Outback Dunny ATC step by step

I've been working on a little project that started out about 2 weeks ago and I finally got it finished. The project involved water colour painting and as I'd never actually used water colours before I did do alittle research on the subject. Thank goodness for 'You Tube'. I was very happy with the finished results and was impressed at how easy this medium is to work with. It's all about the paper and learning how to become loose with your stroke work, as I have a background in fine art and acrylic not an easy task. My only tip that I could pass on is to let the water and paper do the work for you, alittle colour goes a long way.

My project was inspired by our 'Free Swap ATC' held at Westfield every month. For the last few months we have not bothered with a theme and I've recieved some awesome ATC's over this time. However I enjoy the swaps more when we have a theme to work around and I get to see how others interpret the same idea. Sarah picked our theme this month and she chose 'House'. Within seconds I already knew what I was going to do. I ususally go with my first thoughts and just take my time to build on it. I don't know how other artists go about getting their ideas out of their head and turning them into a real projects or creations but I thought I'd share this project and the steps I took to create my ATC for May's Swap. I hope the ladies like it.

'OUTBACK DUNNY' If you get to the end of the step by step I do ask you a question =)

	Getting an idea out of my head is usually done with a sketch and this is my first attempt. I may do two or three sketches before I settle on the one that I'm happy to work with. I then decided that I'd like to make it 3D. The red sketch is my rough attempt at working out how to make it 'Pop'.
	This is my first Line Drawing with all my working pieces. I will then span these into the computer using 300 dpi. I will spend time here editing my Line Drawing. Cleaning up marks, making changes eg the owl, adding the man sitting on the toilet to the background. At this stage I also did the pattern for a digi 'Colour it Yourself' worksheet.
	From here I would print out a draft pattern, cut it out and make sure all the pieces work together.

	This is my working copy printed out on 200gsm watercolour paper. You may notice that there is a light green edge around all the pieces that have to be cut out later. I also designed the back of my ATC.
	I did heat set the ink with a heat gun but when I added water I still got a tiny bit of bleeding. I painted the design in using Tombow Markers and water colour pencils. This part is by far the most enjoyable part of any ATC's for me. I did go over the lines again in places with the ink pen just to clear them up again.
	I rescanned in the colour worksheet at 300 dpi. I cut myself out a small piece of the sheet to test out different print setting. Every printer is differnt and will print differently depending on your ink and the paper you choose to print out on. As I wanted my ATC's to have alittle body (thickness) I printed out the background, dunny and the roof top sections on the watercolour paper again.  I used normal paper to print out the inside door, back of ATC and the bottom of the roof as these two parts did not need to be as think.

	I designed the ATC to flatpack so that it would fit into a standard ATC pocket. The Outhouse colapses to the right and the roof folds up to reveal the same image as the background.  I hope that I achieved an appealing ATC even if it's flat.
	Here is the ATC unpacked, a side view with the door open. Below is a front on view. If your've gotten this far reading then perhaps I could ask you a favour. I'd be interested to know if you ever needed an 'Outback Dunny' could you see yourself using this design? Other ideas I had for this design were for Scapbooking layouts as you could use just the Dunny itself as a paper element. Easy enough to adjust.

I can remember using this style of toilet when I was younger on both my grandparents farms. They really do smell terrible and I couldn't get used to using newspaper to wipe my B...M! When the pit got too smelly or full, in would come the tractor and they would move the Dunny to another location and place it over a fresh pit. Thank heavens for modern toilets.

Thanks for reading, I hope you have a great week.