ATC's on a theme of MUSIC

I do seem to be getting into a rut with my ATC's. I am doing so much these days and it is keeping me from the wide range of art activities which I used to participate in. from writing (several blogs, poetry, articles mainly on Squidoo and now a novel) to art (only weeks away from my art groups annual exhibition) I am not getting enough time to experiment or play with the vast number of techniques available.

I must try to make time to go back over atc's from the past few years and rediscover those fun techniques which I found so attracted me to the world of ATC's. I have even written a very successful article on Squidoo, Making Art Trading Cards which attracts a number of readers (and a few dollars) everry month. In the article I give examples of many, many techniques and these don't even scratch the surface of what is out there.

I need to put a little time aside each week (where from I don't know) to get myself inspired again to make new and different cards. But for now, here are another two cards which I have created for the PDA monthly challenge/swap a small but lively challenge. The theme this month was Music:-

I usually give my cards a title as soon as they are done, but here for some reason I have not named either of these yet. Maybe I am afraid of being a little too "twee". You can see more of the cards from this challenge on the official PDA blog.

I hope that by next week, I shall be getting myself sorted out and scheduling a little time for more art in this genre.

Abstract Activity Cards

I have been designing a "card" game for artists who need help to create  non-representaional paintings, in other words Abstract Paintings.

This post fits in to this blog becase of the method I used to create my prototype card decks.

Here you can see four separate decks of cards. I used an old standard deck as a start point, and then printed out roughly ATC sized copies of original pastel paintings  / photographs.

I needed four decks to represent sets of cards which contain instructions to the artist which taken as a whole and used with creativity (I am afraid the artist still has to provide this) will provide a design for an original abstract painting. Whilst it is not intended to provide a masterpiece of abstract art every time, it does give the artist practice at creating non-representational abstracts.

The three images above show three of the decks; the background, the foreground and a style card. As well as the individual backs for each deck, the front is also colour-coded. I have made enough to show the idea to my artist colleagues and gauge their reactions. A workshop on abstract painting I ran for the group did not produce the results I had hoped for, many were bemused when asked to paint an abstract. they are all competent artists but could not grasp non-representational ideas.

If you are interested in this "game" / methodology then please see my Squidoo Article which is the third in a series describing the reason I designed this game and what it is designed to do.

I seem to have let this development take over my available spare time this past week or so; it is almost done now and I will be letting it rest for a while.

ATC's on a theme of Illusion

There has definitely been a change in my output these days, I am painting and writing far more than I ever have since starting this blog. In the early days, I posted about many things her, including all aspects of pictorial art.

These days I write in separate blogs which cover: crafting, painting, photography, poetry and now writing my first novel. All of these are acccessible from the tabs at the top of this page.

I also maintain a blog about music and one of my Zazzle stores.

In a way they are all very closely linked, and often a story will appear in more than one blog slanted to reflect the subject of that blog. For example, A painting mentioned in my painting blog may well appear in my Zazzle store. Or a poem may be included in my novel, giving me ideas about the plot, etc. One thing is certain it all takes time out of my week.

The entry this week, however, is about more ATC's which I created for a challenge with a theme of "ILLUSION".

This first was a little tongue in the cheek but the other entrants seemed to like it. BTW, I have done something aabout that terrible question mark but not had time for a second photo. I did not notice it before posting.

The second alludes to the dreams we all have when young, many turn out to be illusions.

So there you have it, I do wish I had more time for all my arty interests but I have to ration time if I am to keep them all going. See you next time.