain, and the occasional evil soul uses for a trash bin) or you need to transport your mail to the post office itself.

I came up with an easy life hack by making a little tag asking my letter carrier to take my mail. It can be flipped in and out of the apartment lock box. I used ribbons threaded through the tag holder opening and made sure the tag hangs higher than the bottom of the box.

 

 

Vincent van Gogh Mail Art

This is a letter Vincent van Gogh sent to his brother Theo with a little drawing of a street scene with carriages. It was part of the Art Institute show last spring and it made me smile. It was great to see it up close. Vincent had such beautiful handwriting. I suppose he was writing in French, despite he and his brother being Dutch, because of they were living in France.

Dachshund Portrait

I refuse to make pet portraits, but this miniature 3-inch square oil painting was a special gift for someone in need of kindness. Making brush strokes on a smaller scale is a challenge. I like how it came out and I really like the miniature canvas panels available in art stores more recently.

How to Mail Trading Cards

This post teaches how to mail and prevent damage for traded sports cards and stickers, artist trading cards and mail art. There are a few basic steps you can take to armor the content of your envelope from dents, tears and water damage. Sorting and cancellation machines, hand delivery and the weather are all factors when you send your trade out into the postal system.

I am using this pile of traded hockey sports stickers as an example. They weigh 1.8 ounces (52 grams) and are all the same size.

Douglas M. Ryan, I have your U-Pass.

Douglas M. Ryan, I have your U-Pass.  It was already expired when I found it, so I did not turn it in to Columbia. I was putting weird things I found on the sidewalk in a shoebox and recently thinned out the collection. If you ever find this blog post, your U-Pass wound up in a collage added to pages of an original art zine. If you are as epic a Columbia student as your hair and sideburns are epic, I know you will understand.

 

 

 

The whale that went swimming

My mail art friend Sherry Harmes of Amook Island Creations in Alaska was sad to report that this mail art envelope I sent to her was delivered drenched in water. The long postal journey is part of the risk of sending art through the mail. The watercolour painting inside was well protected by plastic wrap and tape. I sent her an email and advised she try to iron the envelope because many times art on paper can be smoothed out with a clothing iron. Truth is, I iron way more art than clothes…

 

Notecards for Small Mail Art

I found some small notecards make a fun surface for drawings and paintings. The heavy cardstock worked well for ink, watercolour and gouache. It was easy to tuck these in a bag and carry them around, too, instead of a sketchbook. The scallop edged cards and colored cards gave me a something different to play with.

Product Review: Staedtler Master Carve Block

I had tried a few different kinds of soft carve media blocks as an alternative to linoleum. I did not like any of them! The prior brands were easy to carve but were not good for fine lines -or even clear lines- as the edges would cut raggedly or crumble. I carved the blocks as soon as I bought them, in case the soft media blocks can dry out and harden with time like linoleum. Then I tried a Staedtler Master Carve block and it was totally different, holding fine, clear lines like linoleum while being as easy to carve as a pencil eraser. I am so hooked on this product!

This is the carving I did with the block. I used Dockyard Microtools 1 – 2 mm V and U gouges to do the carving. I wanted the pattern of the cat to be hair-like and to also have cuts in the block delineate the fur. I also like carving with gouges a lot, seeing the line appear in one cut as it curls away from the block. Sharpie marker is helpful to get the design on the Staedtler block so it can be carved; once the ink was dry it did not smudge or wipe off.

Carved block before printing.

I was thrilled with how smooth and easy the gouges cut through the block. This media would be great to carve with an Xacto knife or any other block print cutting tools. I carved the background around the cat because I wanted to print the noise and have that as a comparison to the positive image.

I used my preference of an oil-based intaglio ink to print. Oil-based ink takes longer to dry but does not smudge and has a richer, deeper color. Both the positive design and the background noise printed wonderfully with the Staedtler Master Carve block. I used an Asian paper with some mulberry tree fibers and shiny silver flecks in each sheet for printing. The final print on this paper is very lovely. It makes me feel like a cozy cat is curled up on a snowy day so I titled this piece “Winter”.

East Meets West: Matisse Manga

This concept should probably have a question mark: Matisse Manga? I love the Modernist drawing style where simplification was a focus. Matisse had his sweeping line for a face shape and the eyebrow / nose combination that Picasso swiped plenty of times. Add some really kawaii Manga eyes and the style just clicks, at least for me it does.