How to Draw an ACEO or ATC

ACEO means Artist Card Editions and Originals, these are the miniatures you can purchase on eBay. What may be even more exciting are ATCs, Artist Trading Cards that you can only get by creating some yourself and exchanging with artists whose work you like. Kept in trading card albums, ACEOs and ATCs are a growing phenomenon on eBay and a wonderful thing to collect. Here's how to make some!

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Heavy art paper including bristol, artist quality card stock, Canson Mi-Tientes and watercolor paper. Demo is on gray textured art paper.
• Pencils
• Colored pencils
• Graphite transfer paper
• Photo reference of a flower for demo project
• Optional: watercolor, opaque watercolor, watercolor pencils, acrylics, pastel pencils, a medium you can make art on paper in small areas with.
• Optional: acrylic gloss medium and collage elements like fabric, magazine or newspaper clippings, anything flat. Printouts of photos work better than actual photos.
• Kneaded eraser
• White vinyl eraser
• Scissors reserved for paper cutting (do not use your cloth shears!) or an art knife
• Clear grid ruler
• Creativity
• Computer with Internet
• PayPal if you want to sell ACEOs and eBay account
• Archival trading card album for your collection of ATCs and ACEOs
• Clear archival sleeves for mailing ACEOs and ATCs, sold at hobby shops where trading cards are sold. They're inexpensive, one or two cents a bag sold in packs of 100.
• Optional magnifying glass, preferably with its own stand to keep your hands free. Or magnifying glasses.

1. 
   Tiger Lily by Robert A. Sloan, ACEO

   Decide a theme for this batch of ATCs or ACEOs. The difference is that ATCs cannot be sold, only traded with other artists. A theme can be something like "the color pink" or "breast cancer awareness" or it could be a subject, like close-up florals, or a style like collages that include printouts of flower photos decorated with colored gelly pens and glitter. Styles vary widely on ATCs and ACEOs. Collages are popular. You don't have to be a skilled artist or a great artist to make some!
   
   ATCs and ACEOs are 2 1/2" x 3 1/2" miniature artworks in any flat medium. Some people decorate them with things like buttons or sequins that stand up and give three dimensional volume to them.
   
   ATCs have information on the back. You should make lines and write in your name, contact information, title of the ATC and number (1/8, 2/8...). You can do similar series -- I'm doing number 2/3 on this set, and I may do more florals on gray paper later on. Since ACEOs are art cards meant to be sold, the information on the back of an ATC is optional, but I'm going to include it out of kindness to the collectors who buy my ACEOs.
   
   This will also let me decide when the batch is done whether to sell them as ACEOs or swap them to other artists to get some ATCs.
   
   ACEOs can include original prints like linoleum prints, so if you like linoleum cutting, think of doing an ACEO edition of original prints. Vary the ink color and play with your prints if you want, or do them all the same -- just sign and number them, then don't make any more than the numbered edition.

2. 
   ACEO series laid out, Tiger Lily drawn

   ACEOs can be prints too. You can use stamps to make ACEOs, the kind of cool stamps that you find in hobby shops with pterodactyls or lace patterns or Victorian women, those are very common especially in collages. ACEO and ATCs can use many of the same techniques and styles as scrapbooking, but they should be constructed sturdily.
   
   My personal opinion is that it's much better to use acid free paper like heavy all media paper or 90lb student watercolor paper, or Canson Mi-Tientes and other art papers, than just cheap card stock. That will yellow and fade over the years, damaging the artwork. Collectors go to great trouble to keep these in archival conditions, so using archival materials in the first place will help them keep your work in its original glowing colors.
   
   But if you want to make some on index cards or other card stock, or use fugitive mediums like artist markers which are not lightfast, just be honest and tell the collector to avoid exposing the artwork to direct sunlight for any period of time. ATCs and ACEOs are stored in ways that preserve even very light-sensitive art supplies. It's my personal choice to prefer lightfast materials.
   
   Decide what paper you'll use and what materials. Because I can draw well, I'm going to do flowers drawn in colored pencil on gray paper, and this group of ACEOs is a set of three flowers drawn in colored pencils on gray paper. But you can do anything you want. Instructions for how to draw a flower in colored pencils are included here, but this is not the only kind of ACEO or ATC you can do!
   
   I chose Strathmore 400 Series heavy textured art paper in the medium gray, from the Strathmore Gray Scale pad. I've done the Tiger Lily and I have two blank areas marked off for other ACEO artworks. I marked up the strip with some space around the ACEO area, because some collectors may want to mat the art since these are miniature realist drawings. Leaving a quarter inch around each image for matting is a courtesy to collectors who may want to mat and frame individual cards instead of keeping them in a book.
   
   I had the strip of paper left over from drawing a clear glass for a previous article, so I marked it up with three 2 1/2" x 3 1/2" spaces with a half inch in between except on the far right. Using the grid ruler, I just lined up on the machined bottom and sides of the paper strip to draw my lines.

3. 
   ACEO Anthurium sketch ready for coloring

   Using a graphite pencil, sketch a flower in one of the ACEO areas. Look for references in garden magazines, online photo exchange groups, or take a digital picture of a flower you have in your yard. Print out the flower reference. You can trace directly from your photo reference and transfer it to the ACEO paper.
   
   The quick and easy way if you don't mind ruining the printout, is to put graphite transfer paper behind the picture and trace through the darkest darks on the image and around the outlines. Make an extra printout so you can see what you're doing later when coloring.
   
   Or you can print out the sketch of my Anthurium design, because your coloring and your creation will not look the same as mine does. You're a different person and yours will be colored the way you do. Anthuriums come in cream, pink, bright red and maroon. The surface is shiny and the spadix is yellow or cream (the big center spike) and they're often called Flamingo Flower or Painter's Palette because of their shape.
   
