I started the thank you ATC project as a way to thank the people who contributed to the AJ ning funding drive. I thought it would be an easy way to say thanks… I was wrong. ATC are a lot of work and bangning out 34 of them took a lot longer than I’d expected. When I first started I wasn’t sure what I was going to do on them. It dawned on me that I should do something people would recognize as mine and something I enjoyed, obviously that had to be portraits.

When you think ATC size, you might think it’s a simple and easy size, fast to fill. After all it’s a small size, so it should be less effort to fill them up. I wrote about my process with these cards before but what I’m most surprised about is how much better I got with concentrated effort. 34 cards done over a 2 week spread of time. In this time I learn how my tools work on the paper I’ve chosen and how to control them for maximum effect. Dry lines, angles, broken line, speed of the pen, rough paper, cross hatching all of that were things that I learned to effectively use over the course of this experiment.You can see the difference in how I used the pens from card 1 to card 34.


You can also see the difference in how I saw the people I was drawing. Some of these images I drew from direct observation and others from photos from flickr’s commons. You can see the change in my direct observation skills from card number 4 to card 25.


It’s amazing what you learn in 34 small drawings that you expected to be easy. This was way more work than I imagined. I probably won’t do another set of ATC for a good long time. These will for sure be collector’s items and rare.

The last few days have been days of art. I’ve been soaking them up and putting them into the reserve to carry me through the next few months. I’m headed back to the DayJob on Monday so I can continue to fund my art activities. The last few days have been nothing short of glorious. It doesn’t get much better than spending days off of the DayJob making art.

I’ve been banging out the thank you ATCs for the ArtJournaling.ning.com sponsors,  I’m 24 into the total of 34. Only 10 left. I’m pretty excited about getting them done so timely. I think I can get another 5 or so done today.

I spent Saturday doing my usual art visit with Jane in Salem.We talked about Put it on Paper, our reviews we’ll be doing, updates on the articles for the next issue and things we’ll be doing on the blog. Pretty exciting stuff. Then we spent the rest of the AM drawing around Salem. I also stopped to snap a lot of pics along the way.

In the afternoon, I switched lenses and C and I wandered up to Atomic for some iced caffeinated goodness and then went to sit in the Common. We stumbled upon [space] having an interactive still life. They invited us to sit down and participate, so I did. Now that I’m 10+ years out of college it was a blast listening to the art school kids talk art. I haven’t heard so much art speak in one place since 1998. It was particularly enjoyable to sit down and sketch an everything and the kitchen sink still life, since I haven’t done that since drawing 1. I should have moved around the still life more and tried a few different angles, I really wanted to draw this parrot sculpture again, but instead stuck to my spot and continued on making muddy sketches. It was fun.

The vintage 28-50mm Magnum lens performed really well today when I was in Salem. I picked up a lcd viewfinder  so I could focus the manual lenses in harsh light and it made all the difference in using my vintage manual lenses. Where I was unable to get a sharp focus before I did this time. Perfectly sharp. The Star-d 28mm lens(rebranded vivitar) gives me fits in harsh light. I need to get a lens hood. It completely flairs out and I end up with washed out image. I don’t even get good flair with it, just washed out images. So aggravating. But when it was good it was really good.

magnum lens

magnum lens

star-d lens

star-d lens