Art Gone Mad!

Lately I have been busy working on ATC's.  I love working on small pieces as they are easy to store in my over crowded studio. lol

One group I am in, Arts In The Cards, had chosen the color red for their theme.  There are 10 in the group, so it was quite the production!  I used silk ribbon gathered, crystals,beads, sequin, fabric strips woven into a striped fabric background. I wanted it to read as red as can be. Yes, it read red! The piece reminded me of garters, red lights and passion.  It reminded me of  a "Cabaret" poster, so hence its name.

The group is going by color themes this year.  This next month is "Lime".  I decided to get a head start, so I had 10 made plus a couple of extras, just in case! My first thoughts were to do a tree frog in green, of course! So I set out to look for a frog to paint.  Perhaps the subject too predictable, but while going through some old National Geographic magazines, I had seen some wonderful foliage, so I thought, why not do that. I loved the texture of leaves.   Perhaps a frog camouflaged in the leaf, but I really liked the idea of the limey textured lines to be the focus.  I decided the frog would be actually second nature (so to speak).  What I was trying for was the leaf to be viewed from underneath with the sun showing through and the frog to be the dark silhouette on top from the shade.  I cropped and enlarged a leaf and printed it onto an overhead transparency and cut out a frog silhouette which went on behind the transparency on a card.  I tried to use various green backgrounds with fabric under the transparency, but it seemed the green in the transparency was enough against a white background, so I left it as is.  The edges, I used black embossing powder, then added the frog with acid free glue stick.  Then I sprayed the back of the transparency with adhesive spray and positioned it on top. I named this one "Sublime Lime" .

In my Roses On My Table group, the theme was famous artists.  We were to do 6 cards.  I actually wasn't in the mood to do reproductions after having done so many!  I actually love doing one at a time instead of factory style!  I chose to do two different artist's works, Kandinsky and Wain's.  The first two of Kandinsky, I did in colored pencil (except for the black lines with a marker ) while the last one I did in acrylics.  I love the bold colors and abstract pieces.  I love so many famous artists.  The second artist is perhaps lesser known as his popularity isn't as published as many of the others.  Never the less, I am a cat lover so couldn't help by reproducing Wain's work. Wain was an English Victorian artist. Wain actually started drawing cats as a form of entertainment for his wife, who was dying of breast cancer.   He would draw glasses on his own cat as if it were reading and eventually his cats would be walking upright and wearing clothes. Many were sold as post cards. In later years, his cats took on more of a psychedelic appearance.  He had been labeled schizophrenic which they think was a result of toxoplasma.   

You might enjoy reading about his life here.  I think many people find artists mental, since they don't think like normal people.  Perhaps I am too! LOL  The reproductions that I did of Wain, I did in marker, acrylics, gel pen and added diamond glaze.

I thought I would also add a progression of one of Wain's work you might like to see of a cat that seems to have morphed. Perhaps the last two photos seemed to be quite disturbing.

For fun, I did myself as a version of Andy Warhol's work in photo booth.  I did several facial expressions, but this was my favorite!  Perhaps I am going a bit mad! lol

Besides the cheese container I showed earlier, other storage places for my ATC's have been in photo album books.

and in standing flip albums.

I also love to doodle zentangle ATC's!

I admit, I am addicted to ATC's!  I have gone mad, mad I tell you.  So mad in fact that it makes me happy:)