Rhino and chicken

Sent to Ryosuke Cohen.

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.

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!)

Playing with stamps

Simple but fun!

To be sent to a dear friend.

Another squirrel for the Squirrel Museum

Plus four on the stamps!

Sent to Connie Jean.

Time to send Butterflies!

It is summer now, here, with temperatures over 30 degrees Celsius, and the butterflies fly.
Time to send two of them into the world.

The Vanessa Atalanta (Red Admiral) will travel overseas, to the USA, and the Lemon butterfly will go to Hungary.
Have a safe travel, the two of you!

Squirrel / Fox / Sqox

Squirrel and Snail Mail Snail sent to Connie Jean's Squirrelmuseum:



Fox sent to Margit in Germany:



Sqox - Pufflingspaintings character - sent to @pufflingspaintings herself:



Fortunately for the latter I had found these matching stamps to accompany Sqox during the journey:

Mail Chicken and Mail Gull

About 48 weeks ago I painted two postal birds, on eggs. Birds other than the well-known mail pigeons. I peeled the eggs a little on the back to remove the inside. And I've kept them for almost a year in my kitchen window sill.

Finally the time has come to let them go, thanks to this call for an Egg Mail Art project!

So I packed them and added some drawing inside the box:



Seems to be a good question: 'Who was first, the chicken or the egg?'. These birds know the answer!



And I addressed it to the curator of this project, Éva in Hungary:



With some flying egg on the back side (all credits to the mail artist who drew this first - alas I forgot who it was.):



All in a larger package with many stamps:



Wishing both birds a good and safe travel!

Mail for the unknown Mr. Eduardo Munez

Triceratops, drawn for Ruth Tapp, or better: for the mysterious person we don't know yet but who we might learn to know when the movie about him will have been released!

You can still send mail to Mr. Eduardo Munez, check this call for mail art. And see the received mail on the 'Eduardo Munze Letter Project' blog!

Koffie filter mail art

"Snail Mail Snail defies harsh conditions
(even coffee grounds) to deliver mail."



Great mail art project for coffee lovers and recyclists:
mail art on a used coffee filter (size 4).
Sent to Ed Hanssen in the Netherlands.

The Three Aquariae

Several mail artists have been born under the Zodiac sign 'Aquarius'. Here are three of them :-)

Sent to Dean aka Artist in Seine.

There's the King

The Loper was standing before the window, longing.
Until the King noticed him.


Send to Eduard Egorov in Russia for his 'Windows to the World' mail art project.
And meanwhile it has arrived. See his blog post in case you are curious to know who's behind these window shutters.

Why did the chicken cross the road?

On instagram I found Torafish's account.
He makes beautiful photos, and besides that, he collects a certain sentence in all languages: 'Why did the chicken cross the road?'.
Not the answer to this question, but the question itself. He collects these to add to his 17 cm x 10.8 cm sketchbook.

So far he didn't have the Dutch version, so I drew and wrote him this.



(Fortunately there was extra room on the envelope, as I couldn't resist to have the chicken think of the answer..)

Ho.owl

Some time ago I received a friendly Owlet, thanks to the kind HO,OWL whom I learned to know via instagram.

And the little Owl inspired me to draw these owls in return:



Thanks to a photographer's webshop I found a suitable postage stamp.



If you want to learn more about the little ho,owl and read the story, please check his website!


By the way, the mail journeys between Spain and Netherlands were a little special. While the Spanish postal service sent the owl to me via Canada, the Dutch postal service didn't recognize the Dutch 'international postage' stamp as an international postage stamp, which it really is, and asked me politely but strictly to add some more stamps :-)

'Treat all animals respectful. They know more than you think they do.'

Started to draw this Sea Gull more than a week ago at a cube competition. Finished yesterday, 4th of October, World Animal Day.

While our two guinea pigs got extra endive and other vegetables (by the way, they always and each day get extra endive and other vegetables) I was contemplating about some weird, paradox happening during World Animal Day.
People tend to treat their pets with some extras on this day. But: many pets are cats and dogs, and their treats usually exist of, right, animals... Cows, pigs, chicken, of whom most, at least in our country, don't enjoy the good things of life, hidden in stables without sunlight, with too little space and a hard floor without any plants...
Paradoxical, isn't it?

Sent to Ryosuke Cohen for the Brain Cell project.

C'est une pipe

Sent to a postcrosser who loves pipes and who - in contrary to many postcrossers - suggested to use an envelope and draw something on it.

Ode to snail (paper) mail

The mail art network often is called 'the eternal network'.
Sometimes, when I am reading that post offices are closing worldwide, when hearing that the number of delivering days a week are decreasing, as well as home delivering in some places,
sometimes, when we see that postage rates increase, while working conditions for postal workers are deteriorating, and things like that, I am wondering for how long the analogue, paper network will keep on going.

Meanwhile all my received paper mail art survived so far. While in contrary much digital art may not survive eternally, for example because of change of email addresses, computer crashes, or change of website owners etcetera.

These thoughts, and the Mail Pigeon, I am sending to Ryosuke Cohen in Japan. Thanks to his connecting Brain Cell project, to my opinion he is one of the masters of the Eternal universe Network.