b mused

November's Postcard of the Month

Ode to the wild Turkeys.

I see them quite often, but don't always have my camera at the ready.

Here's some turkeys that I saw last year:

I've been wanting some new technique or materials to liven up postcard production, and my artist friend Linda stopped by one day and reminded me about rubbings.

How had I neglected rubbings?! My own mother was Rubbing Royalty! Brass rubbings, that is.

(See Addendum I below)

So... Not brass, but still a rubbing:

Using rather flimsy (but it held up!) rice paper laid over punched-out construction paper.

So then this happened*:

I liked the bleakness of the November trees, but it was a tad sparse/boring,

so then I added other turkey-implying elements:

that I really liked but ultimately didn't include in the final version.

Then some turkeys**:

But I didn't much like these turkeys, so I found others.***

Added a few verticals:

And this got close to what I was after:

And so I rubbed:

And stamped:

And punched:

The Fixin's

Production Steps: The Movie

The Steps

Once again - although far fewer steps - only 26 this month!! -
I'm opting to skip the numbering of each individual step.
I have made some notes along the way though.

The first step was actually the rubbing of the trees (see above),

then I lightly glued the salmon-colored rice paper to the back side of each trio of trees:

And then glued this piece to the card:

I liked this little touch of pink,

implying the short, twilit days of this darkening, barren month.

Turkey tracks!

Turkey talk?!

Wasps' nest 'paper':

These turkeys:

were copied - and then flipped horizontally - from a beautiful painting, by Ron Jones.***

Ooops! Forgot to take a photo of this step,

so I made a copy of the next step and did some erasing/editing!

I'd culled the larger fan-shaped pieces of gold-dotted black:

but I really needed to get at least a sliver of it in:

And what would it be without some dots. ;)

I don't know what they are meant to be!

Maybe mushrooms? (see Addendum II, below)

Very large acorns?! ;)

Panel of 21 of November's postcards:

Fin.

*The piece of brown paper was torn from an envelope one of my subscribers sent me (thank you!) - I liked the color of the brown and don't have any other papers that color. I didn't end up using it in the final version, but it will make an appearance at some point in the future, I'm sure. :)

**Copied from the Audubon illustrations in my bird book.

***Called "Wild Turkeys", by Ron Jones:

Addendum I

For a few years in the mid-1960s, our family had lived in England, where my mother picked up the skill of covering various-sized tomb engravings with a thin, rather waxy paper - like butcher paper - and then - carefully - applying a crayon (called a 'heel ball'*), and bringing the images to the surface of the paper.

She did many of these rubbings over the years, and when we returned to the US, she exhibited them at the Newport, RI Art Museum. Many of her brass rubbings are still mounted and on display in various family residences; several others are still rolled up in mailing tubes.

The very large rubbing here (her largest), done in 1965,

was on the grave of Bishop Robert Wyvil, on the floor of Salisbury Cathedral.

Big rubbing; little Mum. :)

It currently hangs in the nice, tall stairwell of The Woodlands, in Lebanon, NH.

My father wrote up this description:

I recently overheard a fellow resident at her complex describing my mother to some other residents: "Oh you know who she is: She's the artist who did that large piece that's hanging in the stairwell". :)

*It was what cobblers used to touch up boot/shoe heels.