365 Day 338

making Artist Trading Cards with Ruth

My friend Ruth is interested in coming to see the Artist Trading Cards group I belong to at our next meeting. She wants to have cards to trade, so she came over tonight and she made her first-ever ATCs. They are SO wonderful!




I set out a bunch of different supplies before Ruth arrived.












I wasn't sure what she was going to want to do.















So I gathered up a little bit of everything.








Ruth couldn't decide what she wanted to do because she has never made an ATC before. She is fond of the automatic drawings I work on in that print making sketchbook and she had fun trying to see things in the blocks I covered in spattered paper a few days ago, so I suggested that she should do an automatic drawing. Ruth wasn't so sure that she'd be good at it. Yeah, right...these cards are fantastic!

I scanned her drawing and printed it out on watercolor paper in a size that would fit on the ATC.











Ruth painted amazing variations and chose background papers and came up with titles for the various cards within the series. These fit the theme for December -- Big Cats.












This is her very first Artist Trading Card...














...I feel so honored -- Ruth gave it to me!



This is the automatic drawing she did of her friend's BIG cat named Zoette. This does not look exactly like Zoette but the series is made lovingly in the spirit of Zoette.








While Ruth was working on her cards, I did some automatic doodling and came up with this Big Cat head. If my hand had been up to it, I would've tried to make a carving of this. Some other time.

(I already made my Big Cats-themed ATCs for the exchange.)













I also did this tonight in my sketchbook.










I re-sized it and printed it out on watercolor paper. I wanted to make postcards with these but I miscalculated the size when I was using the paper cutter. I still had fun playing with the watercolors, though.

Ruth showed me a way to get a better look with the paints. I started with the yellow cat creature, the blue/purple one was next and the green(s) one was last. I think they improved as I went along. Ruth is much MUCH better at color blending and painting than I am.




I was still looking for something to do while Ruth kept working on her ATCs, so I did a couple more automatic drawings and found pictures within them and painted them.

These are on postcard-size watercolor paper that was in block form...much better!











I don't remember if I posted this before, but it is the lovely (and VERY handy) card carrier/case that Ruth bought for me on one of her road trips.

Such a thoughtful person, that Ruth!










And I can put the cards I make for the ATC exchange into the case and the cards won't get wrecked in my purse!









Ruth and I really had a great time tonight making ATCs together. We are going to do it more often!