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

Sell Handmade

Then I Got a Commission!!

Omygawd! I was very excited. A friend I used to work with decided he wanted a portrait of his niece, photographed as she was gazing through a telescope, with light streaming over her through a window. "Like Vermeer," my friend said. Well, I'm not quite up to that standard, so it'll be "like Kate," for better or worse.

I've recently refined my portrait technique, after years of hit-or-miss likenesses, off-kilter ratios and not quite right angles. Yes, I trace them first. I admit it. I get out my lightbox, print out the original photo from my computer at the appropriate size, and trace around the periphery of the face, with marks for placement of the eyes, nose, mouth, chin, and hairline. Then I turn off the lightbox, and fill in the features and the shading. So I'm confident that I can turn out a good portrait of anybody.

Here's the original of my friend's niece Alexandra:

And here's the pencil version:

What do you think? My friend is happy with it (he said he cherishes it, aww) so all is well. Plus I made $40!

Want a portrait of your own? Check out my BRAND-NEW shop on ArtFire at
http://www.artfire.com/users/KatesPencilPortraits

It's a sweet way to remember someone you love, and supports a worthy cottage industry (me.)

Long Time No See!

Hiya everybody! Sorry it's been so long since my last post, but I have been pretty busy doing pencil portraits. Since this blog was only supposed to be about my computer art, I've avoided posting about what I was doing. But now I've changed my mind (it's my blog, after all) so I'm going to upload all the pencil work I've done during the last couple of months.

 First off, here's a portrait of Yolo, the late dog belonging to some friends of mine. I thought it would be a nice thing to send them a drawing of the big puppy they'd loved so much, so I asked them to email me some photos. I chose the one they had titled "Goofymug," for the goofy expression on his face. So here's the original photo of Yolo:

And here's the pencil portrait I did:

So that's going in the mail in time for Christmas. Hope it makes my friend's holiday a little brighter.

The Alphabet Game

Zazzle has been looming large in what I've been doing the last few days. See, I started doing all those initial mugs over there, and then within a couple of days of my signing up with them, they changed their software. They upgraded me out of making certain changes on my site! So while I wait to buy a new operating system, I'm bringing the initial mugs idea over to CafePress.

So I've been toiling away over 4 sets of initial products. Each set involves 26 uploads of the lettered designs. So, I design the "A," upload it, and put it on a bunch of products. Then I design the "B," etc., and I do this for all 26 letters of all four typefaces. Whew.

So here's an example of the "Swirly" font I put together.

I took a funky, bold font and filled it with a pattern I cobbled together out of free clipart designs. Backed it up with a black-to-white gradient, and it looks excellent, imho.

If you'd like to check out the page, here's the link:

http://www.cafepress.com/feelgoodgraphix/6893236

Have a great weekend!

Robo-Robinson

Wow, two posts in one day! But I'm so enthusiastic about Robo-Robinson I have to get this out.

As are so many of my pieces, this was created for an album for Mahaffay Musical Archives. Perry Robinson and the avant-garde Tres Gone Sextet play big jazz! Perry is the flaming-clarinet-wielding monster setting fire to the skyscrapers of Portland while displaying a photo of the boys of Tres Gone on his in-chest monitor.

This illustration was created in Photoshop, using a real robot as a template, and building layer upon layer to achieve a realistic effect. He could be positioned to play the guitar or the drums too, so he's a versatile guy, and I'm proud of him.

The photo of Portland was taken by my stepson Matthew from one of his classrooms at Portland State.

The image was made into a cd cover, and then proved so popular (among a select group) that I made it into a poster, which is available at www.cafepress.com/feelgoodgraphix. Or, if you'd like to see what all the hullaballoo is about, the album is available at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/tresgone8.

Steaming Brew

So I got inspired by the Halloween display at my local Fred Meyer yesterday, came home and designed some cards and mugs, which I think are pretty cute. Spent some time creating skeletal hand bones in Photoshop, added some text that says "Steaming Brew" in a suitably scary font, and here it is.

It's a wrap-around design so it looks like 2 skeletal hands holding the mug, one on each side.

 

There are greeting cards too, in a slightly different design, which involves a white skeletal hand against a black spattered background, with "Happy Halloween" written in a ghostly font above it.

So if you like them and you'd like to tuck a few away for Halloween, just go to www.cafepress.com/feelgoodgraphix. Choose from this year's design or last year's, take a look around and maybe do some early Christmas shopping!

I've discovered Zazzle!

Wow, it's been a long time since my last post. Well, I told you I didn't think of myself as a blogger, but life's a long song, and I'll learn.

Lately I've been working on initial mugs and other products for CafePress, and for Zazzle, another t-shirt site I found which doesn't charge a fee for putting your designs up for sale. Yay.

Plus they have a really cool "Zazzle Panel" you can put on your blog to showcase your products, like this:


make custom gifts at Zazzle

Krishna gives good advice

This was created originally for a cover for Mahaffay Musical Archive's cd "The Hero's Journey." I took the image of Krishna and added the text "Manifest your desires in the physical plane," because this, to me, is why we're put here on earth -- to create, to manifest, to effect change on our physical landscape. I think that's what meant by the Biblical phrase created in the image of God: We are creators ourselves.