   The sketch is scanned dark to show the lines clearly. Print it out and trace or copy the lines on a 2 1/2" x 3 1/2" piece of art paper. My background's gray but yours could be any color or texture as long as it can be drawn on.

4. 
   Shadows colored in on Anthurium flowers and leaves

   My Anthurium ACEO is going to be bright red, and I'm going to shade in the dark shadows first on the red flowers and green leaves before coloring highlights. If you want to show the shadows and texture yours, follow this step. But you could just as easily cut out red and green art paper in the same shapes (cut up another printout of the sketch to make templates) to make yours a collage. In collage, you could even cut out pieces of photos of objects that color to paste them into the shapes.
   
   To color with colored pencil, copy this stage using dark versions of the main colors of your anthurium. My leaves are green and my flowers are red, but you could be fanciful and make your leaves blue and your anthuriums orange, or do another type of green. The shadow shapes are filled in simpler than they were in the photo reference because the art is so small.
   
   One of the nice things about ACEOs is that they don't take long to finish even if they're very detailed. Each one is small and will look very detailed at that size even if it's not. Use a magnifying glass to draw small details if you have trouble seeing them or keeping a smooth line. I found it helped even if I thought I could see it just fine. Magnifying glasses help too.

5. 
   Bright red and medium green colored in on Anthurium flowers and leaves, some light green

   Color in the bright red and medium green areas on the leaves and flowers. I used a green that was slightly olive, closer to sap green than bright green, but you could use a different medium green to get the same effect. Leave some spaces for pale highlights. I used a light yellow-green on a center rib and some other details but did not fill in all the pale highlights on the leaves.
   
   On the flowers I left some highlight areas bare, because anthurium are very shiny and may have whitish highlights showing their gloss. Centers still aren't done till last when we use cream, yellow ochre and maybe a peach or pale salmon.
   
   Go right over the darker colored areas when doing the bright red and medium green, it helps fill in the little spaces left from the first pass. Color heavily on this design if you want the same effect I'm getting.

6. 
   ACEO flower series 1 and 2, Tiger Lily and Anthurium together

   Do the spadix next, using Yellow Ochre (non metallic gold color) on the tip and underside of it, then a thin line of very light yellow, then burnish over the rest with Cream.
   
   Continue with Cream to fill all the highlights on the leaves, burnishing over around the highlights to blend them and blend some green into the highlights.
   
   On the red flowers, use a light peach color similar to pale skin highlights to fill and burnish around each reserved highlight. Since that came out a bit too bright, use red-orange and a medium pink to shade over and darken some of the highlights to keep unity on the flower and make it look shiny but real.
   
   Sign in the upper right where I've got my initials, spray with a little workable matte fixative to prevent wax bloom from the colored pencils and fill in your information on the back. Please credit with "from design by Robert A. Sloan" on the back if you use my anthurium design.
   
   You can trace flower designs from Dover books, or trace from photos you've taken in your garden, or find photographers willing to share their photo references to create colored pencil floral ACEOs. Because the art is so small, it doesn't take a long time to finish a good detailed piece. Color it in your own style once you get the outlines in. You may want to try pointillism -- trace my design and fill it in with dots from colored felt tips or using a fine brush with acrylic or gouache.
   
   You can ink the design and watercolor it. Hint, if you're going to do watercolor and ink, put the watercolor in first and let it completely dry before inking the outlines with a fine point disposable technical pen like a super-fine Sharpie, Pigma Micron disposable technical pen or Prismacolor Premier Fine Line marker. That way if you want the lines to be loose and wander in and out of the color, you can do that -- or you can make it look as if you stayed perfectly within the lines by moving the lines.
   
   Try drawing other flowers with this technique. Colored pencil works fine on medium colored art paper, maybe you'd like to try it on pale blue or tan instead of gray. The colors will act differently, so test your colors if you're not sure what results you'll get. Try different things. Maybe do a series all the same flower outlines but colored in different ways and treated in different ways.
   
   ACEOs and ATCs are whatever you want them to be, as long as they're exactly 2 1/2" x 3 1/2" you can call them ACEO on eBay and auction them. ATCs are not for sale.

Tips & Warnings

• Choose images to trace or copy that fit nicely in a 2 1/2" x 3 1/2" size.
• Try different mediums on the same design for a series.
• Do them your way, in the color and medium and topic you love best. If you like cats, do cats. Draw, paint, collage what means the most to you and your ACEOs and ATCs will have heart.
• This article is rated Easy because you can just trace the Anthurium design and color it in. If the shading gets out of hand or too confusing, just color yours in solid using Cream for the spadix, your choice of colors on leaves and flower. Try shading over the solid color if it's too hard doing the shading first. Try coloring it in markers and other mediums. Your version will still look good and be your original ACEO artwork.
• Don't copy photo references in their entirety even just by tracing outlines. Copy one flower out of a group, or combine more than one reference together. That way there's no risk of impinging on someone's copyright.
• Use clip art CDs and books for collage elements, scanning and printing them out to the size you want.
• Use heavy art paper for the backing even if you're using nonlightfast art supplies like children's colored pencils or artist markers for the art. It will not yellow and change the color of what you've drawn, and collectors may hang onto your ACEOs and ATCs for decades or more.

Resources

• A site explaining ATCs in detail
• ACEO org site, including galleries where you can display your art if you join
• eBay to buy or sell ACEO miniature art
• Dick Blick for information and purchase of art supplies including colored art paper and colored pencils

[rebeccamichelle]

on 10/24/2009 Hi, I really appreciate your article, I've been attempting to sell my paintings on ebay with out much success. I've noticed that ACEO's have a decent amount of success and I had no idea what ACEO meant. Thanks so much, Rebecca Michelle