#ducks draws

There is one stamp here per letter, in chronological order. Each pair shares the same theme and colours, and the square line surrounding them represents the progress in their relationship.

Stamp 1: Starfleet Official Postal Service. Here Spock is still distant, and he chooses a very professional stamp.

Stamp 2: the Enterprise. Kirk is in the same situation, but he has always been more sentimental, so he chooses a stamp depicting his ship. Notice that the line around the stamp is fully closed — they haven't opened up to each other just yet. The theme for these two stamps is "Starfleet".

Stamp 3: Happy Hannukah. This is a slightly more personal stamp, using the information that Kirk gave him in the last letter. Blue and white colours for Hannukah. Also I apologise if my calligraphy is wrong here, as I'm not familiar with the Hebrew alphabet. The theme for these two stamps is "calligraphy".

Stamp 4: Live long and prosper, written in Vulcan. Kirk asks Spock in this letter to teach him Vulcan some day. The square is no longer closed, but the opening is still small.

Stamp 5: the fern-like pattern. The theme for these two (my personal favourites!) is "science", based on the party organised by the laboratory staff. The design is inspired by the fern test (that's a rabbit hole I went into recently, I find these patterns beautiful, and I chose it because it kind of reminds me of a snowflake or a wreath — pretty wintery either way), but since it doesn't make a lot of sense to study gynecology in space let's say in this case it's an alien substance that creates a similar structure. Maybe its discovery is what prompted the party!

Stamp 6: the Vulcan heart. Jim is a little bit tipsy here, so he couldn't place the stamp completely straight. He also chose a slightly romantic design, at least to humans. The square continues to slowly disappear. Notice the similarity between the shape of the veins and the fern pattern. It means nothing, but I think it's neat!

Stamps 7 and 8: not too much to say about these two, even though a lot is revealed in these letters. Just some cozy-themed hot chocolate and a scarf.

Stamps 9 and 10: a similar landscape in Iowa (in winter) and Vulcan. The theme is "home", and the border is almost completely gone. It sort of makes it look like a camera frame, doesn't it? Did they visit both places and take these pictures?

Stamp 11: oops! there's no border at all. There are no more barriers between them. This one speaks for itself, but I'd like to remark that it's the most colourful of the bunch. I like to think these two freaks designed this stamp as a wedding gift for their guests, inspired by the importance of holiday cards in their relationship :) (it could have looked better but I had been drawing for 4 hours and it turns out it's exhausting)

I have transparent versions of these so if anyone wants any of them for any reason let me know (I'm too lazy to export them twice otherwise)

Title: Home for the Holidays

Author: professorplum221

Fandom: Star Trek: The Original Series

Ship: Kirk/Spock

Summary:

About the calligraphy itself, this is definitely my favourite work so far. I've been learning how to use a drawing tablet (I'm still deciding if I should post my first fanart, because it's embarrasingly bad) and this has been great practice for getting used to making fluid lines. I have to be more careful with keeping the brush size consistent, here you can notice some very obvious changes. But I appreciate being able to erase and adjust the letters as much as I want without destroying the paper.

I'm also very proud of the tears. The character who spoke this line in the fic is the one who I imagine wrote it down (for meditation purposes?), and by the end she didn´t have the strength to finish the lines the proper way, and her tears stained the paper. I hope they are recognisable as what they are and don't just look like weird smudges lol