New Picture Postcards

5 Postcard Sets issued during Benglurupex 2025 on 5 November, 2025.

dedicated to Heritage,  Art & Culture, Science and Sports, Environment and Women of Karnataka

- Col. Akhil Kumar, Bengaluru

Water Tower Art

 

Date of Issue: 7 September 2020

Here is a beautiful set from Australia Post. There are around 74 painted water towers throughout rural Australia. The Water Tower Art stamp issue, released on 7 September 2020, showcases recent large-scale artwork on a prominent feature of rural Australia: the water tower, or water tank. As well as encouraging much-needed tourism, these striking water tower murals are often a great source of community pride, especially as they tend to showcase local people, history, culture and wildlife.

Featured in this issue is water tower art from the towns of Gulargambone, New South Wales (artist, Jenny McCracken); Winton, Victoria (artist, Guido Van Helten); Narrandera, New South Wales (artists from Apparition Media); and Snowtown, South Australia (artist, Vans the Omega). The minisheet shows the water tank that overlooks the township of Cloncurry, Queensland. Painted by The Zookeeper in 2018, the imagery includes the Cloncurry Parrot, the eagle hawk sacred to the Mitakoodi people, and local children Barrack and Brianna. A paper plane refers the Royal Flying Doctor Service, which began in Cloncurry in 1928

$1.10 Jenny McCracken, Gulargambone, New South Wales

Gulargambone is a small town located on the central west plains of New South Wales, on the banks of the Castlereagh River, a seven-hour drive from Sydney. The town is situated in the lands of the Wiradjuri Nation, and its name is said to derive from a local word for “watering place of many birds” or “place of galahs”.

In April 2018, the community held a street art festival, which saw 11 artists from across Australia paint murals all over the town and hold workshops for the locals. The artworks included a mural on the town’s water tower, located next to the football ground. Painted by Jenny McCracken, of Zest Events International, the mural, entitled Lucky Dip, has transformed the water tower into a huge glass of water. A kingfisher is pictured diving to the bottom in search of fish. The subject is a reference to the name of the town and highlights the importance of water to the drought-stricken community. Jenny McCracken has an international reputation as a pavement and mural artist and has been a finalist in the Moran National Portrait Prize.

$1.10 Guido van Helten, Winton, Victoria

The mural on the concrete water tank at Winton was commissioned in 2016 for the annual Wall to Wall Festival in the nearby town of Benalla, a large town of 14,000 people located in north-eastern Victoria. The water tank is in the Winton Wetlands, an 8,750-hectare, environmentally and culturally important region just outside Benalla, on the traditional lands of the Yorta Yorta Nation. The tank is owned by the Country Fire Authority (CFA), and the artist, Guido van Helten, painted it with portraits of three local CFA volunteer members: Colin Hooke, from the Chesney Fire Brigade (represented on the stamp); Robert Green, of Taminick Brigade; and Danielle Spokes, of Winton Brigade.

Like many of Guido van Helten’s murals, the Winton work is executed in grisaille, or shades of grey. Brisbane-born van Helten is one of the world’s great muralists. He has painted works on a range of large-scale surfaces around the globe, including in Ukraine, Spain, Iceland, Mexico and USA. His work on Victoria’s Brim wheat silo was featured in the 2018 Silo Art stamp issue.

$1.10 Apparition Media, Narrandera, New South Wales

Narrandera is a town of around 3,800 people, located on the Murumbidgee River in the Riverina region of southern New South Wales. It stands on the traditional lands of the Wiradjuri Nation. The water tower is located on a hill overlooking the town and was painted over 11 days in 2019 by a team of four artists from Apparition Media, an advertising and studio that creates murals in a range of styles for commercial and community clients. The work was executed by upscaling an image onto paper, which is then rolled out on the tower before the design is chalked in and painted.

