Friday, May 8, 2015

Envelopes - Days Gone By


Eeh, a day behind - yesterday's theme, though I sketched it last night. Personal envelopes (not the kind with little windows unfortunately) are becoming a rare sight, all covered with stamps, handwriting and postmarks.
I used to check my letterbox almost as often as I now check my emails, as one of the many South Africans with many or most of their family and old friends living elsewhere in the world. In fact sit in front of and stare at it - willing one of those crisp, fat packages of news and connectivity to plop through the slot from loved ones. Little gifts, when you consider all that went into writing, stamping, and posting them, sometimes enclosing drawings or children's scribbles, compared to dashing off a few lines in an email or dialing up on Skype. Which is fantastic and miraculous, make no mistake, but just not the same. These are from my three sisters - one sadly no longer with us - from different parts of the world, I wish I'd kept more of them. I think I'll make a new family law that says we have to write each other one real humdinger of a letter a year, except I'll probably be the first to break it. (BTW the address on the top one is obsolete so you won't reach me there if you're thinking of writing:)

An exciting white slip did arrive this week in our rusty old disused letterbox. To collect a parcel from the P.O. which turned out to be packs of postcards from images published in The Art of Urban Sketching. 100 each of three of mine, and a wonderful collection of a hundred of the other participating urban sketcher's works which I'm really thrilled to have and keep - not sending those, but postcard, anyone?

7 comments:

RH Carpenter said...

Another beautiful job with a nice post to go along with the drawing/sketch (I have a hard time calling these sketches because they are so complete!).

dinahmow said...

What lovely old envelopes! Sadly, I've slipped from being a prolific writer to a dreadful back-slider. I suppose we are all so much busier and more caught up in the fast pace of today. But I am slowly reaching more often for a pen.

Ginny Stiles said...

Always love to check out your blog but I don't leave messages often. Tickled to see my blog is one you follow too! You are so right that the art of letters and notes is about lost. I wandered a store the other day and found tons of box of note cards. Who buys these? The Urban sketching post cards look delightful. I'd love a postcard but how awful would postage be for you to send to Wisconsin USA?
Oh boy.
I admit I am purchasing a "fountain pen" Imagine that. I have not owned one of those in years.

Sadami said...

Hi, Cathy, really, really lovely and beautiful!! Cheers, Sadami

http://carolking.wordpress.com said...

Love your drawings. Isn't it nice to get a real envelope or postcard or greeting card in the mail. Everyone just texts or emails something now.

Love your envelopes and how wonderful to get all these postcards from the book.

Cathy said...

Wonderful envelopes! ... and you're totally right about them. I couldn't ahev sad it better. I sometimes don't even check the mail for weeks!!!

Cathy Gatland said...

Thanks Rhonda, Dinah, Ginny, Sadami, Carol and Cathy, yes, drawing these envelopes and writing about them reminded me of how wonderful it is/was to get them!

Ginny, and anyone else interested, if you email me your address to cathy.asketchintime@gmail.com I'll send you one of the USk postcards. Just leave a message here on the blog to make sure I check this email address - it gets mostly spam so I don't do that very often!