Postcard Prompt 3: Send a Snowflake in December

No two are the same. A snowflake-themed postcard prompt for the month.

“Under the microscope, I found that snowflakes were miracles of beauty; and it seemed a shame that this beauty should not be seen and appreciated by others. Every crystal was a masterpiece of design, and no one design was ever repeated. When a snowflake melted, that design was forever lost. Just that much beauty was gone, without leaving any record behind.” — Wilson Bentley, quoted in Snowflake Bentley

Into December

It is time for the next postcard prompt, and, strangely, I can’t get past the snow of it. Winter is coming, but I don’t live somewhere where I will see snow. It has been many years since I’ve seen snow. For people who have never lived in an area that gets no snow, it may seem hard to comprehend going years and years without either the beauty or the inconvenience. I miss snow. I miss the idea of snow.

When my oldest was born, there was snow in surrounding areas. Snow is so unlikely here that even the hint of snow on that day more than twenty years ago was enough to create family lore. For years, we crafted, cradled, and repeated a story about a little boy who lived on a hill, and on the day he was born, there was snow in the mountains around the city. It is the kind of story that, as soon as you begin saying the words, feels imbued with the magic of a fairy tale.

I can’t remember the last time I saw snow.

I have grown into my appreciation of November as a gratitude-themed month and a month of intentionally looking for and tracking light, but December has a magic all its own.

My enjoyment of December is often rooted in light, sometimes catching the early sunset as the days shorten, but also artificial light. Some of my favorite things are related to Christmas lights. There are lights on the tree and on the bookcases. We used to have lights around the windows and across the shelves in the office.

Ornaments are my other favorite thing in December. Ornaments are often shiny and whimsical containers of memory, quiet little portals to the past. Drawing ornaments has often been a way to center myself and anchor creative habit in December. There are some ornaments I draw again and again, returning to them each year, using them as touchstones to the past.

Last year, I took a nutcracker diversion.

I think devising our own nutcrackers would be a lot of fun for illustrated postcards. I considered it, but I didn’t want to do a prompt for this month that is locked into Christmas. So I went to that thing which we don’t have, snow.

A Focus on Snow — Postcard No. 3

How do you do a postcard about snow?

How do you think about connecting the dots between years and people and memory and personal history and the passage of time…with snow?

You get really close.

You think about snowflakes. You think about individual snowflakes in their frozen lattice work, in their fragility and beauty and singularity. You think about crystallization and symmetry.

You think back to when you were a kid, or to some point when you interacted with a child, or to when you were an adult and, on a lark, you grabbed paper and scissors and tried, once again, to make a snowflake. It really shouldn’t be so hard. It’s just the folding of paper and then cutting along the folded edge.

Making snowflakes…I don’t remember doing that as a kid. I’m sure I must have. I don’t specifically remember doing it with my children. I’m sure we must have. But I do remember doing it somewhere along the way, especially as an adult. I remember the anticipation of delicate, lacy, paper creations and the reality that they often come out large and clunky.

I remember that they came out more square than they should. I remember that my hand cut snowflakes don’t offer a lot in the way of whimsy. I remember paper snowflakes as a bit of a disappointment.

Maybe it’s been my technique. I think there’s a very good chance that I’ve never folded the paper correctly, that from the beginning, I had the wrong shape. In looking at directions today, because how hard can it be?, I see over and over again the foundation of a cone-shaped structure. I am fairly sure I’ve never used that kind of triangular base. Did we just fold the paper into rectangles and make block-shaped snowflakes? Surely not. Maybe we stopped one step short of the cone, cutting shapes from a larger, less refined triangle? No wonder they were disappointing. No wonder my memories of paper snowflakes are of something fairly square.)

I would say cutting a snowflake is worth a try again. I would say it’s probably worth using the scissors that shouldn’t be used to cut paper. I would say we should get past caring if we use our scissors to cut paper. I would say we should use smaller paper because we’re older and wiser, and we realize that the full sheet of printer paper is not going to yield a delicate snowflake. I would say we should be bold and use really sharp scissors that can make tiny cuts.

You may or may not be or aspire to be a delicate snowflake, and yet there is beauty in making a delicate snowflake. This is not Minecraft. We don’t need block-level snowflakes. We don’t need 8-bit images plotted out on graph paper. We can follow curves and dip in and out of spaces. We can play with the geometry of shape and form.