The project was funded under the federal government’s Drought Communities Program, and the design was the result of consultation with local young people and artists, including Wiradjuri artist Owen Lyons. The Eastern Bearded Dragon, which features on the stamp, refers to the Wiradjuri word for “place of lizards or goannas”, from which the town derives its name. Other local imagery on the tank includes the Koala, which has been successfully reestablished after numbers dwindled to critical levels in the 1950s, a Tiger Moth airplane and a Murumbidgee River paddle-steamer.

$1.10 Vans the Omega, Snowtown, South Australia

Snowtown, with a population of around 470, is located in the mid-north region of South Australia, 145 kilometres north of Adelaide on the traditional lands of the Kaurna Nation. The town was first established in the 1870s as the terminus of the Kadina railway line, and the now-disused water tank in the centre of town was originally constructed to provide water for steam engines.

In 2018, the Wakefield Regional Council provided a grant to transform the old water tank. The town commissioned well-known mural artist Vans the Omega to complete the painting, with the assistance of Sam Brooks. The subjects selected were local heroes: long-time CFA volunteer John Hansen, depicted on the stamp; ambulance volunteer Jenny Cox; footballer Simon McCormack; netballer Bernie Altmann; and cricketer Lauren Ebsary.

One of our premier street artists, Adelaide-based Vans the Omega (Joel van Moore) has been commissioned to paint large-scale works all over the world. His distinctive portrait style is characterised by blocks of bright colour. Van the Omega’s portrait of a woman on the side of a house in the Adelaide suburb of Goodwood was included in the 2017 Street Art stamp issue.

Special stamp on Blind Talents by Latvia post

Date of Issue : 26 July 2019

 Blind Talents - Painters

Latvijas Pasts in collaboration with the social company Blind Art has released a new stamp and a cover featuring works of art created using the tactile painting technique, a way of painting adapted to visually impaired people. The drawings have been made by the pupils of Strazdumuiža Residential Secondary School. 

The design of the stamp and the cover incorporates several works created during the classes of visual and tactile art at the development centre of Strazdumuiža Residential Secondary School by the pupils of grades 4 to 8, working jointly under the supervision of the teacher Baiba Pika.

The stamp created by the gifted blind persons includes the painting Garāmgājējs (A Passer-by), while the cover is decorated with the drawings Balerīna (Ballerina) and Gribu būt karalis! (I Want to Be King!). The first day postmark depicts the stylus, a centre-punching tool used in tactile painting.

Tactile Painting

Tactile painting is a special type of drawing adapted to visually impaired people. Paper is attached to a specially designed drawing object and a stylus is used to centre-punch the contour of the drawing object. The resulting silhouette of the drawing is turned over and painting with specialised finger paints or oil chalks is carried out by touching the tactile dots made in the centre-punching process. 

Portugal China Joint Issue

Date of Issue : 8 February 2019

2019 marks 40 years of official diplomatic relations between the Portuguese Republic and the People’s Republic of China (on 8 February 1979, the two countries reached an agreement on the establishment of diplomatic relations). The historical relations and direct friendship between the people of China and Portugal began as early as the 16th century, after Portuguese navigators managed to join the Cape Route with the Maritime Silk Road, which had hitherto been used by large Chinese ships, under the command of Admiral Zheng He, to reach the coast of East Africa. Thus began the globalisation of the modern aera, for the first time joining, with a direct and continuous shipping route, the four main continents, from Europe to Africa, America and Asia. Since then, understanding and reciprocal influence between the two peoples have grown, both in terms of knowledge and technology and on a cultural level.

Today Portugal and China develop relations of deep mutual respect and friendship in multiple areas of political, economic, social and cultural activity, namely participating in the Chinese initiative One Belt, One Road, in the more global context of Portugal’s European and international relations.

Leonardo da Vinci drawings from Royal Collection

Royal Post CELEBRATES  LIFE AND WORKS of 

Leonardo da Vinci

This beautiful set of 12 Special First Class Stamps issued by Royal Mail on 13 February 2019 is each one a miniature work of art.The stamps are presented in two se-tenant strips of six and feature the following original Leonardo da Vinci drawings from Royal Collection Trust:

• The skull sectioned.
• A sprig of guelder rose.
• Studies of cats.
• A star-of-Bethlehem and other plants.
• The anatomy of the shoulder and foot.
• The head of Leda.
• The head of a bearded man.
• The skeleton.
• The head of St Philip.
• A woman in a landscape.
• A design for an equestrian monument.
• The fall of light on a face.

