ATC walkthrough

Hi Everyone,

This is a little photographic walk through that I put together of how I do most of my Artist Trading cards. I want to stress that I am not a professional, this is just the way that I like to do my art.

Just incase you don't know what Artist Trading cards are you can learn a little about them at this article.


Okay so a general list of what I use is:

• watercolor or mixed media paper
• HB Pencils (sharpener and eraser)
• Waterproof Fine liner
  
• Masking tape
  
• acrylic paints
• water colour paints
• white ink
• copic markers
• paint brushes + water + pallet
  
• craft knife
• metal ruler
• (Some times I use coloured pencils and a tooth brush for flicking paint, camera)

So to start you need to rule your ATC shape. I cannot rule straight lines to save my life so I use my handy architect man to rule lines for me. Here you can see that I have used this before and have already cut out an ATC. The space around them acts as a nice bleed edge so that you don't have to worry about painting over onto another card space.


I start by doing a rough sketch of how my painting is going to look. I may later add a few details.


Then I am more precise when I ink out my drawing with my fine liner. I also do a thicker line around the main focus of my piece. It's a good idea to make sure that your sugar levels are not low so you are less likely to shake and then take a long time about inking your art. Smooth strong lines can really make your art appear clean and professional.
I carefully erase my pencil lines and apply the masking tape. The masking tape helps to keep the paper taught and add some protection against the paper warping. I leave a little white space between the card and the masking tape to act as a bleed area for cutting.


Here is the cow after I have done the markers, I use copics because they have a nice blender. I sometimes do my background before I do the foreground it all really depends on the piece that I am doing. I just spend sometime before and decide what I think would be the best approach.

I did my background with watercolor. How I do my water colour is to mix my colour, add the water and then paint it directly onto the paper. If I add another colour I wait for it all to dry and then layer it waiting for each layer to dry and I change the colour gradually. The reason for this is that I find it makes the paper less likely to warp.


Here I have added the white ink for accents and highlights.


I love my shiny paints that are supposed to be for my WarHammer models. I've added mithril silver around the flowers.



Here is my finished piece after it was cut out with a steel ruler and a craft knife and then photographed in sunlight.
I hope that you enjoyed this walkthrough.