That's the theme of the second swap I've hosted at IllustratedATCs.com. Cards are in from all the participants and I'll be swapping these babies out to all the players tomorrow.
Here are the first two of my own offerings for this swap; I'm to tired to scan and post the last one. Tomorrow!
"Naughty"
Marker, colored pencil
"Mrs. Lovett"
Graphite, colored pencil
Made further edits to my Narae digital faceup, and created an art card I'll keep in my gallery, available for trade as a print.
BIG HUGE LABS is a cool place to create fun stuff from flickr photos. You can "Warhol-ize" a photo; create a foldable 8.5x11 mini album; make widgets for use on blogs and websites; and make mosaics, as I've done here. It's just a few quick steps if you've already got photos uploaded to flickr to go from individual shots to a grid of images like this.
Just wanted to share the entire group of my most recent Zetti chunky book pages, all together.
I tried something new with my Gothic Alice triptych. Which isn't saying that much, actually, because I'm really just making this up as I go along! It's fun to play without rules. :)
In this case, I first created a pencil sketch on paper, which I've done many times before. The NEW part is that I then scanned my sketch into my computer and cleaned it up digitally with my pen & tablet (which I'm still learning and playing around with; so fun!)
After making a few digital changes and erasing some extraneous marks (most of them from my dirty scanner glass; ugh) I lowered the opacity of the line art to something very light and gray, and then printed it out on nice cardstock. Then, back to the studio table I went. I inked over the printed lines with a very fine Micron pen, and in places, made changes, like adding fur spikes around the cat's face for one.
Once my line art was completed for a third time (1st, pencil sketch on paper; 2nd, digital work printed to cardstock; 3rd, inked lines) I moved to the color phase and laid down layers of Prismacolor pencil, using thinner to blend for a smudgy effect. A very, very spare use of white gel pen at the very end of things added back in highlights and accents in places where they had become obscured. As a last step, I sprayed several coats of final fixative to my work, to prevent smudging over time.
Here's a look at how that played out. The top image is the cleaned-up pencil sketch, ready for printing; the second image is my inked line art (which for the first time ever since I started doing ATC's, I scanned and saved to possibly recolor and recustomize for additional Gothic Alice projects); and the third image is my final artwork.
Personally, I love it when I stumble on progressions like this; for sure, one of my favorite things in the art world is the vast number of "process" tutorials, demos, books, and videos available to Joe Every Man, like me. I learn so much from them. Well, that, or I just enjoy myself silly taking them in; it's so fun to peek into someone else's methods and mindset. I can highly recommend you visit YouTube and SEARCH "speed paint" whe you get a chance. You'll see some amazing (usually digital) process art for yourself!
Got back into art cards a bit today with some cards for a Gothic Alice in Wonderland swap. I made them as a triptych -- my first -- all in a row, but they'll be cut apart into three separate 2.5 x 3.5 art cards before they're sent.
I also scanned and kept the line art on these, plus the triptypch at high resolution, so maybe I'll make these available as ATC prints or try to sell the entire triptych on Etsy or something. Haven't done any of that before.
Gotta admit, I'm loving how these turned out.
Colored pencil, ink.
These were wet last night so I couldn't scan them. Last two Zetti pages for this particular swap!
HAPPILY EVER AFTER, for eraserqueen, who wanted vintage images with wings
GOT BLOOD?, for amerasu, who loves all things Goth
Two more chunky Zetti pages.
THE BEST PIES, for Sarah.
L'ENFANT TERRIBLE, for Harriet.
A mermaid page, PEARL AFLOAT, for artyiagirl, whom I adore.
Paintover collage; acrylic paint; patterned paper; rub-ons; stickers; pencil; gel pen; charcoal; ink.
FANCY and LOVE GROWS. FANCY didn't scan well; it has a hand-painted background and is so much more than a picture stuck to a background, in person.
I'm in yet another chunky book swap, Zetti style. This time at illustratedATCs. Cant' wait to see those returns; I chose "Geisha Zetti" as my particular theme.
Anyhoos... here are two pages I made for other participants. The glorious chubby beauty is for altermyworld, and the angel is for jennalee. The swap called for "mixed media" and I can tell you everything but kitchen sink is thrown into these puppers.
A note about the second page...
I found this sweet, freckly image somewhere online a while back and saved it to my hard drive for inspiration... but dummy me, I can't find the reference, and of course I want to give credit to the photographer/copyright owner now that I've chosen to actually use it! Technically I should have asked permission, even, before using it at all... but since this page is for trade only and not for sale nor will it garner me any proceeds of any kind at any point or be published anywhere that charges a price for viewing, I felt like it was probably okay. Still, I don't want to piss a fellow artisan off or abuse the system or copyright law. I debated whether to post this chunky page here but I like how it turned out so much, I wanted to share it. The beautiful girl really DOES look like an angel, doesn't she? In the end I chose to post publicly -- rather than just swapping secretly -- in the hopes my intentions (innocent and admiring) are clear.
If you know who took this photo please share so I can credit the shot!
