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

This is an ATC swap 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)

This is a little collage (again, ATC format) I made a few weeks ago... As you can see, Koh is a demon (of the more-cute-than-scary kind), and he's busy lying on the floor doing some magic involving irresponsible handling of fire. I don't know exactly when I decided that using collage materials was the only way to go when it comes to illustrations of my own project. I had been quite unhappy with my own illustrations in the beginning, to the point that I threw most of them away. From the purely technical point of view, they were not worse than my other illustrations, it's just that they didn't feel right - they didn't quite capture the cheerfully whimsical randomness of the whole thing.

Actually, a lot of the credit for solving that problem belongs to another artist, who made this wonderful collage (clicky) for me. This came so much closer to the actual spirit of the project! (And, yes, also contains the appropriate nerd-dom. Everything on those sheets is entirely correct...) Incidentally, the original artwork hangs framed on my bedroom wall, because, hey, awesome!

So I decided to also go for implementing collage elements into my illustrations - never mind that the "technical quality" (yeah, whatever) suffers; I actually found that it helps me quite a lot to overcome my obsessive perfectionist tendencies when I know there are some elements of the whole picture that I don't have any direct control over anyway. :) And it's also really fun when other people send me random stuff in the mail and I then have to try to find some use for them. (Thanks to the whole of kakao-karten.de and swap-bot, LOL!!!) So, I guess I'm more relaxed when I make cards like these than when I make "serious" illustrations?!?

The collage materials found on my card are:
- Mother-of-pearl chip (I think it's supposed to be used for making jewelry but it sure makes a nice moon as well.)
- Washi tape with stars / constellations
- Washi tape with books
- Washi tape with marble pattern
- Wood veneer (yes, someone really sent me that in the mail, entirely randomly!)
- Silvery contour sticker of a spiderweb (I think this was supposed to be Halloween decoration)
- Tiny rhinestone
- Enamel dot in glittery gold
- Golden nail stickers (they were unlikely to end up on my fingernails - but as macic-y effect thingies they're nice)
- Puffy pentagram sticker (Who produces something like that??? Really, is there a factory somewhere turning out these things? LOL)
- Felt stickers (cats)

Actually, the cat thing is quite funny! I started out with only written character descriptions, and in Koh's case the description included his tendency to make friends with stray cats. The first ATC that someone ever drew of Koh (clicky) happened to include a cat, (and OMG that was 2009?!? Wow, this has been going on for a looong time!) and for some time that was the only visual reference in existence. (Mainly because I threw my own illustrations away, as mentioned.) The next artists then, apparently, took that as a hint that when Koh is in a picture, there have to be cats. Which is obviously untrue (there are quite a lot of Koh scenes in the story that do not involve any cats whatsoever, thankyouverymuch) but kind of fun when done systematically. I actually got these cat stickers specifically so I could make a Koh picture!

Here, I was not only painting, but also playing with some craft materials! My friend Anke sent me those lovely die-cuts in the shape of chessmen (she knows my taste almost TOO well; I suspect she got these things more for my sake than for her own) and obviously, I had to start making something with them immediately (or as immediately as possible, anyway, with actual work distracting me). Even more obviously, the picture had to be Yora, a character from one of my stories. She's ever the chessmaster and she doesn't even have to distract her boyfriend with one of those outfits to win the game. (Though I have to say - these giant sequins make a nice bra.) I used all kinds of other craft materials (stickers, several origami papers and other craft papers, rhinestones, washi tape, ...) so the overall impression stays somewhat coherent.