Lunar New Year Workshop: DIY ASCII Art Postcards
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Create and take home a custom pen-plotted ASCII art postcard to celebrate the Lunar New Year.
Learn about the history of ASCII art and create your own text-based images in this special Lunar New Year workshop. Together, we will compile everyone’s work into a shared minisite and each participant will leave with a physical keepsake: a custom postcard featuring their ASCII artwork, produced using a pen plotter. All physical materials will be provided.
Some time will be set aside during the workshop for image gathering and reference, but participants are encouraged to prepare a few reference images of zodiac animals they’d like to draw in advance. Need inspiration? 2026 is the Year of the Horse, or participants can look up their birth year’s animal using a zodiac animal search tool.
Space for this workshop is limited. We recommend registering early.
Workshop Logistics
Date: Saturday, February 7, 2026
Times: 1 – 4 PM PST
Cost: $50 for a three-hour workshop
Format
In-Person Workshop
Experience Level: Beginner
Requirements:
Bring a Mac laptop with a valid Monodraw free trial or license.
Additional Information:
• No Refunds or Exchanges.
• View our FAQ here.
• Contact [email protected] with any questions.
About Technologies:
This workshop will focus on ASCII art drawing techniques using Monodraw. Monodraw is a text-based drawing application that makes it easy to create diagrams, layouts, and ASCII imagery using monospaced characters. Because ASCII art is composed entirely of text, it can be easily embedded across digital and print contexts, and exported as PNG or SVG files. ASCII art is a graphic design technique that uses characters defined by the ASCII Standard (introduced in 1963) to create images, patterns, and visual compositions.
Workshop Outline
- Introductions and workshop overview: set up tools and meet each other
- Context and inspiration: a brief history of ASCII art, examples of text-based images, and an introduction to Lunar New Year symbolism and Chinese zodiac animals
- Reference gathering and demonstration: how to translate image references into ASCII using Monodraw
- ASCII artwork creation: guided time to design and work on individual artworks
- Upload work to minisite: publish participant work to a shared minisite
- Postcard printing and group share: prepare files for pen-plotter printing, produce postcards, and share finished work as a group
Experiential Goals
Learn the history and visual language of ASCII art and Lunar New Year symbolism to create a custom-designed postcard to share with loved ones.
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