butterflies pop-up card

This is a sympathy card for a friend whose mother died. Her name is Dorothy, we called her Dot.

If you cannot make it out, it is a double arc of scritchy-scratchy butterflies connected with horizontal braces in the shape of more butterflies. 

Butterfly, metamorphosis, standard condolence symbolism. Usually I do something along the lines of a caterpillar on one page, or the cover, with a butterfly on the next, or a butterfly on a lily pad or a butterfly that appears to fly off the page or some such, but this time I made a mess of butterflies. I could have drawn nice ones, I could have drawn them carefully and copied using a printer. I could  have found appropriate butterflies online and copied those, I could have used Hobby Lobby type butterflies made of feathers, but Instead I scratched them out rapidly.

I don't know what's wrong with me. I don't have patience anymore for careful drawing. Everything comes out scribbly and I send it off. 

The arc is based on Robert Sabuda's idea of Alice in Wonderland (video, skip to the end for Alice with cards) under a similar construction of deck of cards tossed into the air. It is marvelous because it really does look like they're carelessly tossed and seems to have no organization at all with cards flying all over the place, yet it all tucks in obediently. His version is fantastically imaginative. I like it a lot and so do other people too. Benjamin Lacombe copied Alice and the cards explicitly in his Il Était Une Fois [Once Upon a Time] (Video, Alice and cards at 0:54)

These two books together make an interesting contrast. I notice both authors struggle with themes. Sabuda relies heavily on familiar stories rather than making up his own. So does Lacombe rely on familiar fairy tales decidedly un French as if at a loss for material or unable to contrive something unique. Whereas Saubda is brilliant at devising pop-up mechanism, often times overly elaborate, so elaborate they need a bit of help closing shut because he relies on mechanism upon mechanism upon mechanism upon mechanism taking each to an extreme. But his art suffers. He is not that great of an artist. 

Lacome, on the other hand is a beautiful artist. I've shown his book to several women and they all fall in love with his art. They deeply appreciate his take on common themes and marvel at his interpretation through his careful painting. For example, his cards that are tossed in the air are all wonderfully imaginative and beautifully detailed. But his mechanism are terrible. Some hardly work. Most are exceedingly basic as if he has no training in pop-up mechanisms at all, and figured things out on his own just for this one book as I did for my first cards. His flower pedals are whole pages that shift on a tiny hinge. They almost don't work. There is no symmetry or balance, they do not actually pop up but rather fail to fall flat, and they barely shift and almost never stand upright so you worry your copy has something wrong. His strength is in his art.

And that tells me if I'd just take the time to make things beautiful then I don't have to concern myself with mechanisms, women will love them anyway. But it's not how I roll. I lost the patience I had at age twelve for tediously getting the drawings perfectly representative of my vision. Now I just scratch them out. I think hieroglyphics did that. Draw those things a couple thousand times and you're over it. 

Scritchy-scratchy will just have to do.

I have no idea how this card was received. The subject was never brought up.

More on this card if you care to, here.