The gateway to summer, June feels like the archetypal month for postcards, for sending a “Look where I am” or “Wish you were here” message on a piece of card stock with a glossy photo picked up at a souvenir shop. Maybe you chose a local attraction or a sunrise over the ocean.
I was thinking of something different for June in terms of postcards, but then, when I asked if people could guess what might be the theme, someone handed me the rainbow.
Life is like a prism. What you see depends on how you turn the glass.
Jonathan Kellerman
Of course, the June prompt should feature rainbows, I thought, when I saw the note. Of course it should. It is Pride Month, after all.
Then I wondered if it might be too stereotypical to suggest that our June postcards be rainbow-infused, something that, for some of us, might also be about pride, about living our truth, about living on our own terms. How sad is it that we have gotten to a point where thinking of doing something that is pride-focused in June runs the risk of being stereotypical?
I thought about rainbows, and I thought about pride. I thought about the kinds of art that I might make on postcards related to that, and it felt exciting. It felt hopeful and bright. It felt defiant. It felt fun.
A “rainbow” prompt is obviously and innately visual. How many ways can we show a rainbow? In simplest terms, we can swatch our paints or make squares with markers. We can draw flags. We can draw cute rainbows with clouds, rainbows on shirts, or rainbows on coffee cups. We can channel our inner or untapped Kawaii. As someone who predominantly works in black-and-white, my next most-used color is rainbow.
So I thought about rainbows, and I thought about pride.
But then I started thinking about the P of pride. I thought about peace and patience and persistence. I thought about the word poetry. The word poem. The word poppy. The word peony. The word pleasure. The word postcard. The word persimmon. The word partner. The word palette. The words pen and pin, which everyone says sound the same when I say them. The words portal, pendulum, and prism. The word preamble. Palimpsest. Paisley. Paradox and parallax. Pastille. Print. Pearl. Petunia. Perpetuity. Pink. Panda. Parrot. Persephone. Penelope. Pastry. Prayer. Primrose.
Wish you were here.
Wish you could see me.
Wish I could see you.
I could have just stuck with rainbow, but I enjoyed pondering and playing with the words that emerged as I moved away from, and then back to, pride. So, to make it a bit more unusual and a bit more playful, consider it a dual prompt.
This month, make a postcard that somehow features, embodies, or deconstructs the rainbow as well as brings in something with a P. (It might be pride. It might be a self-reflexive reference to the P of postcard. It might be something else. It’s good to have—and respect—options.)
A Year of Postcard Connections
This is the ninth in a year-long series of monthly postcard art prompts, prompts that nudge you to write or make art on a postcard and send it out into the world, to connect with someone using a simple rectangle of paper that is let loose in the mail system. Feel free to jump in and make and send your own postcard art.
Reminder: It is totally OK to be sending regular postcards and just adding a bit of illustration within your lettered part.
Amy Cowen is a San Francisco-based writer. A version of this was originally posted on her Substack, Illustrated Life, where she writes about illustrated journals, diary comics/graphic novels, memory, gratitude, loss, and the balancing force of creative habit.
Header image: assorted postcards, including postcards received from readers, courtesy of the author. ©️ A. Cowen. All rights reserved.
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