Leonardo is widely considered one of the greatest artists of all time, and 500 years since his death his drawings, in which he explored fields as diverse as botany, anatomy, portraiture, design and the nature of the world around him, continue to fascinate. 

The drawings featured on the stamps were chosen to coincide with the 12 exhibitions, ‘Leonardo da Vinci: A Life in Drawing’, taking place in 2019 across the UK – one drawing from each of the 12 exhibitions is featured on a stamp. 

Leonardo da Vinci was one of history’s greatest polymaths – a painter, sculptor, architect, engineer and map-maker who also pursued the scientific study of subjects as diverse as human anatomy, the theory of light, the movement of water and the growth of plants. 

The common thread to all Leonardo’s work was drawing. He drew incessantly, for new ideas, to refine compositions, to record his observations and to test his theories. Many of his drawings are accompanied by extensive notes in ‘mirror-writing’: Leonardo was left-handed, and throughout his life he habitually wrote in perfect mirror image, from right to left. 

Fewer than 20 paintings by Leonardo survive, and nothing in sculpture or architecture. But because Leonardo hoarded thousands of his drawings and dozens of notebooks, many of which have been passed down through succeeding centuries, we have a detailed knowledge of the workings of his extraordinary mind. 

The Royal Collection holds the greatest collection of Leonardo’s drawings in existence, housed in the Print Room at Windsor Castle. Because they have been protected from light, fire and flood, they are in almost pristine condition and allow us to see exactly what Leonardo intended – and to observe his hand and mind at work, after a span of five centuries. These drawings are among the greatest artistic treasures of the United Kingdom.

This First Day Cover celebrates the life and work of Leonardo Da Vinci, and features a remarkable selection of drawings from the collection of Her Majesty The Queen,acquired by King Charles II in around 1670.

The Tallents House postmark features one of Leonardo’s drawings of a human eye, while the alternative postmark features one of his intricate drawings of a human hand. 

The location is Windsor in recognition of the extensive collection of the artist’s drawings housed in the Royal Library at Windsor Castle.

The skull sectioned, 1489 : Pen and ink : Ulster Museum, Belfast

Leonardo had little access to human material when he first started to study anatomy. But in 1489, he obtained a skull, which he cut in a variety of sections to study its structure. In this drawing, he shows the skull sawn down the middle, then across the front of the right side. This beautifully lucid presentation, with the two halves juxtaposed, allows the viewer to locate the facial cavities in relation to the surface features. Leonardo wished to determine the proportions of the skull and the paths of the sensory nerves, believing that they must converge at the site of the soul.

A sprig of guelder-rose, c.1506–12 : Red chalk on orange-red prepared paper : Sunderland Museum and Winter Gardens

A beautifully rendered study of guelder-rose (Viburnum opulus) has been drawn in red chalk on paper rubbed all over with powdered red chalk. Although it may be connected with Leonardo’s Leda and the Swan, it is far more detailed than necessary as a study for a painting; indeed, it surpasses anything found in contemporary herbals. The leaves are shown curling and sagging, for Leonardo was interested not merely in their shape but also in their living form when subject to the natural forces of growth and gravity.

Studies of cats, c.1517–18 : Pen and ink : Bristol Museum and Art Gallery

Leonardo’s studies of sleeping cats are among his most sensitively observed drawings and must have been done directly from life. His appreciation of the animals’ lithe forms had a scientific basis, for elsewhere on the sheet he wrote: “Of flexion and extension. The lion is the prince of this animal species, because of the flexibility of its spine.” This suggests that the drawings were made in connection with Leonardo’s proposed treatise on “the movements of animals with four feet, among which is man, who likewise in his infancy crawls on all fours”. 

