ATC Play

I love creating ATC's, or Artist Trading Cards. They can be a lot of fun - especially if you have no expectations for the outcome and just play.

Painting, mark-making & writing words into the wet paint.

I started by using painter's tape to fasten a long piece of primed, unstretched canvas to my table. I then applied Golden Fluid Acrylics, followed by Golden Open paint in Titan Buff and Titanium White. All paint was scraped on with a palette knife - no brushes. The Open paint makes it possible to manipulate the surface for MUCH longer than regular acrylics. I had to wait 24 hours for it to dry!

The ATC's cut to size: 2.5" x 3.5"

I chose the section I wanted to keep from my long canvas and cut the rest into ATC's. Here you can see the marks made with a wooden skewer and words written with rubber-tipped "pens", which scraped away the wet paint to reveal the layers beneath.

Painted arches outlined in black india ink, red paint dots & white gel pen lines around edges.

I decided to add gothic arches to each canvas card, painted with a transparent paint - Quinacridone Nickel Azo Gold Fluid Acrylic. I love this paint. It allowed the background to show through each arch, creating the look of a tinted glass window. I had originally planned to sew around the edges, but instead chose to draw sketchy lines in white gel pen to get a similar look.

A closer look.

I love how precious each card becomes once it is cropped from a larger background. When I looked at the cards as a collection, a wintery theme became apparent - caves of ice, snow on boughs, the aurora borealis...

Fifteen cards were made for the CBBAG-OV (Canadian Book Binders and Book Artists Guild - Ottawa Valley), affectionately pronounced "cabbage-oh-vee". We have an annual Swap at our December meeting which is always a wonderful event. We all come away with a beautiful handmade piece of art or book art!

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