More rhinoceros

Rhinoceros I always think nice to draw. Here is an other one!



(Also penguins apparently are a nice theme to draw!)

The revenge of the Trees

It is autumn, time to finish the mixed media mail art I started to create many months ago. The tree leave I used, had fallen from its tree in one of the previous autumns.
A lot of Trees have been murdered recently, both in my neighbourhood and close to my work. It makes me angry and sad, however I'm finding a little comfort in the fact that nature (hopefully) will 'win' in a way, after all.

I hope the receiver won't get too sad by this scenery, so I thought to paint the envelope in bright orange colours and to add a friendly hedgehog.

Ballpoint Snail

Part of an envelope, I decorated with ballpoint lines and this Snail drawing.
I created it in 2016, then lost the envelope somewhere between other papers in my piles/files, found it again today and won't wait any longer to send it :-)

Rhino and chicken

Sent to Ryosuke Cohen.

Do we really see a Gecko?

Drawn in 2015, finally sent September 2017.

Oranjevrouw - from the Dutch woman's soccer team

This member of the Dutch 'Orange' women's soccer team I drew as a reply to Jimmy Connors in Berlin, who has sent me several collages and recently wrote very kind words about our 'Orange' teams.

I guess the player won't recognize herself in my drawing (she's a very good, excellent player!), but at least I had a try. That's what counts, doesn't it?!

Bananawalk and Bananarms

I hope it is not too late for my reply to an invitation Anna Banana has sent to me in Januray 2017 from Canada.



And I guess bananawalking will be too slow, and running won't help either, to have the mail arrive quicker. Enfin, we'll see...



Sent in this envelope to Canada.

To be a Penguin or not to be a Penguin

"Penguin in snow and ice landscape."

I think it always fascinating to see that a drawing suggests a complete object, or in this case, a complete animal, while in fact not the complete object or animal is shown.

Sent to Ti Ar Raden, who has a black and white mail art project.

Economics worth more than animal life...

Some of you might know that in the Netherlands and some other countries the fipronil scandal took place in the past months.
Millions of eggs, hard work for the hens, have been destroyed.
And worse, hundreds of thousands hens have been killed. Some farmers have chosen to have the hens moult to have remove the fipronil from their bodies.

The newspaper article shown above, saying the judge decides farmers are allowed to kill the - healthy - chicken, made me very angry. Because the headline mentions 'gifkippen', 'poisonchicken', a 'framing' word.. What can the poor chicken do about it? And the text says the chicken are 'economicaly worthless animals'... While each and every animal is worth being!

My very first Etegami

I never had heard of the word 'etegami' until I got involved in an etegami swap recently.

Etegami, or 'picture letter' or 'painted letter', origins from Japan and consists of a simple hand-painted drawing accompanied by apt words, mostly done in postcard size for a quick and easy mailing.

Etegami can be about daily objects. So I chose to draw/paint one of my favourite obkects: my morning coffee (with milk, no sugar).
Here you can see a picture of this very first etegami, next to the original object.



On the back side this etegami artistamp appeared.

And the stamp which I added to the envelope, invited me to make a longer green road:

The earth and the mail art network were born on the back of a turtle

I think it a good idea to consider the title to be true.

Front side of an envelope, created to send to Ryosuke Cohen for his Brain Cell project.



Back side of the envelope, which is the address side:



And the inside:



Wishing the turtles a safe journey.

About Chess, Stork and Orion soup

Two people to whom I can send black-and-white mail art are Ryosuke Cohen, for he is turning it into a colourful Brain Cell form, and Alex Witter, who has a mail art project on the theme 'Black and White'.

As I love chess, and horses, I chose to draw them these two chess sceneries.


For Alex, I added a stork on the back side, because the stork ('ooievaar' in Dutch) is the symbol of his city.



To the envelope for Ryosuke, suddenly Orion Soup appeared.



Wishing both pieces a safe and speedy travel!

P.S. There is a third person for whom we should create black-and-white mail art: also Ti Ar Raden has a mail art project on the theme.