A star-of-Bethlehem and other plants, c.1506–12 : Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum : Glasgow

Leonardo drew plants and flowers as studies for decorative details in his paintings and probably also in the process of working towards a systematic treatise on the growth of plants and trees. His finest botanical drawings were executed for his painting Leda and the Swan, which was to have a foreground teeming with plants and flowers, thus echoing the fertility inherent in that myth. The focus of this drawing is a clump of star-of-Bethlehem (Ornithogalum umbellatum), whose swirling leaves are seen in studies for, and copies of, the lost painting.

The anatomy of the shoulder and foot, c.1510–11 : Pen and ink with wash : Southampton City Art Gallery

Leonardo was fascinated by the mechanism of the shoulder and by how the arrangement of muscles and bones allowed such a wide range of movement. Here he analyses the shoulder and arm in a series of drawings at progressive states of dissection. He begins at upper right with the muscles intact and then lifts away individual muscles, such as the deltoid and biceps, to reveal the structures below. At lower right, Leonardo demonstrates the articulation of the ankle with the tibia and fibula lifted away from the foot.

The head of Leda, c.1505–08 : Pen and ink over black chalk : Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool

Over the last 15 years of his life, Leonardo worked on a painting of the myth of Leda, showing the queen of Sparta seduced by the god Jupiter in the guise of a swan. The painting was the highest valued item in Leonardo’s estate at his death; it later entered the French royal collection but was apparently destroyed around 1700. In this sketch, Leonardo expended little effort on Leda’s demure downward glance, devoting his attention instead to the most complicated of hairstyles – throughout his life he had a love of personal adornment in both hair and clothes.

The head of a bearded man, c.1517–18 : Black chalk : Derby Museum and Art Gallery

Leonardo was fascinated by the male profile, both the divinely beautiful and the hideously grotesque. Such heads are found throughout his work, from paintings such as The Last Supper to quick doodles in the margins of his drawings. Towards the end of his life, Leonardo made many carefully finished drawings of classical profiles, exercises in form and draughtsmanship simply for his own satisfaction. Their features – such as the dense mat of curly hair seen here – were inspired by ancient coins and medals of Roman emperors.

The skeleton, c.1510–11 : Pen and ink with wash : Amgueddfa Cymru/National Museum Wales, Cardiff

Leonardo’s most brilliant anatomical studies were conducted in the winter of 1510–11, when he was apparently working in the medical school of the university of Pavia, near Milan. He may have dissected up to 20 human bodies at that time, concentrating on the mechanisms of the bones and muscles. This is his most complete representation of a skeleton, seen from front, side and back in the manner of an architectural drawing. Leonardo aimed to compile an illustrated treatise on human anatomy, but his studies remained unpublished at his death.

The head of St Philip, c.1495 : Black chalk :Millennium Gallery, Sheffield

Leonardo’s greatest completed work was The Last Supper, painted in the refectory of the monastic church of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan and now in a ruined state. The mural shows the reaction of the disciples to Christ’s announcement of his imminent betrayal. Few drawings survive of the hundreds that must have been made. This study for the head of St Philip, leaning towards Christ in devotion and despair, was probably based on a live model, but Leonardo has idealised the features, taking them out of the real world and into the divine.

A woman in a landscape, c.1517–18 : Black chalk : Manchester Art Gallery

Two of Leonardo’s favourite devices – a mysterious smile and a pointing hand – are combined in this ethereal drawing. It shows a woman standing in a rocky, watery landscape, smiling at us while gesturing into the distance, her arms gathering her drapery to her breast. The most plausible explanation is that this is the maiden Matelda gathering flowers, as she appears to Dante on the far side of a stream in Purgatory, the second book of his Divine Comedy. However, the purpose of the drawing is unknown.

