Postcards are a great way of communication amongst people living far from each other, even today. They became extremely popular during 1800's and early 1900's. Nearly any image can be placed on postcard, being a destination, a famous person, a holiday, or simply art. They are a way of expressing a certain subject to others. Earlier, postcards were known as mail cards, simply a letter with a post attached. In 1861, postcards were finally created by John P Charlton. After its creation, many different periods of postcards were made. The pioneer postcard for example, one side was for a message and the other for the recipients address. These periods have evolved the postcard to what it is today.
This picture was taken on a boat at Inle lake in Myanmar over interim. These boats provided us our transportation for the last few days in Myanmar. They brought us out to villages located out on the water, one of these villages we visited was called Linn Kinn village. These villages are unique to the region because they do everything over the water. Their transportation are boats, their food is grown atop the water, their cable made out on the water, and so on. It was very interesting to see how much their lives varied from my own. The houses seen at the sides, in the picture below are typical housing for the Burmese people living in these villages on water. Moreover, the sticks, sticking out of the ground seen in the picture below hold the land together creating landmasses, thus helping with the agriculture. These characteristics of my destination make for a perfect image on a postcard.
As soon as I looked over the image, I knew it would look pleasing and perfect on a postcard. While it is clear that its not a mirror image, each visual weight offsets the other. The boat is slightly located towards the left of the image, and the houses on either side are not identical, not in the same place, and even differ in size, however the look of balance is clearly visible. Moreover, the image doesn't show any form of asymmetrical balance, where either side is differs immensely, thus only allowing the image to show symmetrical. There are certain aspects on either side, whether it be the houses, the sticks, the water, or even the boat itself that provide the image with this symmetrical balance.
While creating a postcard may be challenging, it was at times for me, it can be fascinating to see the final result through all the work put into it. When beginning this project, I obviously needed an image, and after my image of the boat was picked, I added effects to it in photoshop to make it easier to carve the lines when that stage arrived. The picking of an image and what effect to give it was a particular success during this project. After printing the image out with the effect, I got my plastic platter and a carver, placed the image behind the platter and began carving over the lines. During my process of carving, a piece of white paper was placed into water to dampen. Once making sure that the lines were all complete and carved over, I moved on to the painting part of the project. The black and brown paints with turpentine were used. I also used a roller to paint my platter, making sure that I was painting over the lines and not on the wrong side. My troubles when making this intaglio postcard came while removing the paint from the platter with a cheese cloth, in order to print it on the the paper. At this stage, I often forgot about removing the ink with the cheese cloth, so I would print the inked up platter onto the paper. The result was a completely black image. This aspect was challenging and difficult to remember for me, making it very amusing. In the end, I was able to get a good, final image. After these images were printed, they were missing one aspect; color! By using watercolors, I was able to give each part of the image its own unique color that added to the overall appeal of the postcard.
Below is the end result of the intaglio design. The colors included further add to the balance of the image, showing on either side, which parts are similar and how they all give the same tone, order, formality, and permeance to it.
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