P.S. 2. Real chess lovers will have spotted the error in the compilation made on top: nine squares in a row instead of eight! :-)

Mail art for the greatest Piggy Mail Art collector in the world

Yes, I think Nicole the most wonderful collector of Pig mail art I have ever seen. So it isn't hard to find out what kind of mail art I should create to send her: Pigs, of course!
The one below is a pointillistic one. If I ever will have more free time, I'd like to draw and paint pigs in more styles from art history (impressionist, classic, cave murals, expressionist, etcetera). Alas time is limited, so I hope to be able to do so step by step in the coming months, years...

Nicole also creates wonderful collages, of any subject. For me she created many beautiful weird animals. You can see them here; more mail art by NIcole you can find on her site.

FeMailed Artist and Scientist

Recently I was invited to join the 'Femail-XX' mail art project about female art and science.



I chose to draw this illustration, in honour of Maria Sibylla Merian (Frankfurt am Main, Germany, 1647 - Amsterdam, Netherlands, 1717). As an artist and scientist, Merian has played an important, be it not so well-known, role in natural history and biology.
Did you know that there were times that people thought butterflies arose spontaneously from mud and dirt? For us it is so obvious that butterflies originate from eggs. However, not until Merian's era people got little by little aware of the connection between butterflies, caterpillars and eggs. And Maria Sibylla Merian was one of the very first to research and draw these species and their metamorphosis. And the very first to add the hosting plants to her insect illustrations.
At older age (as old as I am now) she even traveled by boat to the tropics, a 2 months journey, to Suriname. There she researched more butterflies and other insects, and she has published beautiful, and scientifically seen correct, illustrations of the insects and all stages and surrounding vegetation.

This not so correct drawing is just a small honour to a woman who deserves a high place in natural and art history.



The mail art project's full name is Women Art Scientist Testament Exploration. I couldn't resist the urge to change 'waste' into the well-known female item 'waist'.

The Kancil and the Bridge

'The Kantjil and the Bridge'. Maybe an old, maybe a newly invented story.

Made for Theo Nugraha and the Palangkaraya Batuntur mail art project, in honour of the 60th anniversary of Palangkaraya.

Mail Cardinal

This Cardinal Bird I drew and consequently I turned it into a Mail Cardinal Bird:



Sent to the USA (and arrived - thank you, FinnBadger, for your reply! I'll post your Chicken mail art in a few days at the RealWeirdAnimals blog!)

Thumbs up

After the rain there's an after the rain.



Sent to Ryosuke Cohen in Japan.

In memoriam: Catootje

Cato, also known as Catootje, born February 2012, arrived at our home summer 2012. Passed away last Friday, 26 May 2017.

Superb Fairy Wren revisited

I've drawn a superb fairy wren before. Drawings never will be as good as the real bird, but anyway I love to continue to draw them.

This time the tiny bird flew to Antonia Mayol in Spain, covered by a far larger bird, a razorbill, as an envelope.

Ducklings drown thanks to DAPL

There's a lot of injustice and short-sighted stupidity in the world.
One of these is the fact that people / companies / politicians who have power, think they can own the earth and destroy it (injustice) and seem to not notice that in the end they'll have destroyed also what belongs to their/our next generations (short-sighted stupidity). Just for short-term profit.

Blue birds

Naomi was so kind to send me one of the postcards from her thousand postcard project.
On instagram I saw she draws and paints wonderful birds on envelopes (like these Cockatoos).
So I decided to draw a bird in reply to send to Australia. And while I prefer to draw Australian wildlife, she prefered to receive a Dutch bird. So this Blue Tit arose on my paper.

On the envelope some more 'blue' birds: the 'Blauwborst' (literally 'blue chest', in English the Bluethroat) on the Dutch stamp, and... I couldn't resist to add one tiny Australian birdie, the superb fairy-wren.

For the Endangered Animals project

This year Micu has an ongoing mail art project about endangered animals. I would say: take a look at Mail a Smile and join!

This bluefin tuna I finished today, in hope that the original species won't finish.



On the back side an example of the location fish like these finish in:



A few weeks before I drew and painted her this white rhino:



See Mail a Smile's gallery for more contributions from various artists to the Endangered animals project and feel inspired to add your contribution to this project!

Composition in green

And now for something completely different :-)
One of my very few abstract paintings. Or maybe not that abstract: I wonder if you can see any figurative in this 'Composition in green'?

To be send to Eduardo Cardoso, (minimal) mail artist in Portugal.



On the back I added a silver coloured sticker, which appeared, when scanned, to contain clearly visible stars and flowers.