Walking through Steps of an Artist Trading Card Series

This is a sweet little series of Artist Trading Cards (ATCs) I made.

Not long ago I was sitting in the Panera Bread parking lot looking across the street at a line of birds on the wire.  I did a nice little sketch of them enjoying their peaceful time above Chic fil A and the din of life.

When I heard the subject of our trade was 'Things with Wings,' I knew it would be those birds.  I did, however, substitute the traffic and noise for some peaceful, cool trees.

My purse sketchbooks feed my imagination - they're like cookbooks - recipes not yet tried, but ready to be explored.  My sketchbook gave me the idea for the ATC, and now the cards I made have inspired me to do some nice paintings  I can see a new series of paintings coming out of all of this.  One idea fuels the next.

And, for those students out there - a word about MISTAKES!  As Murphy's Law requires, I went through to the very end of these cards before I made my bad mistake.

My idea of artist trading cards is developing layers.  Here are the steps I took for this set:

1 - Spray paint in the driveway.  Sheets of cool colors, sheets of warm colors.  Found some great artist's spray paint I'm liking these days. Covers well, and is archival.  Yes!

2 - Each set of colors is layered on with a number of stencils and mark makers
3 - Once dry, I cut the big sheets into many of the required ATC size, 2 1/2" x 3 1/2"
4 - I cut some cool rectangles smaller to get the complimentary color thing going
5 - Gold stencils on the background
6 - The actual drawing on the cool background
7 - Stick 'em together
8 - LAST STEP:

I had intended to put the date stamp in only one place, on the right side of the blue, hanging out in the sky.  Did it.  UPSIDE DOWN!  ARG!!!  At that point I remembered there's always a way around mistakes - so I started stamping all over, in all directions.  Personally, I think the multiple stamps make the cards richer.  All because of a mistake!

Pretty sure I won't be using the date stamp on my finished paintings, well, sort of sure... but working through layers like this feeds my imagination and enriches my for-sale work.  Try it!  You might like it!