Art Trading Cards, ACEOs and Oddments

     Many artists make trading cards, for fun, for profit, or for trading. They can be used as business cards. I give mine away. ACEO stands for art cards, editions and originals. I suppose that's more serious, professional artist stuff than just "art trading cards." Duane Keiser, on his amazing blog, A Painting a Day
( http://duanekeiser.blogspot.com/), calls his very small studies "oddments."
     Here are four of mine. (If you enlarge these, you will be disappointed. I was.)

Pencil on paper, 3-1/2" x 2-1/2"

      This barn is on Cambria Mill Road, near where I live. It has not been red for a very long time, if ever.

Pencil on paper, 3-1/2" x 2-1/2"

 

      These are pebbles in a small dish.

Pencil on paper, 3-1/2" x 2-1/2"

      Prettier than the male? These colors are slightly, but only slightly, more vivid "in hand" than they appear here.

Pencil on paper, 3-1/2" x 2-1/2"

     These are trees in winter mist.

Influences

 

"Canada Geese" February 27, 2011 Watercolor on paper

A friend of mine recently posted a Mark Rothko painting on his website. I was reminded the noted Canadian wildlife artist, Robert Bateman, observed that Rothko’s paintings are abstract landscapes, which, I believe, Rothko himself had said. Bateman said one of his own paintings, a picture of a goose flying over a marsh, was essentially a Rothko with a goose added. Well, I’ve tried to emulate that to a certain degree. I am, of course, not Robert Bateman or Mark Rothko!