It's "Penguin Awareness Day!"

Celebrate as you see fit! Where's your tuxedo?

All text, photographs, and other media are ©Copyright Carol Leigh (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Carol Leigh. Thank you for your understanding and kindness.

WHAT-IFFING . . . "Heading to Seattle"

In my ongoing experimentations, I ended up creating this postcard, which I like so much I uploaded it this morning to Fine Art America.

A lone tanker stood out nicely against the backdrop of Port Townsend, Washington a month or so ago. I converted it to black and white, added texture and color from a hand-painted paper, and then found an old address label from a vintage envelope to slap onto the front.

(I looked up the person, in hopes of maybe learning something about her, but had no luck. Sometimes I do, however, and it's fun to follow the threads back in time.)

The name of the addressee sounded Scandinavian, so I found an old stamp from Denmark in my collection that had birds on it, put it on top of an old stamp from Japan, also with birds on it. And then I added a cancellation stamp from Copenhagen, Denmark. A few other bits here and there and I considered it done.

I now have a gallery of almost 100 mail-oriented pictures at Fine Art America, and if you'd like to take a look, here's the link:

https://carol-leigh.pixels.com/collections/mail+art

All text, photographs, and other media are ©Copyright Carol Leigh (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Carol Leigh. Thank you for your understanding and kindness.

Faux Poste: Fish Postcard from Indonesia

I've not been making any weird postcards lately, but this one's been waiting in the wings since last April, so it's time to get it off the table and show it here.

I created a "faux poste" collage using a photo of a fish I took in South Carolina, a piece of paper money from Indonesia, a postage stamp with a contrived cancellation stamp, and a scrap of paper from an antique Japanese book.

This was fun to create -- inspires me to get back into making more of these.

©Carol Leigh
All text, photographs, and other media are ©Copyright Carol Leigh (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Carol Leigh.

Mark your calendar!

This year's festivities take place March 7-11, 2016. Alas, they're all held at night. The photography's going to be tricky!

©Carol Leigh
All text, photographs, and other media are ©Copyright Carol Leigh (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Carol Leigh. Thank you!

Happy Birthday, George!

In case you were thinking of sending him a birthday card, don't bother . . . It's the thought that counts.

©Carol Leigh
All text, photographs, and other media are ©Copyright Carol Leigh (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Carol Leigh. Thank you!

Latest work: "Year of the Ram"

Another fictional postcard I made this morning using photos of a rubber stamp, a real stamp, stickers (thank you Kathleen A.), vintage pages, Japanese postal rubber stamps, Japanese hanko, and more.

©Carol Leigh
All text, photographs, and other media are ©Copyright Carol Leigh (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Carol Leigh. Thank you!

Latest works . . .

I'm sort of in a postcard rut these days. My actual photography doesn't seem to exist at the moment (taking care of various things lately and not carrying around the big camera; disenchanted with the quality of the iPhone), so when I need to create something, I'm rummaging around in previously-taken images to see what I can put together.

Here we have one rather monochromatic image ("John Dory Fish Postcard") and a colorful one ("Crow in Orange and Pink").

Have I told you how much fun I have making these? Well, I'm having fun making these!

©Carol Leigh
All text, photographs, and other media are ©Copyright Carol Leigh (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Carol Leigh. Thank you!

Latest work: "Three Kittens in the Congo"

I had a cool postage stamp from French Equatorial Africa. That was the basis of this piece. I decided to make a faux postcard all around that stamp.

A friend had given me a rubber stamp that looked sort of like a cranky lynx, so I used that. He also had given me an elephant rubber stamp. I looked it up. Are there elephants in the Congo? Yes! Okay! It's in the scene. From there I just kept adding things until the postcard ended up looking like this.

What I particularly like is the absurdity of the name I gave this image: "Three Kittens in the Congo." What the . . . ?

©Carol Leigh
All text, photographs, and other media are ©Copyright Carol Leigh (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Carol Leigh. Thank you!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Wishing you a happy and GREEN St. Patrick's Day . . .

©Carol Leigh
All text, photographs, and other media are ©Copyright Carol Leigh (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Carol Leigh. Thank you!

It all worked out great . . .

