Illustration | Murals | Technical Drawing | Mail Art & Templates | Photos
Mail Art is ART that is mailed!
ATCs (Artist Trading Cards), original works of art, 2.5″ x 3.5″ are traded, never sold.
I trade online with 2 different sites – ATCsForAll.com and IllustratedATCs.com – they are sites set up like many social networking forums – you get your own gallery to post your art. You can message people, talk in the different threads.
Here are some ATCs of mine that were made for swaps that show a variety of my styles…
On the ATC forums you can join group themed “swaps” or swap one-on-one with artists from all over the world. I’ve even swapped with kids on that site (children of members) – kid art is awesome! After drawing lots of small pieces of art an amazing thing happened – I realized that my ‘need to create’ was being satisfied. And satisfied in a short amount of time. I could create a card in a couple of hours or less instead of days or weeks on one of my big drawings. I could experience that creative flow and get back to my graphics work rejuvenated! So ATCs have become a kind of therapy as well as creative expression. And it keeps me in practice and being exposed to so many artists of amazing talent, it serves to stretch my abilities as well.
ATCs of mine that move or open…
(click on images to see them opened)
Make your own Artist Trading Cards – you can cut your own paper 2.5″ x 3.5″. It should be heavy like the thickness of a business card, or else mount it on card stock. Or you can buy little packs of paper stock made just for ATCs. They come in bristol, watercolor, illustration board and more textures. On the back of each card it’s traditional to sign it, put your screen name and title if applicable, media, location and date. ATC collectors these usually put them in binders filled with those clear plastic trading card pages that hold 9 cards.
Mine are primarily drawn or painted, but many create ATCs with collage, rubber stamping and all sorts of other creative media. Do a search on Flickr.com or on Google.com for ATCs and get a feel for it. If you are interested, a great place to start is ATCsForAll.com - All ranges of ability on this site. It’s a wonderfully supportive, fun, creative place. There is also an online magazine - ArtTraderMag.com check it out, its a free download. One of my 4×6 Arch cards is featured in the Autumn 2010 issue.
Artist trading cards – Make art – meet the world!
Mail Art Hand Shapes
These are just tracings of our hands, on heavy stock – the front is filled with art, the backs are covered in decorative papers or color washes. Many people hang on string to drape around their art studios. Right now, mine are in an open box so you can pick them up and look through them. Here is a gallery of the ones I’ve created and traded.
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Illustration | Murals | Technical Drawing | Mail Art – Templates | Photos
