For the past two years I hand sketched postcards for that most dreaded of holidays: St. Valentine’s Day. I think I am one of the few people who insist on keeping the S-A-I-N-T on the holiday. I don’t insist for religious reasons, more for tradition. I am perfectly aware that the story of St. Valentine was most likely conflated with some horrible then contemporary bodice-ripping tale, but the Church changed the names and then… A saint has nothing to do with our modern greeting card and candy driven wallow in pink and red excess. Do Americans do anything but excess? Holidays, War, Debt.
Enough imperialistic woe for a moment. I started two years ago by hand drawing and coloring post cards for my friends. I loved getting valentines in elementary. We make “mailboxes” out of white paper bakery bags and adorned them with our names and a myriad of misshapen construction paper hearts. It was the one time of year that a young gay boy like me could put pink on something and not be beaten up for it. I wanted to recapture that feeling from childhood, not the secret pink feeling, but the other feeling, the valentine card adrenaline rush. Each postcard had a poem on the back and was sent in the mail to the people who had signed up to participate.
According to my LiveJournal, I sent out 41 valentines in 2009 and that number jumped to 60 in 2010. I decided to set a goal of 100 this year. I will mail out 100 and attempt to hand out the rest for the locals who want them. I invited 300 people on Facebook, but if I sent that many out by post it would cost me nearly $100 in postage. I love you all, but not that much. So be one of the first 100 to sign up.
This year, I sketched six designs and I am very happy with four of them. Three are nature themed and three are man-made objects. I won’t say more because I don’t want to ruin the surprise.