Introducing my photos now available at Creative Market

I am SO excited to announce that a collection of my most popular photographs is now available for purchase as digital photo files at Creative Market! That's right... you can buy my photos to use in your own creative ventures! No wonder I'm over the moon (and using way more exclamation points than I should)!

With the launch of their new "Photos" catalog, Creative Market has chosen to be different than typical stock photography sites. I can't say it better than they did in their announcement:

"Photos are such an important part of almost every creative project, yet somehow it's still so difficult to find authentic images among the mass of photos on other stock sites. And with the word 'stock' used to describe the content, it's not surprising most of it looks generic and cookie-cutter, when all you're really after is real photos, of real people, living real lives, taken by real photographers. 

"So beginning today, we're setting out on a journey to bring you photos that authentically tell your story, with the launch of Photos on Creative Market. We're working to build a collection of the most honest, genuine photos from independent photographers with an eye for composition and a passion for their craft, that'll remind you why a picture really is worth a thousand words. 

"As a brand new category, we hope our initial collection saves you time looking for the perfect shot to represent your projects. And as our catalog grows, we'll keep that same commitment to highlighting quality, to make sure it's easy for you to find beautiful photos that are unique to you and don't feel like 'stock'. 

"We've also simplified the purchase process to get you in and out faster, as all photos on Creative Market are sold at their maximum resolution, at a single price point. So once you find the right photo, you won't have to worry about picking the right size and hoping it fits within your budget. Just check out and get back to your project right away. 

"We do things differently because our mission is to do for photographers what we've done for so many other creators - to give them a platform to make a living doing what they love: taking beautiful photos all day. That's why every photo purchased on Creative Market goes to support the photographer who obsessed over the perfect shot, held out for the perfect lighting, or used their years of experience to capture the perfect moment."

Illustration Inspiration: Vintage 1946 Armstrong flooring print ad

I'm in love with this illustration for so many reasons. The shading is fantastic. The technique used is as well. Wouldn't it be wonderful to see an actual candy store that looked like this?

Freebie: 1940s boy and girl playing with a toy airplane

I found this darling illustration on a vintage birthday card at my favorite local antique mall. The card was sent to a child on their 7th birthday from Lerner's shoe store on Piedmont Avenue in Oakland, California. It was signed by J.E. Learner. I thought that was quite charming. 

Once I did a hi-res scan of it and got it into my computer, I decided to utilize the power of Photoshop to make a couple of other versions that were more ethnically diverse than the original. 

Click on any image to see the larger version and save it to your computer.

Designing a handout that's economical on paper and reproduction costs but still looks great

This year, I was again given the choice privilege of creating the design for a handout to announce one of the thousands of worldwide gatherings of incredible women to watch the satellite broadcast of the General Relief Society Meeting of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It is such an honor to be a part of this organization of stellar women and then to be able to assist in some way is an honor I don't take for granted at all.

The design process for this particular flyer is always a fun challenge for me. In order to save resources and money there are some key limitations:

1. The design is for a half-sheet of standard letter-sized paper so that two flyers can be made from one sheet of paper.
2. The design needs to look great reproduced using a simple black and white photocopier. Color copies are pricey and printing hundreds of these on a color inkjet printer isn't economical.

I can't use color or photos as a crutch because neither would reproduce well when copied on a photocopier. Everything has to be black and white line art the way it used to be back when I was a graphic design student in college. Luckily, I now have the computer as my main design tool so the work goes much faster than back then.

I custom-built the lettering for the word "Feast" using vector tools. I incorporated a Victorian-style font for the words "Upon the Word". I created a black and white vector of the Relief Society logo. Then I added antique and vintage clip art from my Dover books to pull the eye through the design to all the key pieces of information the reader needs to see and know. I like how many of the design elements look like grapevines winding their way through the layout.

