Tuesday, December 4, 2012

The Big ATC Tutorial - part two - drawing with paint markers

So yesterday I showed you how I made twelve atc-backgrounds from one sheet of paper. Now it's time to show you how to make some actual atc's! I made three kinds of atc's and that means four atc's of each kind (I'm such a math prodigy). Today, tomorrow and Thursday we will be looking at how you can use one background in different ways. I'm hoping it will inspire you to see that there is more than one way to finish a project. (But I'm sure you already knew that.)


The Big ATC Tutorial - part two - drawing with paint markers

Before I start on this first series of atc's I just want to say that in making them I chose to use the theme of 'flowers', so all atc's have flowers on them one way or another. That's just 'cause that's what inspired me at the time. It also shows how you can execute a theme in different ways and yet have the cards be related to each other. Often trade groups will set a theme or prompt for a series of atc's so I thought it might be interesting for you to see that you can approach a theme in different and yet connecting ways.

Materials used:
  • atc-backgrounds made in part one of this tutorial
  • any black marker (or a pencil) to draw your first outline with, just use whatever is on hand
  • paint markers (I used UniPosca, but this will work with any reasonably opaque pen, I think Sakura's souffle pens might be a good alternative)
  • a black glaze pen (by Sakura, I'm not sure if there are other brands, but you could also use a 3D paint for even more effect or just any black marker for less effect)

I took a black permanent marker and started drawing some flowers on the background. I just drew simple shapes from my imagination. ' Simple'  was the key word in this first series of atc's

I coloured the image in with paint markers. I love paint markers. They will write on anything and are completely opaque which means they will cover whatever is underneath them. The ones I have also last quite a long time.

I made a border on the bottom with a paint marker, because I felt it lacked something there. I also did another layer on the already coloured parts by adding accents in a different colour. Here you can see how opaque the markers are, the light green completely covers the dark green.

I then got out my black glaze pen. Glaze pens are wonderful for outlining things. They have a little shine to them and just a tad of a three dimensional effect. You can't really see that in this picture...

.....which is why I made this one so the light could shine on it right. Just this bit of extra shine and shape gives the card a little oomph it otherwise would not have. It keeps it from being too flat. I can imagine that real 3D paint would give an even more dramatic effect.

I added an inspirational word and another border at the top of the card. Those I outlined with a glaze pen as well.

Just a bit of a close up to show the texture of the background coming through the drawing. Somehow it works.
 
I added some last details to the borders of the card and with this I considered it done.

After that I made three more atc's in the same style, but with different colours, different words and differently shaped flowers. Here they are:





I know that there are  plenty of atc makers who do exactly the same card several times, but that's just not my style. For me a series consists of cards made according to the same concept, but they are never copies of one another. Each card I make is really unique.  I just like the idea of that. 



And that concludes my first set of atc's! Now that wasn't so hard was it? I hope I gave you an idea for some simple but fun and colourful cards. It might be a good way to start this way, just some drawing and coloring, before you bring out layers and layers of goods to impress people. ;-)

Tomorrow we will be doing some more mixed media type cards and some collage. Hope to see you then!

For now I wish you a wonderful and artsy day!