A design for an equestrian monument, c.1485–88 : Silverpoint on blue prepared paper : Leeds Art Gallery

Ludovico Sforza, ruler of Milan, commissioned Leonardo to execute a bronze equestrian monument, well over life size, to his father, Francesco. Leonardo’s early studies show Francesco on a rearing horse over a fallen foe. Over the next five years, Leonardo built a full-sized clay model of the horse and prepared a mould for the casting – a huge technical challenge. But in 1494, Ludovico requisitioned the 75 tonnes of bronze for the cast to make cannon, and the monument was never finished. Invading French troops used the clay model for target practice, destroying it.

The fall of light on a face, c.1488 : Pen and ink : Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery

During the 1480s, Leonardo began to assemble material towards a treatise on the theory of painting. His own paintings, such as the Mona Lisa, were noted even in his own day for their sophisticated treatment of shadows, and here he sets out the geometrical principles of light and shade. The diagram and notes (in mirror writing) explain that where the light falls at right angles on the face, the face will be most strongly illuminated; where it falls at a shallow angle, the face will be less strongly lit; and where no light is received, under the nose and chin, the surface will be completely dark.

Leonardo da Vinci Prestige Stamp Book

Beautiful paintings and drawings adorn every page of this Prestige Stamp Book which explores the many facets of Leonardo da Vinci - making it the ideal gift or collectible.The book is complemented by three stamp panes containing all 12 Special Stamps.

• Set against a background featuring examples of his drawings and paintings, including ‘The Last Supper’.
• A fourth pane contains Definitive stamps in colours that beautifully complement the drawings and paintings in the book. The pane also includes a self-portrait in the centre.

Source : Royal Mail

New special Cover

135 years Birth Anniversary of Shantalingappa Patil Nimbal : 12 June 2017

Shantalingappa Patil Nimbal is the first artist of Hyderabad Karnataka region to complete his education at Sir J J School of Art, Mumbai. He is well known for his Portrait Paintings. His Paintings can be found in the old Hyderabad region, especially in Bidar, Raichur & Kalaburagi. His 135th Birth Anniversary is being celebrated in 2017.

Cover Photo: A Painting of Artist Shantalingappa Patil Nimbal

- Suresh R. Bangalore

Street art on stamps

Date of Issue : 16 May 2017

Street Art

In recent decades there has been an explosion of art practice in the urban environments. Street art describes public artistic expression that appears outside traditional art venues, such as galleries. 

Beginning as unsanctioned graffiti in the 1980s, street art has now evolved into a sophisticated range of practices, including stencil art, poster art, spray painting, yarn bombing and installation art. Australia has a particularly vibrant street art culture and this issue features four portraits by internationally respected artists painted in the streets of Melbourne and Adelaide.

$1 Mural by Adnate, Melbourne, 2014

Adnate’s large-scale works can be seen all over the world. Commissioned by the City of Melbourne, his 23-metre mural of an Indigenous boy was painted in Hosier Lane, Melbourne, in 2014.

$1 Portrait by Vans the Omega, Adelaide, 2015

Influential Adelaide-based artist Vans the Omega painted the vivid female portrait on a house in Railway Terrace, Adelaide, in 2015.

$1 Forever curious by Rone and Phibs, Melbourne, 2013

Australian artists Rone and Phibs collaborated on Forever curious, the expressive portrait of a woman in Rutledge Lane, Melbourne, in June 2013. As is the ephemeral nature of much street art, it was painted over with blue paint by another artist only two months later.

$1 Shinka by Fin DAC, Adelaide, 2016

Irish artist Fin DAC employed a stencil and spray paint technique to create the mural Shinka, as part of the Little Rundle Street Art Project in Adelaide in early 2016.

Club News

INSPIRE - 2017 - A hobby Fest

KARPHILEX - 2017

New Special Cover on World Theater Day

27 March - World Theater Day

CPMG Charles Lobo,  Smt Jay Shree  and Smt Uma Shree  Releasing the  special  covers

A photo exhibition was also organized at the venue and a book  on Karnataka Theatre family  " Hakki  Nota" (Kannada)  by  Jagannath  Prakash  ji was also released .

- Jagannath Mani & Vineeth J ,  Bangalore