This is another in my series of daily, one-hour ATCs.

For some reason, I was in an Edgar Allan Poe mood this morning. When I was little, the very first TV show that I can recall seeing was "The Fall of the House of Usher" on PBS, a dramatization of the Edgar Allan Poe story. I must have been about four years old at the time, and I'm sure that it made an impression that is today reflected in my love of gothic art and ghostly themes.

The background is a page from the 1817 Farmer's Almanac. I own an original copy, and I'd scanned it for my clipart CDs (see below).

Next, I added a public domain image of Edgar Allan Poe, found online and altered to suit this card. I had used this image in a shrine that I made (and sold at eBay) several years ago. The raven on his shoulder is art from that shrine as well.

Over his torso, I placed one of my 205 Eerie Images from a New Orleans cemetery. When I first saw this falling-apart grave, I thought of the Poe tale. As I made this art card, adding this Poe-like image a logical step. Of course, I changed the Hue and increased the Saturation; the latter by about 90%.

Photoshop trick: To get the cemetery photo to appear only in the black areas of Poe's clothing, I selected Poe's torso with the rectangular tool, and made a copy of it. After pasting that to a different window and removing the background, I increased the contrast of the clothing so that it was sharply black and white. I cut out the black areas and pasted them as another layer on the ATC, positioned over the existing Poe clothing.

With the Selected areas still outlined, I switched layers so that I was working with the cemetery image. I inverted the selection and cut out (removed) areas of the picture that covered white portions of Poe's clothing. Then, I flattened the image.

Finally, I added the word, "Nevermore," from Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven," and added a drop shadow to the text.

The finished image is 3" x 5" and you can print it at 150 dpi. Right-click on this link and save the image to your hard drive. Then, print it at 150 dpi if you'd like it in the original 3" x 5" size.

(Of course, you can reduce the card to the more standard ATC size of 2.5" x 3.5" and improve the resolution as well. I'm accustomed to trading art cards in Red Dog Scott's swaps, and they're often 3" x 5".)

This art is copyrighted, but you can print it freely for your personal use, as long as you don't alter the design of the card.

RESOURCES

• Clipart CD: Scanned pages of the 1817 Farmer's Almanac (This image is old enough to be in the public domain.)
• Clipart CD: 205 Eerie Images (If you own that CD, the image is PDRM0459.JPG. This image is copyrighted, but if you purchase the clipart CD, you can use the pictures permission-free in your own art.)
• The "Nevermore" font is Black Adder, and the title/artist lines on the card are in Century Schoolbook.