eBay

Still doing well on eBay, each girl card has sold.  We've decided to only list one card at a time to avoid cannibalization.  I think as soon as one auction ends, another will begin.  So far, the card that sold for the most was the Zendikar forest girl with white hair and a bird.  It seems like the same person is buying all or most of our cards, which is interesting.  Thanks, guy!  

Anyway, up for grabs is an altered Zendikar mountain.  She is painted with acrylics. No metallic paint on this one, other than maybe the signature.  Auction ends August 10th.

Coming soon to eBay is some sort of elf card that is more of a tweak to the original art, not so much a full alter. Done in black, emerald greens, and metallic greens, this was superimposed above the original.

Also coming soon to eBay are an SDC first-- collaborative cards between Selkie and myself.  I am beyond pleased with the results and can't wait to post!  Or for Selkie to post!   Also a first, one collaboration will be a set of 4.  Yah!

Copic Markers

If you could have anything you wanted, what would it be?  Well this has been what's popped into my head for the last several years.  Copic Sketch markers.  I even came close to actually purchasing them once!  Good thing I didn't though, 'cause my freelance gig went south, checks bounced, and my bank account was drained.  It was so close though..  Now I just check DickBlick and Jerry's Artarama on a daily basis, hoping for a 20% off sale or something (not that I'd even have that much).  The treasured 72 Set A is usually about $327.10 on either site.  These are not disposable markers-- each one is refillable and you can even change out the nibs if they get all scuzzy.  The next time your little bastard nephew gets ahold of one and smashes the tip down, no worries!  It's easily replaceable.  And your nephew is still young enough that you can beat the crap out of him without much effort.  Technically, you can build your own marker-- buy an empty marker body, the nibs you want, and fill it with whatever refill cartridge you want.  They can also be used with an air can (also sold by Copic) to air brush.  Wow.  Another nifty feature in the shape of the marker bodies.  The Copic Sketch bodies are oval, so they will not roll all over the place.  They have 2 ends (one is brush-like and the other is a chisel shape).  The Copic Original markers feature square bodies and different nibs (one is a chisel and the other is sort of like your typical sharpie nib).

eBay

A little background info:  I work full-ish time as a graphic artist at a screen printing and sign company called Pyramid Graphics.  Because we do a lot of stuff for sports teams, business tends to be kind of seasonal.  Things will be slow until football season starts up and that means less hours of work to do.  Selkie introduced Diva and I to this altered magic card stuff as fun as hell (and a way to supplement our incomes... or lack thereof).

These cards are up for auction, ending August 2nd -- SWAMP   ISLAND

The swamp is foil, which had its own challenges.  It was easy to sketch out the card using white paint, but it was also easy to accidentally wipe off everything I did after that.  Aside from being greener in person, the hair has a slight glitter to it and the frog and body scales have metallic paint in them.  I doubt I'll be doing the heavily outlines style again unless there is some sort of purpose to it. 

The island's original art is left mostly intact with the alter layered on top.  Again, it was much harder to layer paint evenly without pushing it off.  I tried to maintain the same color palette as the original art (because it is totally beautiful) and her hair is supposed to mimic the cyclones that were covered up in the process.  I meant to do some sort of tropical flower in her hair, but forgot.  It was a lot of fun to have a color palette to work with, so I am trying it again with the mountain (unfinished, so far).

I think I need to get more of the brick red color added into this one and warm up the purple, but it is definitely going in the right direction.  If i am able to do a painting session tonight, it should be finished.  I'll do another one if I can find another Zendikar land with nice colors.

So far, the hardest part about this is not getting clumpy paint and trying to align pictures with text on the damn blog.  Uhm, I guess the other hardest part is doing any subtle blending.  My medium of choice is usually a combination of marker (Prismacolor and Copic) and colored pencil (Faber-Castell).  This glorious combo makes for easy easy easy and quick blending and layering, but... the surface of the card is too slick to handle such a technique.  Might be worth experimenting.

Card Supply

Haha, gross.  Brain tears.

Anyway.  Michael (the boyfriend) has offered us pretty much free range to paint on his cards.  He has a few binder sheets of rares that need permission first, but any duplicate rares are up for grabs.  I haven't really browsed them yet, but am hoping he's got some of those Zendikar lands in there.  The workable space on those lands is the best, though it's not impossible to paint outside the original art borders.  Should probably do that more.. It might also be worthwhile to consider extending pretty cards just because they are pretty.

Edit:

No Zendikar lands to be found, but there is a bunch of other stuff.  I don't really know what I'm looking at other than 40 lbs of paper, so we're gonna need Selkie to take stock/appraise or something.

Dachsunds, Zombie token

Yes, I'm sitting with the puppies right now! They are super cute...and fun to laugh at. They miss Selkie and it's making them a bit confused. Heinz and Gretel, my voice teacher's super cute furry-babies, are super amazing. Heinz is 8 and Gretel is 6, I think. Selkie renamed Gretel "Gert" or "Gertie." He usually talks to the dogs in a very high pitched tone, so I asked Gretel where she was in that tone, to see what she would do...

ZOMBIE TOKEN!



I just did this for fun. I like the tokens for several reasons:
1) I'm still learning, so if the paint is thick, it won't screw up your tournament rules.
2) the area on the card is large, like Zendikar lands. Bigger area means easier for me to paint!
3) It's easier for me to come up with a back story for the person or thing I'm painting, which makes it easier (in turn) for me to create.

I started with the eyes, actually. I hadn't planned on this card working like it had---really, she was meant to be a sort of hydrocephalic-zombie. But, the eyes and face started to look so balanced, but sad....and calm. In my mind, she became this person whose fear wasn't absorbing her; no, she had resigned herself to the fate at hand. She was done in only black and white, except the tears and irises. The tears are a copper Lumiere paint and I thought it could look like she was crying blood. If the aberration in the back had already sunk his teeth into her skull, she could be completely pale and dead, and the tears really were her leaking brains.

Gross, huh?

I'm pretty happy with it, especially since I'm still learning!

Website

In addition to this blog, we've also begun a website.  Selkie is doing all of the site design and I'm trying to help out by creating buttons and banners.  It's hard to make stuff in Photoshop without it looking... Photoshopped.  I think we're off to a good start though, despite our team mate Diva being gone to dog-sit. Have fun with the dachshunds!  =)

Another technological thingy we might do in the future is video record our painting sessions and post them at several times the original speed or something.  I don't know how to do that, but between the three of us, we should be able to figure something out.

Commissions

No commissions yet, but a local dude named Zac was nice enough to trade us a bunch of lands in exchange for an alter or two.  Thank you for the lands, Zac!  I promise to spell your name right next time!  Most likely!

A swamp Cultist Chan.  I didn't know what she was, but here we go--  Ka-CHOW!  There.  It's impossible to tell from the scan, but every part that looks like poo brown is actually a metallic gold (background, outlines, belt buckle, bra ring, necklace cross, eye sparkles).