Remember the surprise and delight of receiving a postcard in your letterbox… addressed to YOU? Think of your excitement discovering the correspondent has illustrated that card with a drawing!

I used to send postcards every day, covered in drawings – meaningful or aimless – and then, as email and social media intervened, the regularity of my postcard-giving took a nosedive until I was standing one day in a post office trying to recall when I had last posted one. I couldn’t remember.

I love receiving postcards. Beyond the message written on it: the look of the postage stamp, the artefacts of the journey from letterbox to my door (a dog ear or thumbprint, a smudge or tear, the postal worker’s scribble in pencil), the immediacy of the communication is tangible. The card itself always played an indifferent part in the process, and was basically a surface to work on. I was only interested if it had an uncoated surface to the paper, so it would receive pencil, paint or whatever I had in my paint box.

Now that experience can be yours:

Send me your name and postal address, and for £25, I’ll take a random postcard from my collection, turn it over, and add an original drawing on that side. Then I’ll hand-letter your name and address, put a stamp on it and post it to you: anywhere in the world.

Visit the Postcard Original page to order.

(Postcard illustrations shown above are for example only).