eller

...aaaand the third ATC made with the help of the craft materials sent to me by Up-Quark.



I still had a large clock sticker and two metallic pens I had not used yet at all, soooo, I had to use them on this card! The materials used are:

By the way, I'm sure the jeweler doesn't just make jewelry: he also has tools for much rougher work out, and the scales seem a bit big for small stones... All this sparkly stuff has to be a front. The question is what the lady REALLY wants in the store! Presumably, it's not purely for, uh, fashionable purposes... XD

Another page filled in the sketchbook from antaresnox. I'm trying to draw something fast every day. The forsythia is in front of the house... And, of course, rhododendron is everywhere.



It's kind of fascinating: rhododendron is an invasive plant, and when I was a kid, people started to plant it in their gardens deliberately "because the bugs don't eat it". This used to be true, except, oh wait, these days they do... I suppose we're seeing some evolution in progress. XD

This is an ATC forum game again: Up-Quark sent me an envelope with 15 different craft supplies, and I have to use them on ATCs.

( Here's a picture of the art supplies. )

My first ATC is IN SPACE, and it's a shaker ATC again, because hey, why not?

I used the following eight materials:
- space washi tape (background of the large window)
- die-cut (colored in; can be shaken in the large window)
- narrow striped washi tape (in the small window, where the lady is working, as background)
- Wire (unfortunately not clearly visible on the scan, but also in the small window; here's a detail photo https://ibb.co/p1ZsDvh in case you're interested)
- white textured transparent paper (the lady's clothes; I colored on it but the texture is intact)
- blue narrow washi tape (the lamp holder on the top right)
- light green transparent paper (the monitors at the top; I drew on it, but the color is still coming through)
- World map/globe motif paper (on the monitor on the left edge; I put shading on it)

These ATCs are for a swap that challenged us to use new materials. So, I used some things from my advent calendar and from Christmas. :)

Michael Harding watercolors and Schmincke opaque white on paper from a Paul Rubens watercolor sketchbook (hot pressed, 300gsm).

Very fast papercut (and, well, paper tearing, because that's a lot of fun as well) made from the giftwrapping paper of today's advent calendar gift from Eleisis, as well as Kraft paper I got from someone else... Because, hey, it's black-and-gold sparkly paper, it should not be wasted! :D I glued verything into an Arteza watercolor sketchbook, which was a gift from Glitzermond. (So, everything was a gift!) Unfortunately, the paper doesn't really like water, but it makes a nice textured background. (I enjoy having contrasting textures in paper art. It's an entirely underrated part of the fun!)

I'm sloooooowly starting to send out snail mail again. (I took a break from that when I was ill and potentially contagious.) This inchie (yes, that's a little square of 1x1 inch) is for Atlicedrawsstuff who sent me a care package with art supplies that I also haven't seen yet because I've yet to go home to my family. Anyway, I'm sure it's lovely mail! XD



Paper: Vaessen Florence watercolor paper, smooth, 200 g/m² - I'm actually very happy with this paper although it's rather thin and was super cheap, which means it was a really positive surprise to discover it doesn't buckle much when wet. I originally bought it for sketching while traveling, but I may actually use it for more 'serious' artwork as well. It's much better quality than I would have expected, and labeled as acid-free as well, so, YAY.
Watercolors: Winsor&Newton this time. :) Winsor Violet, Permanent Rose, Cadmium-Free Yellow, and Burnt Sienna. I don't use this box very often but technically these paints are perfectly fine.
Acrylic pen: Uni Posca in white. I'm actually not happy with that one. It dries kind of crackly (I don't know how to describe this, but the dried lines are soooo not elastic they crack when you bend the paper), and it's one of the more expensive acrylic pens on the market, while the super-cheap ones (FlySea) I bought in packs of 12 (!) handle much better.

It's kind of embarrassing but I don't have any scissors here, so Atlice will have to cut the painting once she receives it, ahaha. (I'm not going to buy new scissors because, heck, I've done that before when I forgot to pack any, so, uh, I have enough scissors at home. I mean, I do papercuts, so... I have enough scissors. Really.) I'm also sending Atlice some ATC-sized outlines she can color - I guess I'm going to link those when she got them and painted them. I drew everything on the same postcard-sized piece of paper anyway, which at least makes mailing it really uncomplicated.

This one is a papercut card I did send on Postcrossing. Someone stated they like horses, I happen to like horses too, so the decision was easy! Also, it's a very fast work (20 min or something), so I didn't feel bad about giving it away.



Papercutting is one of those art forms that are incredibly complicated and slooooow when you're a beginner, but where the working speed increases exponentially with practice - and, of course, if you've ever watched really experienced papercutters, you'll know they'll produce something like this in two minutes or less. (Interestingly, it tends to be faster than drawing the same thing!) Basically, I'm viewing pieces like this as practice. It's cut from one of these super cheap white square note sheets that come in those plastic cubes - you know what I mean. Fixed with spray glue on 300gsm construction paper. Simple, but I kind of like the composition, and I hope the recipient will enjoy it.

The saga of artistically questionable postcards goes on! This time, I drew the address of someone I already knew a bit from the Postcrossing forum - and they're another paleolithic art nerd! YAY! Of course, I could not resist the temptation to produce some cave art fanart.



I prepared a piece of thick Kraft paper (A6 format) with sand (collected myself, of course) and acrylic paste, so the result looked kind of like a sandstone cave wall. (The closest approximation I could manage, anyway.) I then took charcoal and pastels and drew on it, which was somewhat tricky. I fixed the end result with spray varnish. (Also, obviously, I had to send it in an envelope, but I’m told it arrived undamaged, which makes me very happy.) This was SOOO much fun! XD

Two more postcards for Postcrossing. Simple flowers, my comfort zone - I can produce these reasonably fast.





The daffodil actually does not involve any watercolor - that's transparent acrylics with lots of water. The magnolia is colored with watercolors, in the same style. The preliminary drawings and final highlights were done with acrylic pens.

Everyone, look at this, yhlee made me a sketch book! (To fully admire the craft that went into binding the book, look at his journal entry with more pictures and descriptions how it was made.)



The chess position on the cover isn't random - rather, it's the end position of my favorite chess grandmaster game ever, Tal - Hjartason, 1987. I squeaked when I unpacked the mystery package and saw this diagram! (It's the kind of super-weird position that, uh, has a lot of recognition value.)



The back cover is chess-themed, too. :)



And the book holds a selection of different papers in different colors! YAY! I knew some of them, but others were new to me, so I couldn't wait to test them all! The book is suuuuper fun to use, and for dmonstration purposes, I decided to show the first page of each paper section, with the picture I painted on it. Recently, I've mostly sketched with black and white acrylic pens and my watercolors, so that's what I've used here as well.

( Behind a cut, because hey, these are a lot of pictures. )

As you can see, I'm enjoying the book a lot already! :D It's not full yet, but... Only a matter of time. ^^°