A Mini Gallery

Spirit of the Griot

It's been a while since I have posted my ATC's.  Following is a little tour of my recent works.  This is a little painting of a baobab in Pebeo's Moon Effects enamel paint.  The background is color pencil.  The baobab is a remarkable tree in the landscape here in Senegal.  In the countryside it is often the only tree in the dry landscape.  I have titled the card Spirit of the Griot because there was a practice of burying the musician/historians known as griot in the trees.  You can learn more about this practice here. 

This ATC is a small painting with textile paints on watercolor paper is one of the series of ATCs exploring the work of other artists.  This is a copy of Manet's Asparagus painting.  That painting has a cute story.  Manet painted an additional spear of asparagus to send to art collector Charles Ephrussi after he was over paid for a larger asparagus still life. 

Madame du Barry

This one was designed for an artists choice exchange.  I dipped lace in paint and created a print on two cards.  I cut out a heart and added a paper flower and photo of a Madame du Barry ceramic doll.

Little House

This ATC is to be in the shape of a small house.  Little houses and buildings are a recent trend in the world of ATCs.  This cottage is in oil pastels.

After Don Li-Leger

Another ATC in the series inspired by artists, this one after the work of the artist Don Li-Leger. His painting are of flowers in soft jewel tones and earthy colors. Many of his paintings are also sub-dived into squares and rectangles. He aims for an Asian inspired, meditative mood in his paintings. My ATC is painted with acrylics, enamel, pen and oil pastel.



Cool Garden by Don Li-Leger



Elephants in Spring

I love doing ATCs as they are so quick and allow a little instant gratification.  This week's offering feature elephants silhouettes and sewn details.

Greek Goddess Fabric Design

Tada!  Another fabric design, another contest.  This time I have entered into the Spoonflower weekly contest, themed: Handrawn.  If you like my work, please consider voting for it sometime this week.  There is a lot of competition this round.  My fabric will be available for sale in Kona cotton in about three weeks.  The original drawings are in color pencil and pen on watercolor paper.

It all started with a couple recent Greek Goddess themed ATC swaps for at Swap-bot.com.  I found I enjoyed researching the subjects of the swap and creating images. When I was a girl, one of my favorite books was filled with the myths of Greece and Rome.  It was a book printed in the late 1800s and must have had a lot of fairly contemporary artwork for the time.  The black and white pictures (glued into the book) included sculptures and paintings which included many of the Romantic painters, as well as many Neo-Classical masterpieces.  This book was not the classic Bullfinch's Mythology that I had seen in the school library but a similar book, Myths of Greece and Rome by H A Guerber published in 1893.  I just loved the stories and the art.  It has been many years since I last saw that book and so I had forgotten a lot of the stories I once knew.  Rereading the backgrounds on the Goddess has been really interesting.

I have drawn upon comic book art, pinups and the artwork of Alphonse Mucha for the inspiration.  For example, my Medusa was inspired by a Alphonse Mucha calendar I have.  Her pose is after the dancer in Mucha's La Danse. Mucha is an Art Nouveau artist who was basically a pin up artist with flair.

I have tried to incorporate what I know of the temperaments of each Goddess from my research into the poses.  Aphrodite (aka Venus) originally more than the pin-up she is popularly portrayed as, was the Goddess of what draws life to create more life. I have attempted to draw her as a desirous, mischievous character. Athena is the Goddess of Wisdom and War. I have tried to represent her as intelligent, proud and determined. Artemis was a Goddess of the moon who is independent of men and a hunter. She is represented as an athletic woman, relaxed in her power. Hera is a proud, mature woman, she is believed to have joined the Greek pantheon from Egypt where she was Hathor.  Gaia, the Earth I have drawn as a lush woman.  Demeter and Persephone are mother and daughter.  Demeter is the grain Goddess and her daughter the Goddess of Spring.  Circe is a minor Goddess and is featured in the Oddessy.  She clearly gets a lot of come-ons from men if one looks at the number of pigs on her island.  Circe was known to change men into pigs if they disrespected her.  It is arguable whether Medusa was a Goddess during Greek times but it was her card that started this who process for me so I will share more information than the brief summaries above.
Medusa was originally a daughter of water deities but in later myths Medusa began life as a beautiful priestess of Athena who was turned into a snake creature when she had sex with Poseidon in the temple.   The snake was a very powerful symbol in ancient times.  The snake was seen as an animal from underground because of its appearance after hibernation but also because the snakes would slip underground before earthquakes.  This underground connection tied snakes symbolically to prophecy and they were kept in the Temples to Apollo, the God of prophecy.   The snake's habit of shedding its skin was representative of renewal and it's phallic shape was not lost on the ancients making it a symbol of sexuality.  In many ancient mythologies the snake was also the symbol of the Chaos that the world was drawn from and was thought to surround the world still.  Slaying Medusa can be thought in terms of civilizing the chaotic and restoring order.

