A piece done for the ATCards.com swap. I usually end up feeling less than satisfied with most pieces, but I like how this one turned out.

Fortunately, one of the themes I am supposed to do for the Pick a Theme swap on ATCards.com is a self portrait ATC. So, I can use this card for the swap and have another entry for the self portrait marathon. I like being able to accomplish two goals with one piece!

I joined another “pick a theme” swap on ATCards.com where I have to create a card for each of the other participants using their chosen themes. I have finished the first card for a person who chose “In the Wild Jungle” as her theme. This is a drawing of a cheetah. I am wondering now though if the cheetah is really a jungle animal or more of a desert animal. When I googled jungle animals the cheetah came up so I figured I was in the right ball park. Hopefully, it will be acceptable even if I haven’t quite hit the mark in subject choice. I like these pick a theme swaps because they cause me to draw subjects I would not think of choosing myself. I am not always thrilled with the themes people choose, but it forces me to think about how to give them something they would like to have and be of interest to me as well. The hardest part sometimes is coming up with an image that conveys the theme and also works on the small size of the ATC canvas, which is only 2.5 inches by 3.5 inches. Close ups seem to work best. 

Edit: It has been confirmed that the Cheetah is not a jungle resident. That’ll teach me to do sloppy research!

I received another Paper Trader’s journal (Suze’s) and got right to work on doing my spread in it. Her theme is extraordinary women, historical or fictional. The first person who came to my mind was George Sand, upon whom I did a 50 page paper, written in French no less, when I was in grad school.  I always admired the way she lived her life according to her own vision, at a time when few women had any sort of freedom.

The scan of this drawing is not very good because I didn’t think to scan it before attaching it within the book. Once it was in the book, I was not able to get it to lie flat enough on the scanner to get a good scan of it.  Oh well, one gets the sense of what it is like at least.

I decided to go ahead and buy the CDs of the group I found the other day (it seemed like the right thing to do). I received my shipping confirmation email today and I have to say that it is the funniest confirmation email I have received to date on the web (and I do a *lot* of Internet shopping). I thought I would share this gem. After the details of my order came the following words:

“Your CDs have been gently taken from our CD Baby shelves with sterilized contamination-free gloves and placed onto a satin pillow.

A team of 50 employees inspected your CDs and polished them to make sure they were in the best possible condition before mailing.

Our packing specialist from Japan lit a candle and a hush fell over the crowd as he put your CDs into the finest gold-lined box that money can buy.

We all had a wonderful celebration afterwards and the whole party marched down the street to the post office where the entire town of Portland waved ‘Bon Voyage!’ to your package, on its way to you, in our private CD Baby jet on this day, Friday, June 9th.

I hope you had a wonderful time shopping at CD Baby.  We sure did.  Your picture is on our wall as “Customer of the Year”.  We’re all exhausted but can’t wait for you to come back to CDBABY.COM!!

Thank you once again,

Derek Sivers, president, CD Baby”

I’ve done quite a bit of art work over the past week. Here is one of the pieces that I completed.