I had an interesting experience with Fine Art America this past week. I received a personal e-mail from a woman who wanted to purchase my faux postcard “Trout Fishing in America.” The problem was that, based on the picture’s original size, FAA couldn’t print it as big as she wanted it.

She wanted the picture 48” across, and my picture didn’t have enough pixels to blow it up that big without it disintegrating. Could I make the picture bigger?

My original image was 3600 pixels across. I needed it to be 6000 pixels across. If all the bits I used in my original image were too small to blow up, then I was screwed. So I went back to my original and looked at each piece to see where it came from and to see if each piece was large enough to blow up.

In Photoshop I looked at all my layers, found the originals, and yes! I saw that I could re-create my photomontage and make it lots bigger without losing any definition. I just had to gather up all the individual bits and size them to fit in this larger format.

I told my customer that yes, I could do it. It might not look EXACTLY like the original, but it will certainly be close enough. (And above you see my first version and then the larger version. Not exact, but close.)

I created a blank canvas 6000 pixels across and began re-building my photomontage, same scale as my first go-round, just a lot bigger. (Why didn’t I build it big to begin with? When I originally made it? Well, hindsight is great, isn’t it?!)

I uploaded the new version to FAA, the client ordered it, received it incredibly quickly (like four days later), and I received an e-mail from her this morning with a photo of the picture on her wall.

She said, “Hey just wanted to let you know we love the picture. It turned out great. Still have to finish the room but this is a great focal. Especially since we live on the lake. Thanks again for your help.”

I love it when things work out like this. Love it when a client is happy. And, frankly, I liked the challenge of seeing how I could make the picture bigger, with no loss of quality, to please the customer and to save the sale.

Art. It’s all about problem-solving, isn’t it?

©Carol Leigh
All text, photographs, and other media are ©Copyright Carol Leigh (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Carol Leigh. Thank you!

Latest work: "Northwest"

I've lived in a lot of places -- Norfolk, Virginia, San Diego, Carlisle, Pennsylvania, Long Beach, California, Palm Springs, San Francisco, Hawaii, Vienna, Virginia, Japan, Nevada City, California, and more. With so many moves under my belt, I have no real concept of "home."

Gotta say, however, that the Pacific Northwest just feels right to me. I'm drawn to Santa Fe (well, who isn't?), but the sights, sounds, smells (fresh air!), and the green, lush environment here in the northwest make me feel more alive somehow. But Carol, isn't it cold? Yes, but those of you who constantly remind me that I wore shorts pre-dawn at the Reno Balloon Festival in 2000, I'm a warm-blooded person, and the temperatures here are perfect for me. Luckily, Chris feels the same way. Luckily, he's not wearing shorts!

Is this our last house? Probably not. There's probably one more move in the future, to a place with a bit less rain, a bit more space for a studio, and a place where Chris can set up power saws and things and have a woodworking shop. But will it be in the Pacific Northwest? Oh, yeah.

About the art . . . a faux poste card that incorporates my photos of a crow, postage stamps, an Oregon cancellation stamp, painted papers, and more. Made it yesterday morning.

©Carol Leigh
All text, photographs, and other media are ©Copyright Carol Leigh (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Carol Leigh. Thank you!

International Letter-Writing Week

Yes, it's that time of year again, the holiday none of us should ignore: International Letter-Writing Week (January 8-14). Since I am way too busy to write a letter, I created a postcard instead. (Oh, the irony!) Interestingly, I already had a Japanese stamp commemorating the holiday, so I built the card around that stamp.

But what I also want to tell you is that I now have a friend in Japan, who sent me a delightful letter last week.

While in Kyoto, Rich, CJ and I were in a calligraphy shop and were approached by a young Japanese woman (her name is Nao), who spoke quite a bit of English. An art student from Hiroshima, she was visiting family and looking for some inexpensive watercolors.

We all must have talked for about half an hour. We talked about calligraphy and brushes and so Rich showed her a quick iPhone video he had made of a famous Kyoto calligraphy artist we had visited. She said she wanted to write to us, so we gave her our business cards and were on our way. A delightful experience.

