ATC: Kissing Fishes

colored pencils on canson paper

My First ATC finally arrived its destination.

What is ATCs?

ATCs stands for Artist Trading Cards.  As explained on the wikipage for Artist Trading Cards, ATCs "are miniature works of art about the same size as modern baseball cards, or 2 ½ X 3 ½ inches (63 mm X 89 mm), small enough to fit inside standard card-collector pockets, sleeves or sheets."  I googled and found a few Taiwanese traders are in ATCs but not many of them and it seems not so popular here.  But from the search I did found some trading sites or forums with many people active for this art exchange movement.

The card is asked to be 2 ½ X 3 ½ inches.  That is so small comparing to the size of paper I usually work on!  At first I thought it wouldn't be so hard.  After creating one by myself, I found it quite challenging in some ways.  But it is definitely fun to present my own miniature to ATC traders around the world, see their art and exchange cards I like to collect.  For me, it also works as a kind of inspiration.  I try to do it when I am tired of assignments or just want to relax and fly my mind to somewhere else.  It is great that my first card was safely received by the trader in Texas, USA.  I'm now expecting her card to arrive; it should be arriving soon.

我的第一張藝術家交換卡終於寄達對方家了。

什麼是藝術家交換卡呢?

ATCs全名Artist Trading Cards，中文是藝術家交換卡。參考維基百科的解釋，ATCs是：「縮小版的藝術作品，約2.5x3.5英吋(6.35x8.9cm)像棒球卡般大小，收集者拿到時可直接放在口袋或裝進標準規格的集卡冊裡。」（註：維基百科網頁尚未有中文版。）我上網google找到一些在台灣收集ATCs的人，但是不多而且交換ATCs在這裡好像並不風行。不過國外倒是有一些ATCs交換平台或論壇，而且上面的交換活動都很熱絡！

藝術家交換卡標準規格是2.5x3.5英吋(6.35x8.9cm)，比我平常畫的紙張小很多，一開始我還想說不會太難畫，結果真正做一張才發現還是很有 難度的！不過能夠把自己的小作品分享給世界各地在交換收集的人，也同時欣賞他們的作品，最後可以互相交換有興趣的作品，的確是很有趣的活動，也能刺激我的 靈感，有時候功課畫累了，就轉移心思到ATCs上稍作放鬆。很高興我的第一張卡片已經平安抵達美國德州的交換對象手上了，這幾天應該也會收到她的卡片，很期待。