Wednesday, January 22, 2014

I did it again (ATCs)

More upcycled ATCs from a piece of unsatisfactory artwork. Fortunately I'm involved in two very large ATC exchanges, so I have lots of use for all the ATCs I've been making lately! For one swap I made 47 (I think) and for the next one I'm committed to 106! Yes, really!

I love fractals and encountered the Koch Snowflake design some time ago. It's composed of equilateral triangles and each triangle has a smaller triangle off the middle of each side. It continues like this, with smaller, tinier, ever more miniscule triangles. While the perimeter of the Koch Snowflake is fascinating, the middle is blaringly empty. Paradox (a favorite tangle) seemed like a marvelous thing to put inside the triangles. I didn't like the tiniest stars I could manage to draw; they seemed to make it look fuzzy.

Here's the original artwork, divided in pencil into ATC sizes. I saved the edges for potential bookmarks.

Thirteen cards to play with. Two have almost nothing on them.

Six of them received a background wash in various colors.
I also added collaged bits to some of those. Here are the above cards completed, and in the same order as above. Some I've decided I prefer 'upside-down'.

Five received initial collage elements of various sorts.
Here are the five above, now completed, and again in the same order. Little gems were added to the two on the right.

Two were left alone at the beginning but the one on the left got a bit of collage along the way. Finally, here are the last two.

14 comments:

  1. You continue to amaze and inspire me!

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  2. Lovely idea!!! I can think at least one of my own pieces that could get the same treatment!!!

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  3. I love the idea of making a collage out of them and coming up with something completely different! The colors in the first one, I just love!

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    1. Thanks Linda. It's always so interesting to see how different the subsequent art is from the original!

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  4. OK, so even though I love the final products, I can't believe you cut that gorgeous first completed piece! I love it and can't imagine you finding fault with it! You, however, are the artist and your imagination and productivity astounds me. What creativity! Thanks for sharing. Namaste.

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    1. Thanks Angela. I've been thinking I should treat the large piece as a lot of small pieces and see what happens. Then I'd still have a large piece!

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  5. Margaret, I was wondering: What kind of pens do you use for the colored tangles? You seem to have a never ending supply of colors. What are they?
    And how on earth did you do that Shattuck (green and yellow over different green and yellow background)??
    Love these!

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    1. Hi Anya, I've had so many inquiries about my color that I've just started preparing a post about it! Stay tuned.
      Quickly, however, generally I use Sakura microns with colored ink. There are more colors available in 05 than 01 so I have those too. However, colors are still limited, so I also have a few Zig pens (especially for light blue), and a selection of Pitt (Faber-Castell) artist pens. I shade with colored pencil.
      The Shattuck you asked about: it's a green wash (more likely a blue and yellow wash), then Shattuck in Micron 01 green, then yellow ink in the top bands, then shading in green colored pencil.

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  6. Wow, Margaret. Great job and awesome artwork!

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  7. Beautiful work. I love being able to take one piece of art and then cutting it up and repurposing it. Fun fun fun!!!!

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  8. Margaret, when you say you added "collaged bits" to some of them, are you adding pieces of other artwork you have cut up? They all came out looking marvelous.

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    1. Yes. The mottled beigy strips on the second batch were the edges of a painting on paper, but the rest are all from zentangle drawings that I'd cut up.

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