And then I received this charming letter (Rich and CJ received one, too) in an envelope that contained a color picture of her work (the goldfish) and a few other things. It was great! It reminded me of when I was 12 and living in Japan and how I helped a Japanese serviceman practice his English, the carved bear sculpture he gave me as a thank-you, and how we corresponded for quite some time afterwards. Japanese enthusiasm for learning English, their gratitude for your time, their small appreciations, and then a letter like this -- well, what can I say? My life has been enriched. Again.

Anyway, just thought you would like to be reminded that International Letter-Writing Week is right around the corner. Don't you just love getting letters? Well, pass the love next week and send an actual, physical, letter. You'll be enriching someone's life as well as your own.

Postally yours . . .
PO Box 1269, Waldport, OR 97394

©Carol Leigh
 All text, photographs, and other media are ©Copyright Carol Leigh (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Carol Leigh. Thank you!

Latest work: "Professor Starr"

I don't even know where to begin describing this faux postcard. I created a physical collage and then used bits and pieces of it here. I added torn papers, stamps, rubber stamps, labels, cancellation marks, and more for the final piece.

What I love about making these postcards is how I can use items that are in my personal collections, photograph them, print them, glue them, scribble on them, on and on, and then come up with some strangely appealing final picture.

I especially want to thank those of you who have been sending me weird stamps, papers, washers, foreign currency, and more over the years to add to my collection of rusty, torn, bent, folded, mutilated and unusual exotica! You know just what a gal wants! ©Carol Leigh

All text, photographs, and other media are ©Copyright Carol Leigh (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Carol Leigh. Thank you!

Latest work: "Looking Eastward"

I created this cool image of a crow and have used it before as a stand-alone picture. This time, however, I combined it with a couple of mono prints I'd made as well as a vintage piece of Japanese paper. I added photos of a few old stamps and it's done. I like how everything is sort of indigo in color and how the treatment I created on the crow makes it look like it was created with ink and a brush. What fun this is to do! ©Carol Leigh
  
All text, photographs, and other media are ©Copyright Carol Leigh (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Carol Leigh. Thank you!

Latest work: "Miss Bergeron"

I don't know about you, but I have a file in my computer called "works in progress." This is where I put everything I'm working on but am not quite sure if the piece is "finished." Don't want to throw it out, don't want to lose it, so I stick it into one particular directory to be looked at and worked on later, with fresher eyes, with new eyes. Or I may simply toss it out, knowing it will never really work.

I looked at my "works in progress" directory this morning, looking for something a bit lighter, a bit brighter than what I've been producing of late. This image caught my eye. I added just one more thing to it (a Chinese receipt) and considered it done.

I created this postcard using photos of stamps from my collection, various cancellation marks, a hand-painted background, a Chinese receipt I found in my dad's drawer, and a fanciful bird. I like the overall lightness and the underlying feeling of mystery.

© Carol Leigh

Orchidaceae

I created this postcard using a photo of paper from a vintage book, an etching of orchids from an 1889 newsprint magazine, and photos of various stamps from my collection.

Why? Because I can . . .

©Carol Leigh

Faux Check

I had this old check and decided to play with it a bit, adding an orange Internal Revenue stamp, some red documentary stamps (also courtesy of the Internal Revenue Service), various rubber stamp images, and a vintage engraving of a bovine-like animal (which is why the check is made out to the North Branch Lumber Cow). Yes, this is rather weird, but it was fun to put it all together. ©Carol Leigh

National Postcard Week May 4-10, 2014

"Undeliverable: Too Messy"

Yes, it's that time of year again. And how will YOU be celebrating? Come on, you know you want to . . . send out a few! Don't have anyone to send a card to? Well, my address is PO Box 1269, Waldport, OR 97394 . . . just in case you get the urge!

©Carol Leigh

National Postcard Week

Latest work: "Trout Fishing in America"

I hand-painted the background, slapped a trout onto it, used a couple of appropriate postage stamps I'd photographed, used a few more photos and then called it done! The name comes from a famous Richard Brautigan book. http://www.amazon.com/Richard-Brautigans-Springhill-Disaster-Watermelon/dp/0395500761/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1398118449&sr=8-1&keywords=Brautigan+Trout+Fishing+in+America

©Carol Leigh

Festival of Owls

A fictional postcard for an actual event. I had fun making this! ©Carol Leigh