Painting with Shadow

Happy PPF!  Just a few ATCs I’ve made recently:

This was for a Christian-themed ATC swap.  The equations in the background are Maxwell’s equations, of course, and the ATC is meant to be a celebration of God as creator – both creator of the world we see and creator of logic and reason and mathematics and understanding and everything that makes life interesting.  (I’m going to link this to the butterfly effect because I consider science to be a force of nature – it’s wild and wonderful and you never know where you’ll end up.)

I wrote the equations in Sharpie, and then gessoed over them, and then ran it through the printer to add “and there was light.”  Unfortunately the toner didn’t stick to the gesso very well (too textured maybe?) but it gave me enough of a guideline to go over it in sharpie.  Then I added the color by brushing on layers of eye shadow, of all things.  It was an interesting experiment, and I think it came out well.  Hero got me a 144-color eye shadow palette from e.l.f. for the holidays, and much as I love it there’s colors I’m not going to wear, mostly because they’d make me look like an exotic cocktail.  So I brushed on yellows and reds, isolating each layer with a coat of cheap hair spray.  There’s a bit of shimmer in the final image, and I love it.

As I was finishing, it occurred to me that the Bible-belt Christian receiving it might not really see it as “Christian-themed,” even with an explanatory note, so I hedged my bets by making this as well:

Not much to say, as I find this one on the boring side.  It’s colored pencil on a tea bag, glued to an acrylic background.

This one for a Book Page ATC swap is more interesting:

The heart is a Heart Origami Corner Bookmark, made from a book page and with a little watercolor to jazz things up.  I found the instructions on Pinterest and they are really fun to make.  I had to make a couple before I got the size right.  After that it was just a matter of arranging papers and little details until I liked it.