Mail Art Theme-Brown

"Pick a color" was the theme for the swap. I chose brown, as that was my partner's favorite color. However, I think it may have actually turned out more bronze. Still working on putting together effective collages.

I'm not sure if the envelope was enhanced or reduced by the overzealous postal woman. I told her I wanted brown stamps and she proceeded to put three along the top and at least four across the bottom.....at least it will be interesting. xD

Disappointment, Success, and Cute

 
     So I've been attempting more of the art of the envelope. With the prompt of "flowers," I created this pretty but vaguely uncreative thing. I shall endeavor to be more creative in my next attempts. Though I have decided I do enjoy the combined look of the drawn-over picture. It adds a bit of the illustrator's style, perhaps. I have a few more mail-art prompts coming up. Birds, a colored theme, and one of my choosing.

     Perhaps for the freebies I should start what I once wished to do: pick an artist whose art I enjoy and copy either their style or subject matter. Of course, altering it so that it is my own creation and not merely a copy. This could be a good exercise, if remembered. On the bird theme, I could copy my past success. However, while the receiver may well enjoy it, where is the art in creating a stale copy? Hence a motive for this blog: to keep my art honest, and effort displayed to be judged alongside others of my work.

Fly

Escape

     And here are more ATCs. For this prompt, I had to have some part of the card brunt. I decided to burn the edges and remount it upon another backing.

     I went outside my normal style of things for a mixed media mash-up kind of look. I'm not sure I like what I've made, but I've always wished I 

could create such types of art and these two ATCs are the closest I feel I've gotten yet. 

Therefore, considered a success. :)

     And then, of course, I can't forget about my steampunked sea turtle. At first, I was excited by the prompt "steampunk sea creature." All sorts of ideas flitted around my head of creatures of the deep. However, when it came time to actually create, all ideas fled. Then I found this little guy. I immediately know he needed a monocle and top hat. though how to make him steampunk and not just Victorian....I decided he could be a little machine. Though how steam or smoke billows out underwater, I couldn't tell you. He is cute though, is he not?  ^_^

A Note....

I have changed the format of this blog and widened it a bit. Consequently, that affected the formatting of all my previous posts. As I have no desire to go through and attend to each one, I shall simply state here that they weren't so chaotic at the start. Oops and acknowledged.

Bird-Themed

 So I have been busy with lots of art-directed swaps! Here are my ATCs, most of them with a zentangle prompt. Notice how I am learning: I've begun to allow the patterns to be their own barriers and not add artificial border lines. Some are more successful than others.

 This ATC on the top is one I am very proud of. It has a title: "Fibonacci's Tangle." I was inspired by my boyfriend's newest tattoo idea. The rose compass ouroborus also began as another of his tattoo ideas. Though that one I took more liberties with. :) The swap specifications required the use of a gel pen, at which point I both remembered how fun they could be and realized that none of mine really worked anymore and the ones that did work, did so badly.














The ACT that is odd-tangled-out, as it were, is part of a series of bird-themed mail art that I created. The first envelope shown is merely supposed to be doodled while the rest are similarly bird-themed. I went on a supplies-buying spree yesterday and part of what I bought was this funky shopping-list style pad of paper. It has turned out to be most useful. And I cannot claim either of those types of bird images. Though I have taken them out of their original context and altered them somewhat, their original forms can be found while meandering about Google or Pinterest. The idea of the almost tribal/abstracted bird paired with ginko leaves is my own invention, and I still find it rather fascinating.

Keep a lookout for that motif repeating itself!

 

ATC

So, I've decided to utilize swapping as a means to encourage/push me to create more art. I'm stagnating!


To start off with, today I've created three ATCs for different swaps. Two for zentangle letters and a mushroom theme.




It's been forever since I've made any ATCs, so I tried to stick to my strength of drawing. Still, it feels like cheating. xp I put a little charm on the non-zentangle one to make myself feel better. I think it looks cute! ^_^

The zentangles are fun doodle-projects.