Bill the Butcher

This card was for a character PIB swap. The first person to post on the swap lists 3 or more characters (from books, tv, movies) that she would like someone to make her. The next person to post agrees to do one of the listed choices and creates a list of characters of her own for the next person to chose and draw for her.

This is Bill the Butcher from Gangs of New York.
I drew his bar in the background. Though the bottles are modelled after actual bottles from the late 1800s I came up with the names of each liquor myself. The names are slang expressions you might have heard in America at the time. I've been doing a lot of watercolor lately, but this ATC is colored pencil.

Hostess Gift

I made this doll for the hostess of the steampunk paper doll swap I joined a while back. Has nothing to do with the steampunk, but I did try to match it to some of her themes she mentioned collecting in her profile.

black and white birds, nests, bird masks

The little mask fits over her face.

Feminine Menagerie Swap

Another swap at IllustratedATCs.com.
This was the swap I joined and completed while going through artist block with my unicorn swap. I absolutely loved the theme for this swap and enjoyed myself very much while making my ATCs. These were the first images I submitted as a new member to the group and the other artists were very kind with their words and support.

Here are my cards. Again, more crappy scans.

This is my favorite. I so love mermaids and I was very pleased with the flow of this ATC.

This was the second ATC completed. This really happened to me when I was around 5 years old. Just the nest. No baby birds. I'm one of those people that bizarre things happen to now and then. LOL.

The third one was fun with the red hair.

And the fourth one. This woman actually has olive skin, but you would never know it to look at this scan. I love the little frogs and the quetzel.

New Challenges

I recently joined a new ATC trading site, IllustratedACTs.com. It's juried site so being accepted was an exciting thing for me. I still love my first trading site, ATCsforAll.com and plan to continue trading there, but look forward to having to push myself a little more with my new group where people don't know me as well and I have to prove myself all over again.

Upon being accepted, I immediately joined a swap. A CAT (choose a theme). I picked a fantasy themed group within the swap and decided on unicorns as my personal theme. Honestly, I don't know why I picked unicorns. They make me think of the 80s, bad fashion/bad hair, and and my goofy teen years. Once I started drawing them, I also realized that (1) horses are a pain to fit into an ATC and (2) getting the horn to show at different angles is challenging. And I wasn't really feeling inspired to do unicorns. They really aren't my thing. What was I thinking? I've started several unicorns that I just wasn't feeling and never finished. I also realized that another artist in the other fantasy group on the swap had also picked unicorns for her theme. While I was trying to come up with my first card, she completed her whole set as well as another set for her second group. And they were fabulous. I got so sucked up into trying to make my unicorns new and original and wouldn't even think about putting cliche rainbows in my cards while the other artist used rainbows in every one and made them anything but cliche. At that point, I joined a second swap and completed all the cards for that one as the CAT was starting to kill my artistic selfesteem. I was getting some serious artist block.

I'm so used to seeing unicorns depicted as white, flowing, skinny legged creatures and wanted something different. I was on a 'zunicorn' (zebra + unicorn) kick last year and still thought it was a cool idea. Zebras are stocky, have short spiked manes and of course sport the awesome striped pattern. But after looking through lots of horse pictures for inspiration, I came across these knabstruppers and was hooked on them. I love love love their spotted coats.
At this point, I have three cards done. I may need to tweek them a bit. But this is what I have so far. My new scanner is awful. The colors are off, the shading doesn't show up, and there are blotches. Sigh.

After years of painting pictures of my nieces, I find they still pop up in my artwork now and then. This girl looks like my niece Rachel. I love her freckles and thought they would be fun with my spotted horse.

Here is the second one I finished. It looks completely washed out. Sorry about that.

And my third one. Do you see a pattern here? Lots of hugging and lovey dovey going on. My art is certainly influenced by my mood of which will be another post at some point.

I have one more unicorn card to go.
For my hostess gift, I made this paperdoll. The hostess is collecting Queen Elizabeth 1 ATCs. Hopefully she wont mind a paperdoll instead of an ATC. I love making them and Queen Elizabeth 1 was so much fun with that awesome dress. The little puppy on her shoulder has a movable head.