Ian James Andersen

Adventure Postcards

Creating a magical environment one postcard a time.

A series of loosely related postcards based on cute animals adventures in an ever expanding forest. I make these postcards whenever I have time as a way to explore using watercolor and worldbuilding; I think the best way to describe them is Richard Scary meets Matisse, cute animals explore bright, colorful, semi-abstract landscapes. These are all created at standard four by six postcard size using a combination of watercolors and acrylic inks, and sometimes a little bit of gouache. Though there isn't any set story, I tend to think of them as taking place within the same world.

Outcome

Series of Watercolor Postcards

Glimpses of Adventure

Adventure and recreation are two of my favorite themes to draw, these postcards take those themes and blend them with references to Matisse, Jean Arp, Sophia Delauney, and other artists I enjoy.

Adventure

Most of the cards are more about exploring than danger, ocassionaly they bend towards more fantasy oriented, but usually I keep things like a walk through a wooded park where there's all sorts of things to find. I like drawing strange plants and flowers along with odd forms that decorate the landscape. In a way I think of it as a painting of imagined large scale sculptures and earthworks and the animals that encounter them.

Recreation

The other thing I enjoy drawing in these is picnic type scenes, spreads of food and drinks where the characters can play and have a good time in the strange park spaces. Most of the scenes take place during spring or summer, which is probably influenced by living in Houston where there's not really any other seasons.

Objects

There are a variety of reoccuring objects in the postcards that I continually add to. The objects are pulled from the subject matter of still life paintings, flowers, vases, bottles & glasses. These become repeated symbols that relate the postcards back to the tradition of still life painting that have come to life through the characters that encounter them.

Media

I refer to these as watercolor postcards because they're four by six inches on watercolor paper, but they're not really meant for mailing and or only partially watercolor. I usually start with a vauge idea of what elements will be in the card and start sketching them and moving things around until I'm happy with the composition, then I use acrylic ink to draw the lines. The colors are done with a mix of water color, acrylic ink and gouache, I've found acrylic ink gives the brilliant colors I want them to have, water color is better for subtlty, and gouache is good for adding a layer on top of the other two.