You want respect?

I'll show you respect! True to my promise, here is "Respect," the final cornerstone of that societal edifice we call Marriage.  Don't know why I didn't include it in my original four, it's much more apropos than "Wisdom," don't you think?

There's really no rhyme or reason to how I choose the pieces of clipart to use (beyond compatibility of style.) There's Chinese cranes juxtaposed with nouveau florals, punctuated by 19th-century typographic ornaments. The text has to remain readable and can't be obscured too much, though I do definitely appreciate a cluttered, Victorian aesthetic. (You should see my house, ha ha.)

Tomorrow I'm going to share some of the vintage valentines (circa late 50s/early 1960s) that I found on my recent trip to my childhood home in Southern California. Some great stuff, and their copyrights have expired!! Stay tuned!

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

What was I thinking?? When I was choosing which qualities to embellish that are necessary for a good marriage, why would I not pick "Respect"? (Slapping self on forehead) Must create a "Respect" graphic... immediately!

Peace Mandala

So lately I've just been sprucing up the shop and reading up on how to improve my blog, advice I seriously need. But until I begin actually showing improvement, I won't credit the people who are helping me, so I won't embarrass anybody.

After embellishing noble words with my Dover archive of Art Deco type ornaments (and deciding they'd be perfect wedding gifts,) I wanted to move on to playing with symbols. My first thought was the Om, symbol of peace and centeredness. But as you can see, the Om is a profoundly unsymmetrical figure, and somehow embellishment didn't suit it. 

I dunno; I created this

 and this,

neither of which really excited me. What do you think?

 
Anyway, I moved on to the Peace sign. I set out to do something highly decorated and ornate that would establish a working style for FeelGood Graphix. ("Get yer highly ornamented '60s hippie symbols here!") When it was done I colored it in Photoshop just to see what it would look like. I tried different backgrounds and settled on a jet black because it contrasted with the colors so beautifully. After looking at it for a while I realized it was like a mandala with blue sky in the middle and detailed decorative painting all around it, as if Mr Toad had gone on from painting his gypsy-wagon to this.

Then I decided it needed some text to make it a truly outstanding t-shirt/coffee mug/tote bag, so I ratted about in the old font cupboard and found Ziggy, a psychedelic trip from the 60s that perfectly embodied my message: "Peace is Beautiful."

 

What do you think? I think it captures the 60s vibe. Now my husband, of the Transcendental Brass Band, says it would make a good cd cover. So stay tuned, we'll see how it all shakes out.

All artwork  

Ah, hello.

I have been remiss. I'm finding that I treat blogging as I used to treat writing in my diary at age 13 -- it's a habit I resist getting into.

It's not that I haven't been busy, or that I haven't "done" anything; I actually have. I've created a set of 4 "Qualities That Are Useful If You're Married" designs, heavy on the Victorian typographic ornaments, with the express intention of using them for wedding presents I need to send this year. They're beautiful, if I may express an opinion.

 It all started with this graphic:

which I found somewhere on the web but can't credit. It was from the site of a stationery designer. If you have info, I'll credit it.

Anyway, I took the look of the first and went crazy with it, initially on a monogram for me:

I delved into my cache of typographic ornaments and ornamented it to within an inch of its life.

Flush with success, I asked my husband for something to embellish. "Do a logo for my band," he said. So I created a Tres Gone logo along the same lines, to be seen on their Facebook page here.

 And then I added color: (which one do you like best?)

Then came "Yin/Yang," which seemed like a logical next step in my ornamenting frenzy. It's all about balance... heavily ornamented Yin is complemented by an equal but opposite Yang.

Then came "Love," the next in my hippie archive of my imagination. The theme of my shop is what makes people feel good, after all, and Love would have to be Number One on that list.

These are all churning out at a high rate, you understand. No sooner have I finished one than I'm looking for something else to embellish.

Aha! It came to me in a flash. "Patience." The counterpart to Love. This one is set in upper-lower case, for some reason. And it came out in color.

After that, Wisdom and Forgiveness seemed the logical next steps. I had received two wedding invitations and my mind was turning toward wedding gifts.

Then I had to add color to Love to make it match the other three.

And there I have my wedding gifts. Mugs, decorated with the qualities that make for a happy marriage. Available here at Feelgood Graphix on CafePress.

I'll Blog Tomorrow!

I promise. Lots of stuff to talk about, but it's midnight now and I'm going to bed. But I just created a Facebook page for FeelGood Graphix, and uploaded a lot of new designs. Check out the badge to the left. :)

I've been reading blogs for inspiration

Like "Colour Me Happy" by Maria Killam. Very inspiring; shows this novice what a REAL blog should look like!

Anyway, lately I've been doing computer artwork, particularly one Christmas card, one collage, and one computer portrait of Greta Garbo. (She has my favorite all-time face.) I'll admit it, the Christmas card design is not entirely original. I took a silhouette of a Christmas tree, filled it with stars, and added some emanating rays and a beautiful old-world font. This is how it turned out, and it is of course for sale at cafepress.com/feelgoodgraphix.

I was also noodling around on some of the older card designs, and I think I really improved them. My original Halloween card was a photo of a lamppost with a spider web hanging from it in appropriately spooky fashion, which struck me as ... unfinished. So I superimposed a pumpkin stem on top of the lamppost, which made the whole design MUCH more interesting. Here's the original:

 and here's the improvement:

What do you think?

Also, just in time for Valentine's Day, I messed around with my "Love is Always Right" design, and made it into a true Valentine. I took what used to be a static, right-angled design and made it much more dynamic and swingy with a few swipes of the virtual eraser tool. Here's the revamped version of that card:

Previously the red background was in a rectangular border, and the text area in white was rectangular also. Just too many rectangles! I swapped the rectangles for hearts and now it sparkles (partly because I also added ... sparkles.)

Hey, I also made a calendar! They have a calendar-making feature over at CafePress, so I rounded up 12 of my better photos and made a calendar! I'm all excited. Here's the cover of the calendar, along with a link to where you can see all the pages:

www.cafepress.com/feelgoodgraphix

Oh, and then there's Greta. Good old Greta, with the most perfect face ever to gaze out from a movie screen. I took an old studio portrait of her, in black and white of course, and jazzed her up to look like the Snow Queen from a Tchaikovsky ballet. Here's the original:

 You've seen this one, right?




And here's my Snow Queen version:

She's not available for sale right now. (But I think she could be because that photo's gotta be in the public domain, right?) But she graces my bathroom mirror now, bestowing sparkly goodwill to all who brush their teeth before her.

Second Commission

And this one was a double subject. So while I am supposed to charge $80 for 2 subjects, since the customer was my mother, I only charged $60. (I REALLY needed the money, folks.)

So I asked the customer, my mom, who she wanted a portrait of, and she said she wanted me to draw my dad, with his favorite dog, Rags. How old should Dad be? Around 50. (He's now 87.) Rags was an apricot-colored cockapoo who was very smart, very obedient, and very tuned in to my dad. So, okay. I'll go through the old photos and find what I need. Well, after going through what seemed like hundreds of photos, I found the perfect photo: my dad, at 50, holding Rags up to the camera. Say cheese, Rags.

So here's the original photo of my dad and his beloved Rags:

And my pencil version:

I like it. It captures his "my dad"-ness. And Rags' "rag-ness."

And, as always, if you want one of your own, just go to:
http://www.artfire.com/users/KatesPencilPortraits
Or just click here:

KatesPencilPortraits

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