For anyone who has ever meant to write and did not.
Everyone has an artist in them, at any age and any level. These cards exist so that the artist gets an evening, and somebody else gets the result.
Who do you write to?
Most people can name the first one before they finish this sentence. The rest take a few questions. Who were your childhood friends? Who in your family do you admire, or have not heard from in too long? Who did something for you when you needed it most, and never knew what it meant? Who taught you a thing you still do their way?
Every pack comes with a printable sheet of those questions, with room to write the names down and keep them. By the end you have a short list in your own hand of the people who made your life what it is, and what you want to say to each of them. Thank them, tell them what you admire, ask after something of theirs, send news, or just invite them to write back. Four lines is plenty. It can feel like a lot. The first one is the hardest, and it gets easier from the second.
How the drawings are made
Marlo Wren is the name this work is published under. The drawings are made, corrected, proofed and coloured in Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand.
The line work is developed using AI image tools, then selected, corrected, laid out and proofed by hand. A great many are rejected. What survives is checked at print size, because a line that looks fine on a screen can close up on paper and spoil the card for whoever is colouring it.
On an original, the colour is applied by hand in watercolour and pencil, on the sheet you receive. So each original has two halves with two different origins, and the label says so: hand-coloured original, watercolour over a printed line. Nothing here is described as hand-drawn, because it would not be true.
A note on what is not here
There is no Māori design in this work. No koru, no kōwhaiwhai, no tā moko, no tiki. The birds and plants of this country belong in a drawing by anyone who lives here; the design language of tangata whenua does not, not without a mandate and a paid, credited Māori artist. If that range ever exists it will be made that way or not at all.
Orders
Lisa handles orders, invoices and shipping, and is the person who will reply if you write about buying something. For anything about the work itself, that reaches me.