Artist Trading Cards and an Irish Hare

I participate in a group that makes and trades Artist Trading Cards (ATCs) and occasional other works in different formats, based on a theme or prompt each month. ATCs are small flat cards that are 2.5” by 3.5”, like sports cards. (Wikipedia has an excellent description and the story about how it got started.)

A recent theme was “cultural motifs.” I wanted to do something Celtic involving rabbits or hares, and remembered that I had come across some folklore of the British Isles assigning symbolic and magical qualities to hares.

I’m kind of using “rabbit” and “hare” interchangeably here, but they are distinct species. Hares are generally bigger, lankier and have longer legs and ears than rabbits; baby hares are called leverets and are born with their eyes open, all their fur, and ready to run, whereas baby rabbits, called kits, are born naked and blind. Jackrabbits are really American hares, so-called because their ears resemble those of a mule, aka jackass. I wrote more about this in my old blog in 2023, which was the Year of the Rabbit. (I also wrote that I was going to make a rabbit zine, which I haven’t done. Yet.)

Irish people believed that hares had supernatural powers, were associated with the moon (perhaps because they are nocturnal), and were able to pass between the land of humans and the Otherworld of the fairy folk. They believed that women from the Otherworld could shapeshift into hares, and thus it was taboo to hunt and eat them. The old threepenny coin in Ireland depicted a hare. To the Saxons, hares were associated with the goddess Eostre/Ostara, from which was derived the name for Easter (Ostara is actually the spring equinox).

Moon rabbit illustration for the 2023 Year of the Rabbit Useful Calendar.

Of course, it’s not only Celts and Saxons who have folklore about rabbits and hares, and associate the animals with the moon. In Chinese mythology an immortal rabbit lives on the moon with the goddess Chang’e, using a mortar and pestle to make the elixir of life (above). In the Americas, there are many indigenous traditions and stories about rabbits and hares, often featured as tricksters. To the late Welsh folklorist George Ewart Evans, the hare is an archetype that appears in folklore all over the world, which he wrote about in his classic book, The Leaping Hare.

But I didn’t want to go into all that, I just wanted to make little cards featuring the Irish hare, or at least a hare, with a Celtic knot and a generally Irish feel to them.

I did search for an image of a hare that I could use to make little collages on my trading cards, but nothing was quite what I wanted, so I did some sketching and then made my own picture with pen, watercolor, and chalk. I scanned it and reduced it slightly to fit the card format.

I copied a very simple Celtic knot from a tutorial on Deviant Art, downloaded an image of a former Irish 3-pence coin featuring a hare, and arranged these and a couple of other elements on a background I had collaged several months ago for another project. The resulting ATCs are pictured on the home page.

I enjoy participating in this art-swapping group, it’s a low-pressure creative practice and a pleasant social network, much like a sewing circle or knitting club. 

I made several illustrations of rabbits and hares for the 2023 Useful Calendar, and used some of them on products, like this mini notebook.