* My periodic notice all images created by me are copyright Penney Hughes and may only be used with permission.

An Owl, A Goddess and Fashion Things...February ATCs

February's ATCs so far...the upper left is my Fashion ATC, upper right is the Hera card and at the bottom is the front and inside of my Brown Owl ATC. 

For the Fashion ATC, I choose to be influenced by the Saque gowns Watteau made famous in his paintings in the early 1700's.  The Saque (sometimes called Sack) is a loose dress flowing from the shoulders.  This style of dress has been occilating in and out of fashion since the 1960's. 

The Hera card was fun to do.  I felt that I had no depth of knowledge on her story so I spent a little time researching her.  In preparing the card I discovered that items associated with Hera are the peacock for pride, the cow for her beautiful large, cow-like eyes, and the pomegranate, symbolic of life's blood and death.  We all know the stories of Zeus cheating on her and that she was very vengeful.  If her story were told in modern times, she would be a more sympathetic, less shrewish character than she comes across in the ancient stories.  She would also be kicking Zeus to the curb.

Finally, the Brown Owl card is made from a stamp I hand carved.  I also tried something I have always wanted to do, I made a 'door' in the card.  The quote from Carl Jung reads 'Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart.'

Four Mediums For Merbabies

A couple of posts ago I mentioned hosting a ATC exchange on Swap-bot.  Here are the results of my work.  From the many ideas I initially sketched, I decided to create my cards experimenting with different materials.  The first card completed was the colored pencil and ink drawing of the merbaby playing with his tail on the lower left.  The second one is the merbaby hiding behind her mommy (upper left.)  This is done in oil pastel and I like the pastel's watery effect.  The third, in the lower right corner) is a cut paper and ink merbaby playing with a starfish.  I was going for a Charlie Harper feel, reminiscent of his piece, Otter Delight.  (Browse this commercial site for more of his work)  The forth, upper right, is an ink and watercolor drawing inspired by Disney's Silly Symphonies-cartoon shorts created between 1929 and 1939.  Check out the cute video.

Dragon Fairies and Dr Who

What do they have in common?  Not much, they are just the current subject matter of my most recent ATC's.  The Dragon Fairies swap theme was just that but the the Dr Who card is for a steampunk swap.  The dragon fairies are supposed to be a hybrid creature.  I drew a few prototypes and realized they were all male.  That is when the couple below evolved.  The Dr Who card happened as I was looking around the Internet for some steampunk machines and found Alex Holden's Steampunk Dalek and thought it was perfect for my peering Victorian gentleman.  My image is enchanced by minature brads.  (And by the way, this season of Dr Who is one of the best so far, even if my heart still belongs to David Tennant.  OK and this week's episode is written by my favorite writer, Neil Gaiman.)

On a bit of a roll

 

Two more ATC's.

 

The top is colored pencil and ink on layered tissue paper over recycled junk mail.  The recipient in interested in Ancient Egypt so this is Sehkmet breathing on a representation of Ib--one of the 5 parts of the soul representing the heart.  The ATC on the right is based on a vintage artsy nude with collage, colored pencils and beads.  The words on the card are Who is this flower before me?  And what is the work of this God?  It is taken from a prayer known as the HA prayer.                                                

Mermaid ATC

I love doing the swaps at Swap-Bot.  They give me incentive to create small pieces of artwork.  Sometimes it just feels good to get a piece done.  This Artist Trading Card (ATC) is a break from the collage oriented pieces in the past.  The swap theme is mermaid and I decided to just draw what I had in mind.  This mermaid was drawn in pencil and then I outlined the above water area in Pigma pen on teal linen cardstock.  Oil pastels to give the watery, immpressionistic feel and then I have painted the 'wet' areas of the card with high gloss varnish. 

Most Recent ATC's

Lately, there have been several pulls on my time; packing for our move to South Africa, baby, the boys, emergency gall bladder surgery. ATCs are so great in that they are tiny and I can feel like I got some 'art' done even though I have so little time. I accomplished the above in little bits of 5 minutes here and there over the course of a few weeks.

Children's ATC Swap

My older son recently noticed my Artist Trading Card collection and thought they were neat. He asked if he could make a couple. These are the designs we came up with; the upper left card is my younger son's "The Space Alien A", upper right is my older son's "Falling Ball" and the bottom card was designed by me, "The Trip." Artist Trading Cards are little baseball (or Pokemon) card sized artworks that are created to be given away or exchanged with others. Many cards are made of collaged items or stamped but I have cards of almost every media that can be put on some kind of paper. If you are collaging materials, I suggest recylcling some of your more interesting looking junk mail. Mirkwood Designs has a really great ATC template to print out onto cardstock to get you started.

The kids were excited to trade their cards and see what came back in the mail. I am a member of Swap-bot, so I logged on to my account and have set up a swap for the kids. Please feel free to join our Kids ATC swap. The account is free and they have many fun activities to participate in.