Illustration Friday:Fail

2409244170 776dd13edb m Illustration Friday:Fail
Illustration Friday:Fail
Originally uploaded by speartoons

The United States airline industry has to feel like failures this week. Between canceled flights, bankruptcies and prolonged inspections, I’m wondering what my next flight experience will be like.

This illustration is rendered in Adobe Illustrator.

share save 171 16 Illustration Friday:Fail

Indiana SCBWI spring conference

I am part of the Madison Park Church of God Writers’ Group. I just posted an announcement on the site about an upcoming writers conference.

http://madisonparkwriters.blogspot.com/2008/04/indiana-scbwi-spring-conference.html

This is the spring conference for the Indiana Chapter of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. I’m going to attend. Maybe I’ll see you there too.

share save 171 16 Indiana SCBWI spring conference

Illustration Friday: Save

2389958953 d30c882839 m Illustration Friday: Save

When I heard this week’s word, it made me think of all the talk I’ve heard about saving money. People say we are in a recession now. It’s time to save that money, whether or not it falls from the sky.

share save 171 16 Illustration Friday: Save

metaHatem : where hatem rambles & sketch: homage

metaHatem : where hatem rambles & sketch: homage

I found this great link from an Egyptian born illustrator. The illustration reminded me of an old toy firetruck my grandfather had. We played on that rusty thing for hours.

This is a great illustration because Hatem uses texture to give it an organic feel. I was surprised this is a digital illustration.

share save 171 16 metaHatem : where hatem rambles & sketch: homage

Photoshop Happy Accident pattern

Photoshop Happy Accident Funky Pattern

Here is a little surprise I thought was so cool I needed to share it (and therefore, file it away for future reference).

I was designing and illustrating a children’s place mat. There was an area I wanted to knockout with soft white. I took this art from Illustrator to Photoshop because I needed to apply some random texture to the blue. I wanted the white edge to be extremely soft, but I was getting a strange pattern.

 Photoshop Happy Accident pattern

While the pattern looked fun, it wasn’t what I wanted for this instance. I wanted it to be soft. I used the smudge tool, but the pattern kept moving with the cursor instead of softening like I expected.

 Photoshop Happy Accident pattern
Finally, I looked at the layer. I discovered I must have put the layer blending mode on “Vivid Light.”
 Photoshop Happy Accident pattern
When I set the blending mode to normal, voila! i got the soft borders back.
 Photoshop Happy Accident pattern
I’d encourage you to try all sorts of combinations with blending modes in Photoshop. You just never know what effect it will produce.

By the way, here is what the place mat looks at this point. This is a project for Warner Press and they own the copyright.
 Photoshop Happy Accident pattern






share save 171 16 Photoshop Happy Accident pattern