Greetings from 2012 - Austin

The last city on our grand calendar tour is Austin. I have never been to Austin, but my husband has a number of cousins there and recently visited. He brought back many postcards, and the cousins were instrumental in finding my inspiration for the Austin sketches.

It was the postcard of the bat bridge that got me. It's proper name is the Congress Avenue Bridge and it is home to the largest urban colony of bats in the world. About 1 million bats live underneath the bridge during the summer months (they migrate to Mexico in the winter) and every dusk they emerge in this cloud to hunt for food, a sight that attracts over 100,000 tourists annually. That's 10 bats for every tourist!

The bats have become such an iconic part of Austin that many businesses have adopted the bat into their logos and below you can see a bat sculpture which sits across the street from the bridge, by artist Dale Whistler.

I've already done a second sketch of the annual kite festival. The Letterpress Library volumes will be available at the end of January. I'm very excited and can't wait to finally visit Austin!

Our 2012 postcard calendar is now for sale in our Etsy shop. There are discounts for multiple purchases. We will also it for sale at all of our holiday markets and events listed in the sidebar.

Greetings from 2012: Amsterdam

Throughout November I've been visiting the inspiration behind the designs for our 2012 postcard wall calendar, which features sketches from twelve cities from around the world.

 

I love visiting Amsterdam. I still want to do more traveling around the Dutch countryside (during tulip season would be amazing!) but there is still so much more of Amsterdam to explore.

Oh the row houses! The beautiful diversity of the slanted, narrow canal houses! The plethora of peeping windows! How could I not draw those marvelous buildings!?

Our 2012 postcard calendar is now for sale in our Etsy shop. There are discounts for multiple purchases. We will also it for sale at all of our holiday markets and events listed in the sidebar.

Greetings from 2012 - Tokyo

I have been itching to go to Tokyo and Japan for years and years. Honestly, I want to go there with an empty suitcase and return with it full of papers, tapes, and other fabulous stationery products. But aside from that, I find it a fascinating, beautiful country and look forward to an anniversary trip with my husband some day.

I slotted Tokyo for April since it's the height of cherry blossom season, a wonderful welcome to deep spring, and included a drape of blossom branches over the city skyline in the sketch.

Though the illustration didn't address it, the traditional and religious architecture of Japan draws you in. I adore the sweeping roof corners and how they seem to embrace the sky.

I even find the lights and busy-ness of the entertainment district captivating and love especially how the natural verticality of Japanese signage creates this amazing tunnel of lights and life (in an entirely different sort of way than the cherry blossoms).

What are some of your favorite places in Tokyo? What about Japan?

Our 2012 postcard calendar is now for sale in our Etsy shop. We will also it for sale at all of our holiday markets and events listed in the sidebar.

Greetings from 2012 - Los Angeles

In case you're just tuning in, Greetings from 2012 is a series of posts about the inspiration behind the Albertine Press 2012 calendar, which features a dozen cityscape postcards.

I've been to L.A. only once before, but clearly wasn't paying careful attention. When I went about researching reference images for the skyline sketch, I was pleasantly shocked at the beautiful mountain in the background. Hmmm, maybe L.A. is worth another visit?

Los Angeles, or Miss June (that's when the summer blockbusters come out, right?) is actually an alternate version of one note card design already in our wholesale catalog. I was glad for an opportunity to showcase the variant, which I was particularly attached to.

Our 2012 postcard calendar is now for sale in our Etsy shop. We will also it for sale at all of our holiday markets and events listed in the sidebar.

Greetings from 2012 - Rio

I wanted a South American city to round out the calendar and Matt suggested Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Everything I found added up to an impossibly complicated and inspirational place.

The favelas, or shanty towns, have a captivating quality to them that I find somehow beautiful, but for the representative postcard image of the place, I didn't feel it quite appropriate. And with so many other gorgeous options, I was okay with that.

Also Matt's suggestion, I took a good hard look at the tiled boardwalks of the Copacabana and Ipanema beaches. How amazing is this?

If there are songs about it, then a nice beach-y scene seemed a great place to land for our postcard image - especially for December (cold up north, but full on summer down in Brazil).

Our 2012 postcard calendar is now for sale in our Etsy shop. We will also it for sale at all of our holiday markets listed in the sidebar.