Farm People

I still haven't given up on the idea of festivals and mail art. One of the things I think might work for doing festivals is pedestrian type products that don't cost much and are easy to reproduce. Yay, printmaking! We are so applicable to such things! When I was a teenager, I LOVED comic books. My mom thought it was a waste of money but we didn't have life drawing in my rural area and those books really helped teach me anatomy. Anyways, fan art in popular comic zines came in the form of mail art. People would draw images on the flat side of a business envelope and write the address and postage on the seal flap. It was really neat to see what people would come up with. I began thinking that maybe customers would enjoy sending block prints like that through the post and that a series on prints on the envelopes would work well. I have a boat load of colored envelopes already and I began thinking of subject material that would be popular. Everybody loves animals and old engravings of animals are being ripped as public domain ALL the time. At first, I thought I would just do portraits of farm animals because it would work well in my conservative based market. Then, the idea of dressing the farm animals up in period clothing popped into my head. "Nah, don't do that. Just plain animals will sell better." I heard myself think. Well, screw that! I'm tired of ditching fun ideas over that. So, I went ahead with my idea for "Farm People" for my first series of mail art. I picked 10 of my favorite farm animals and will be dressing them up in 1920's attire. I'll be carving them onto blocks for a series of black ink open edition mail art envelopes. I will produce a limited edition of fine art prints as well for those who want something more archival (me included!).
My first specimen is the Work Horse. I just love his suspenders and hat! I armed myself with the Ultimate Horse book years ago and one of my favorite breeds is the Italian Heavy Draft. I like his conformation and the colors of the specimen in the book are very unique. Below is a scan of the image in the book. Not the best scan but it will do. :) Can't wait to start carving!