2012/365 - Day 343

carving waves for a sea monster ATC

Today I am working on teaching myself to carve some waves for the January artist trading card swap with the theme: sea monsters.  At some point I will be drawing some sort of sea monster as well.

By enlarging and tracing some of the examples I found, I am starting to get the hang of the motion I need for drawing my own waves.

Tracings are on the top, my scribbles are on the bottom.

 The look I am going for is like those theater sets where people are moving cut out and painted waves and other elements are hanging, being moved, etc.

 Like this sort of thing...isn't this beautiful?

I know I have other examples in kid books but I can't find them today.  I pulled up this still from the film "Moonrise Kingom" -- that sort of waves.

Eventually I will feel confident enough to draw and carve my own waves...and they will be combined with my clouds and other elements that I have made previously.

I am going to use the "make-it-twice-as-big-then-reduce-it-to-the-correct-ATC-size" method that I've used in the past for other artist trading cards.

The oversized playing card is the size I work in and then the Magic: the Gathering cards are what I use as a foundation/base for my cards.

365 Day 284

coloring paper

Whoa -- how did it get to be Tuesday night already???? Benadryl, you giveth (some relief from my allergy symptoms) but you taketh away (entire afternoons/early evenings). Ah well...get to work, Took!

Tonight I am putting color on paper for the ATCs I need to get done in time for tomorrow evening's trade. I love the alcohol inks so much. And yet, they are not acting like I am used to them acting. Perhaps it has to do with the sprayer...I have larger bottles of inks with pump sprayers -- they didn't have those at Scrappy Chic (where we meet on the 2nd Wednesday of the month) but they DID have individual teensy mist bottles and the small bottles of ink in colors that I didn't have...fair trade off I'd say.

I think maybe that the ink dried almost immediately as it hit the paper in that fine, fine mist rather than sitting on top of the paper in bigger drops like I am used to...and the colors usually blend more easily...and I usually need to mop up pools of color.






The alcohol inks in the colors I didn't have and the
wonderful little mist bottles.















The sheet of paper -- not exactly what I had in mind but I really really like it a lot. The colors are really intense in person.














I guess the point-and-shoot camera isn't sure what it is trying to focus on...LOL...but you get the idea anyway.





Now to get back to work on the cards!

365 Day 256

Artist Trading Cards for September

Well that took all day -- whew! Today I have been assembling my ATCs for the group trade tomorrow.

Just to recap: This month's theme is characters from children's literature. I chose The Mad Hatter and The Cheshire Cat. I love Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, but I also chose these images because they were ones I had once originally drawn for use on ceramic tiles and I thought I could re-size black and white versions, print them on watercolor paper and then paint them individually with watercolors.

I finished painting the cards last night and today I used little scrapbooking rivets to affix them to the cards that I wrapped with handmade paper.

I use Magic: the Gathering cards that I am not playing with as the base for my ATCs because they are the right size and they have rounded corners. I have been doing this since I first started making ATCs in the 90's. It is a great way to repurpose cards that would just be languishing in a box.




I also covered the backs of the cards with decorative papers, but I messed up and ended up covered them with a few sentences about the characters from the book that I printed out on decorative paper.







A few weeks ago when I first thought of doing this for the trade I printed out a bunch of the original images from that ceramic tile series and made little one inch stickers to give away with the ATCs...so people getting my cards could see the way the images looked before they were sized for the cards.







And now they are all ready to go!













Now all I need to do is gather up a whole bunch of Art-o-mat art to show as examples when I do my presentation to the group. I am going to do an overview of Art-o-mat and walk them through the submission process, including making a prototype.

This is only my second meeting of the ATC trading group, but I am having a blast making Artist Trading Cards again -- and trading in person with people! And hey -- I have a captive audience that wants to hear about Art-o-mat -- how cool is that?