First Card in the style of Sarah Bishop completed

I had a few free hours and worked on the Sarah Bishop-style swap, getting one ATC card completed:

Belt and Garter

One of the things that impressed me most about Ms. Bishop's originals was the sense of warmth each individual painting had, so I concentrated primarily on conveying the sultriness of the originals.  My apologies to Ms. Bishop for slaughtering her work :).

Some ATC Action

I am trying to stay active in the ATC community because I really like trading and collecting little masterpieces.  I am currently finishing up a swap entitled "Hand Drawn Dark & Twisted Carnival" which is a fun theme to play with.
The first piece is entitled "Pan-pan" and it features a baby-eating panda.  I intentionally elected not to go overboard with gore.  The piece can be viewed without an instant bad reaction, so it can be enjoyed - at first, anyhow - by anyone.

"Pan-pan"  The baby eating panda

I also did a little Internet research on circus freaks and kept running into images of Schlitzie who was a circus Pinhead for the first half of the 20th century.  I decided to try and do a fairly sensitive, accurate likeness of him/her.

"Schlitzie"

I actually learned quite a bit while doing this little piece (2.5" x 3.5" which is the size of all ATCs).  I started by laying down some pen and ink line work with microns of varying sizes.  Then I came back over quite a few of the lines with opaque watercolor (gouache) that was thin enough to soften or dull the lines.

Another trick I learned was easy enough... I painted the entire face in a single, medium tone.  I then came back with brush loaded with water and then used a towel to lift out color.  If it needed to be a bit brighter, I returned and lifted more color.  It worked out really well!  Removing paint allowed me to set the stage for the addition of white paint for the brightest highlights and a thin purple for shadows.  I also tossed in some greenish washes for medium shadows - it worked as a shadow color and it helped unify my colors a bits.

Now that I am almost done with this swap, I joined another entitled "Hand drawn, Sarah Bishop Style Bodies" which is based on a series of images by an artist named Sarah Bishop.  The bodies drawn will have some very exaggerated buttocks and should have a whimsical feel as well.

Artist Trading Card: Mountain Valley

I got home last night and played around with the gouache.  It seems like a good medium for working small, so I created a couple of ATCs:

Landscape: Mountain Valley

Underlit Study in Blue

I got my distant mountains a little darker than I should have, but I was fairly pleased with it otherwise.  It has been a long time since I have created an ATC and I posted this and another more ribald one on ATCsForALL - I am known as Topdecker over there.

The study in blue was supposed to end up as a gypsy fortune teller, but I scaled the head up way too large.  It was large enough to play around with underlighting and to render shadows that you rarely get to play with.  I finished it over the course of a Human Planet episode (great show, by the way).

One thing that I have discovered about gouache - I greatly prefer my paint to be soft - like straight out of the tube and juicy.  I realize that it is not realistic, but I believe that I will have to squeeze in softer paint a bit more often that I had intended.  It is just so much nicer to work with.

Oh, in case you don't know, ATCs are very small works of art, being 2.5" x 3.5" in size.  I rarely sell mine and prefer to trade them off or join a swap on ATCsForAll.  In fact, due to my recent activity, I have several trades pending and at least 3 more cards that I have to make.