Computers – the ultimate love/hate relationship
I came to update my blog with my latest ATC Workshop lesson, number four, only to find that I never posted my cards from lesson three. Of course, now I remember how the night I had posted them to the A.R.T. Yahoo Group, my internet connection was giving me all sorts of problems. In the end, I lost my connection and never posted it to my blog.
So in order to keep things in order (okay, that just sounds weird), I am going to post my lesson three cards in this post and write a separate one for the ones I finished today. Without further adieu, here they are…
The first ATC, “ROAR”, is simply a collage of bits of magazine pictures. The background is made up of three “visually textured” photos and then a center of a large flower (from a Macy’s advertisement) was cropped to form the “aura” behind the lion. I added the words “I am woman…hear me ROAR!” in a gold leafing pen.
The second card is a magazine/gesso technique where a magazine photo is covered in gesso and the basic outline of the photo is recreated with a marker. I used watercolor pencils to add my own colors.
The last card is a fascinating technique that Bernie Berlin referred to as Nevr-Dull in her book Artist Trading Card Workshop. Nevr-Dull is a solvent type of product that is marketed for automotive use. Since I didn’t want to buy something new if I had a suitable substitute, I tried a few of the things I had around. My first attempt was with a citrus-based solvent that I have used for blending wax-based color pencils. It did work but my samples were nothing that really inspired a finished ATC. I also tried using Transfer Ink by Stewart Superior. This product worked beautifully to remove the ink from the magazine pictures. I had used Glossy Accents by Ranger Industries to create a resist on the magazine picture, outlining some of the major lines. After the Glossy Accents dried, I sprayed the Transfer Ink on the picture, saturating it, and then wiped it in one direction with a paper towel. I like the way that because of saturating the magazine paper, there were slight wrinkles that formed during the wiping process. A packing tape transfer of a Buddha figure and the word “breathe” were added to finish off the ATC.
Okay, now that I finished explaining last week’s assignment, it is time to work on this week’s….Stay tuned!