So what do you do on a postcard if a single snowflake is your objective? You think about symmetry. You think about branching and hexagonal designs. While it may be fun and intriguing to draw snowflakes with a large number of branches (or arms), the familiar snowflake has six branches that radiate from the center. It’s all about chemistry:

“The six-sided shape of a snowflake can be attributed to the molecular structure of water and the unique formation process of snow crystals. Snowflakes form when water vapour condenses on tiny ice nuclei in cold, supersaturated air. As the water vapour freezes, it arranges itself into a hexagonal lattice due to the hydrogen bonds between water molecules.” (IET)

From each of the six arms, a unique symmetry evolves, each arm mirroring the others:

“…while different snow crystals follow different paths through the clouds, the six branches of a single crystal travel together. They all experience the same growth history, so they grow in synchrony. The end result is a snow crystal that is both complex and symmetrical... and often quite stunning.” Kenneth Libbrecht, The Art of the Snowflake

It is often said that every snowflake is different, that no two are alike. The infinite scope of this singularity, the possibility of this lack of repetition in formation, is part of the magic of snowflakes. We may cling to this story of individuality, but there are actually a number of different types of snowflakes. The classification of snowflakes seems to be something on which scientists differ, but many use a system that includes 35 different types:

Source: Andy Brunning, Compound Interest

A Bit of Snowy History

Wilson A. Bentley, known as Snowflake Bentley, spent much of his life examining, documenting, and photographing snowflakes using a photomicrographic technique. (He succeeded in first photographing a single snow crystal in 1855.) Bentley photographed thousands of snowflakes and, famously, never found two that were alike.

In 1931, Snow Crystals, a collection of his photographs, was published. (Bentley died shortly after the publication.)¹

Snowflake photos taken by Wilson Bentley. Source: Jericho Historical Society.

“And here comes the snow,
A language in which no word is ever repeated.”
—William Matthews, “Spring Snow”

Send a Postcard

On your postcard this month do something related to snow. Draw a snowflake or two. Play with tessellation. Look up snowflake photography and draw something based on real snowflake structures, or play with the simplification of the snowflake as a symbol.

Drawing a snowflake is similar to the process of drawing a mandala. It can be symmetrical and mindful. It can be geometric. It can be precise and structured and measured and calculated, or it can be freeform.

I encourage you to cut a snowflake first. You can then use it as a model to draw, a visual aid as you think about the shape of snow. You might even use it as a stencil and play with negative space, adding a splash of color to a postcard and creating a mosaic from the spaces between.

I tried again before writing today’s prompt, and I still didn’t have much luck. After laughing at one of my attempts, my son suggested that solving part of the problem (the fact that it didn’t have distinct branches and was circular) required cutting off parts of the top at opposite angles. I did that, and as I opened it back up, I was enchanted to find I had unwittingly created rabbits. (I couldn’t not see rabbits.)

The additional cuts helped, giving the snowflake some semblance of branches rather than the appearance of a circular doily, but it still wasn’t satisfying. The rest of the snowflake is still disappointing.

(I had to laugh to see Martha Stewart talk about kids happily occupying themselves cutting dozens of snowflakes.)

The Challenge

This month, I am suggesting you cut one, or, really, draw one.

You don’t have time because December is busy? Really? That might be exactly why you need to slow down and cut or draw a snowflake. It can be a mindful practice.

This month, consider drawing your own snowflake or snowflakes, one or many, on a postcard. Snowflakes embody individuality and singularity, and something crisp and fragile, something icy and prismatic. Snowflakes are often said to represent hope.

Snowflakes are very quiet.
Be like a snowflake.

Related Resources

Here are some directions you can use to cut a snowflake. (These directions also include instructions for how to make a vertical mobile or “curtain” out of paper snowflakes.)

Video inspiration for drawing snowflakes:

• How to draw snowflakes (LethalChris Drawing)

• How to draw a snowflake (Crafty Nica)

Children’s books about snowflakes:

• Snowflake Bentley by Jacqueline Briggs Martin (author) and Mary Azarian (illustrator)

• The Snowflake Mistake by Maddie Frost and Lou Treleaven

• Snow Globe Wishes by Erin Dealey (author), Claire Shorrock (illustrator)

• Snow by Uri Shulevitz

• Stella, Queen of the Snow by Marie-Louise Gay

History:

• Wilson A. Bentley: Pioneering Photographer of Snowflakes (Smithsonian)

A Year of Postcard Connections

This is the third 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. The first two prompts involved Halloween memories and spirals of gratitude.

Feel free to jump in. Even if you don’t literally make a postcard and apply a stamp, you might at least think through your response to the prompt and do it in your illustrated journal or sketchbook.

(Thank you to PRINT for inviting the postcard prompt series. At PRINT, you’ll find Debbie Millman’s insightful Design Matters podcast and the What Matters project, but also an inspiring collection of writers in the Creative Voices section.)

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Unless otherwise noted, all images in this post are ©️ A. Cowen. All rights reserved.²

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1. Snowflake photos, Jericho Historical Society.

2. Head photo (top): assorted postcards, including postcards with snowflakes. Animal postcards mixed in with this arrangement are postcards received that were part of a set of postcards called The Art of Quilts: Postcard Collection: Animals. Dog card: David Taylor; Heron card: Joan Colvin.