If you have to design a flyer with the same limitations here are some helpful tips:

• Choose only black and white line art with clean definition. Stay away from photos or color graphics that will look like a smudgy mess when you photocopy the master.  
• Don't use a lot of different fonts for the key information text like the date, time, location, and other important information. 
• Be creative and playful with your font choices in the title instead of the body text. Treat the title like another piece of clip art and play with font size, choice, unusual placement, etc.
• Find a key element in the theme and then play off that for your graphics choices. I keyed off the word "feast" and embellished with a bunch of wheat and grapes. You don't need to be super literal when you're choosing your clip art. Sometimes it's better not to be. 
• You probably will rarely find everything you need in one piece of clip art. Don't get discouraged. Instead, mix and match laying one on top of another the way you would cut out pieces of paper on a scrapbook page. 
• If you want really crisp lines that reproduce well, look for clip art that's in a "vector" format or .EPS format. That means it will resize to any size and still retain smooth edges that don't become jagged (pixelated).
• When you're ready to hand off your final printing file to someone, save it as a .PDF file. That way all your hard work is safe from an accidental edit on the other end (e.g., someone hitting the delete button while something in the design is selected). It also ensures that the resolution will be beautiful when they print the master to be photocopied.
• To add a little punch to the final handout, try photocopying it onto colored paper. Choosing a pale to medium shade colored paper will add an extra "pop" to the black and white design without making it hard to read (stay away from darker colors like red).

Fun facts
Did you know that the Relief Society is the oldest and largest women's organization in the world? Established in 1842 for women 18 years of age and older, the Relief Society is a philanthropic and educational women's organization that now has approximately 6 million member in over 170 countries and territories around the world. 

Click here to find out more about Relief Society

Tutorial: Using a texture to make a photo look like a colored pencil drawing

Taking a close-up of fruit on a tree in direct light creates some pretty harsh shadows. But you can make that kind of photo work for you by turning it into a piece of art that looks like a colored pencil drawing.

Here's how I do it...

I open the photo in Photoshop. I use CS3 but this will also work in Photoshop Elements and other versions (you can also use this method in other software programs that allow you to work with layers).

When I open the photo in CS3, the photo is the first layer in the file (sometimes it's named "Background").

Using the "Place" command (under the "File" menu), I place a texture file as a new layer.

In this case, I placed my texture "Arroyo" from  The American West texture variety pack (available by clicking below).

When I first place the texture it may not be the same size as the photo.

I then resize the texture layer by pulling the resizing squares on each corner so it completely covers the photo layer underneath it. It ends up looking like this:

The next step is to make the texture layer slightly transparent so you can see the photo through it and get the effect of the texture overlaid onto with the original photo.

In this case, with the texture layer selected I went to the "Layers" menu (in CS3 you can see it in the right hand side of your workspace) and changed the opacity to 50%.

 It made the image look like this:

You can experiment by sliding the opacity up or down to find the right fit for your photo. Remember, nothing is permanent and you aren't changing the original photo at all.

I liked the 50% for this texture and photo pairing. It gave me enough texture to but let the details of the photo show through (this is why a photo with harsh shadows works really well with this technique).

At this point, I could actually leave the photo the way it is, save it, and I'm done. But I like to tweak things a bit more after this step by accentuating certain elements in the photograph that I can only determine by hand.

To do that, I first have to turn the texture layer from an uneditable "smart object" into something I can edit with all my Photoshop tools (if you're using a different program that let you place the texture as an editable object on top of the photo then you don't have to do this step). So I rasterize the texture layer by right clicking on the texture layer in my Layers panel.

Then, I select the eraser tool:

I set the opacity of the eraser to 5-10%:

I choose a soft-edged brush at about 100 (this will depend on the size of your photo and you will probably change the size of the brush a couple of times as you edit):

Then with the texture layer selected, I start strategically erasing certain shadows around the center of the bottom of the apple to bring out the details of. I use a digital tablet and stylus so it feels like I'm "drawing", but you can do the same thing with your mouse. Gentle strokes from the darkest shadows out toward the lighter areas mimic brush or pencil strokes. With the opacity set very low I only take away a little at bit at a time and feather out from the darker shadows.

 I only erase just a little here and there to draw out some of the detail in the focal points of the photo. The reason I'm doing this is I'm mimicking how colored pencil would look on paper. The areas with shadows would get more colored pencil on them so the paper wouldn't show through as much as the lighter areas that barely have any colored pencil on them. For areas of really white highlights where you'd use a white pencil to define them if you were drawing, the same holds true because the white pencil would mask the texture of the paper.

I erase more in the deepest shadows and the lightest highlights until I get it to look exactly how I want:

As always don't hesitate to ask me questions in your comments.

I will do my best to answer them here as a reply comment 
or privately if you have an email address connected to your comment.

Happy creating and remember...