I'm very proud of this illustration. I created it in Photoshop, and it's got 65 layers, each with a title like "eye reflection right" or "left arm lowlight." It's patterned after an Indian painting of Krishna (obviously) with an ultramarine stucco wall added as background, and all enclosed with an anachronistic Victorian filigree. I think it looks good!

And, it's on, like, 96 products over at CafePress! So go manifest your desires in the physical plane, and buy a Krishna product. I know you'll feel better afterward.

www.cafepress.com/feelgoodgraphix

Putting the "graphic" in graphic art

This is a phrase I've wanted to turn into a poster for a long time.

It's a concept I struggle with. I mean, I'd rather equivocate, pontificate and bloviate (or whine) than actually DO anything. And so, to combat yet another bad habit of mine, I created a motivational poster to remind me that unless I take action, I'm just an equivocating, bloviating whiner.

It's got punch, don't you think? I like it. And if you feel the need to shake yourself out of the doldrums of useless pontificatory whining, it's available on a variety of products over at CafePress.com/feelgoodgraphix.

On a "Love" Kick

I am on a Love kick. See, I have a firm belief that Love Is The Point. We're here to love one another, not to acquire wealth or power, but to create good feeling among people. So (in my opinion) if you are working to make others happy, you are doing God's work.

Not everyone agrees with me, of course. Some believe it's God's work to kill those who disagree with their religion. Or that it's God's work to punish others when they sin, in an attempt to recreate divine justice on earth. Of course we have the Biblical admonitions "Thou Shalt Not Kill" and "Judge Not, Lest Ye Be Judged," but those are the wimpier sentiments, aren't they? I mean, the thrilling parts are all about Revelation and Divine Retribution and being snatched out of your shoes during the Rapture! And it's so much more pleasant to believe that you are on the winning side of the cosmic war between Good and Evil, than to think that God has created all the exquisite shades of gray as well as the black and the white.

So it's clear (at least to me) that the only way to live is to realize that Love Is The Point. Examine your motivations closely when you find yourself calling for someone else's eternal damnation... And while you're at it, emblazon this message on your mugs, greeting cards and tote bags, to remind yourself and all your friends. Then act accordingly!

www.cafepress.com/feelgoodgraphix

My favorite image

This photo-montage was created a couple of years ago using a photo of Mt Hood and a cherry tree taken at David Douglas High School, which is right across the street from our apartment. When you come out our front door, you can see Mt Hood looming over the roof of the high school. Very "Portlandian." So I cropped out the backgrounds of the mountain and the cherry tree, slapped 'em together on a sky-blue background, and airbrushed a happy cloud in, adding the caption "Home Sweet Home," in the font Arid.

To me, this image just breathes "Portland." It's so fresh and springy, you can almost smell the blossoms on the tree. Portland Chamber of Commerce, could you use a new marketing image??

Makes a great souvenir! Go get yours a www.cafepress.com/feelgoodgraphix

Getting the word out

First I was a graphic designer.

No, that's not strictly true. First I was a clerical worker, a drone who took dictation, cut paychecks and answered office phones. When I was in my mid-30s and realized that I had already spent 15 years of my life doing work I hated, I put some real thought into where I wanted the rest of my life to go. I spent hours at the library researching careers, and decided that art was really the only subject that interested me deeply and exhaustively. Anything else -- business, journalism, cosmetology -- might hold my interest for periods, but not really set my life on fire, you know?

So I decided to go back to school and become a graphic artist. I got an associate's degree in 1993 in Visual Communications. I got a job at the Salem, Oregon, Statesman Journal newspaper and worked there for 11 years, creating ads, flyers and catalogs.

And then I moved from Salem to Portland, a distance of about 50 miles. I commuted that distance (actually 106 miles round trip per day) for two years. When gas prices reached $2.00 per gallon and mileage was costing me $200 per month, I finally resigned.

Fortunately, I had a Mac computer, and could still design, if only on my own time. I was creating some pretty cool images and had no outlet for them until I found CafePress. It felt like a marriage made in heaven. Here was a site that would let me upload all my designs, would do all the work printing them up for me and shipping them, and would pay me money besides!

So I signed up. I decided that the point of creating my shop was to make people feel good, so I called it FeelGood Graphics. I created a benign, grandmotherly logo to convey the idea that my designs were like little cinnamon rolls of joy being served up for your delight. I went on a tear uploading everything I had on my computer, creating coffee mugs, t-shirts, tote bags and posters by the dozen. I had found my niche.

Now all I needed was to get the word out.

I don't think of myself as a blogger.

But new challenges require new solutions.

I am a 54-year-old married woman living in Portland, Oregon. I have recently begun selling products on CafePress.com, and I would love to make a profit on this venture.

So I've decided to write about the experience of setting up a shop, designing products, and the stories behind the designs. I hope to give readers some insight into my goals, why I create the things I do, and to convince at least some of you to support me and my products.

The name of the shop is FeelGood Graphix at http://www.cafepress.com/feelgoodgraphix
It's a labor of love in every sense of the word; combining my love of graphics with my desire to communicate the love and beauty I see in the world. I want to let everyone know that if they believe, they can achieve. I want people to see the beauty in each other, across party and across religious lines. I want to Save the World One Mousepad at a Time.