One of my favorite art instruction books is, How to Draw and Paint Watercolor, The Collector’s Series, by Walter Foster Publishing, Inc., published in 1991. It was republished as The Art of Watercolor by Walter Foster Publishing, Inc.
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In the Spring of 2006, we decided to plant a garden in the front yard. We had put in a few plants the year before that had been moved from our old house, which included; Iris, Daylily, Tiger Lilly, and Phlox.
Our front yard before planting the garden.
Whenever I need a little “me” time, I take out my Art Instruction books for inspiration on maybe a new painting or to improve on an idea that I started but not finished. Usually, my paintings are never really finished, they are just stepping stones. One drawing or painting becomes a new one with a little modification. Yesterday, I had some quiet time with the book Watercolor 1, Learn the Basics of Watercolor Painting by Caroline Linscott from Walter Foster Publishing.
Although I have been painting with watercolor for more years than I like to admit, this book is a nice review and gives me inspiration to try something new. Sometimes, I can get so wrapped up trying to make a “perfect painting” that I lose sight that this is supposed to be fun. As Caroline says in the introduction,
“The unique properties of watercolor make it an exciting, spontaneous, and interesting medium.” Caroline Linscott.
One fine summer day
When the flowers in my garden were all in bloom,
The sun was shining,
Birds were singing,
Cats were sleeping in the yard,
I picked a blossom of a blue
geranium.
In my summer studio,
I carefully placed the flower
On my desk.
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Zazzle has a promotional widget called the MySpace Merch Booth. It is found in My Zazzle on the Store tab under Promote Your Store To Boost Sales. It gives the customer the ability to design their own products using their own images and text.
When designing my Merch Store, I decided to create template images with the recommended resolution printed on the image. One for T-Shirts, one for key chains and another for posters to make it easier for the customer to create their own products.
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Many of my designs for my Zazzle and Cafepress products come from photographs or drawings of flowers in my garden. If you would like to read about my garden, visit my Squidoo Lense. These are a few of my garden inspired designs.
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Watercolor Painting by Rose Aune of Rosie's Workshop
Buy the framed print at Cafepress
Other products featuring this design are available at My Zazzle Store.
Hi! I’m going to be moving in a few months, so I have been going through my drawings and paintings that have been collecting dust in boxes and scrapbooks for years. Self, I said, “the time has come to start doing something with all this stuff, before you have to pack it all up again.”
I go through these drawing and painting frenzies, where I produce a lot of work that may be just an idea, or may become a full blown painting. That is how I accumulated this large collection of sketches and ideas that wait for me to come back to them to finish.
To make a long story short, I selected a few works that I thought would make good posters. I have a Zazzle store, and hadn’t really spent any time learning how to use the Poster design tool. After I prepared the images for publishing, as I talked about in Preparing Images for Publishing, I uploaded the images to Zazzle to start making some posters. I had a few posters that I created earlier, but, they just didn’t look very good, in my opinion. I wanted to add backgrounds, borders and text to jazz them up a little. I realized that if I took an existing product, and then used the Customize It feature, I could create a new product, by saving it with a new name without having to start from scratch. Aha!
I like the Zazzle design interface, it makes it easy to change backgrounds, borders, text and product descriptions. When I finished making my Posters, I made a Zazzle panel that just shows Posters, nothing else. These are my new posters in my Zazzle panel.
Please visit my website Rosie’s Workshop, my Zazzle Store, my Imagekind Gallery or follow me on Twitter.
Many times, when trying to come up with a new design idea, I will review my drawing notebooks for ideas. Today, I found a drawing of my dog Lucy in colored pencil that would make a nice poster or other product.
Original scan of my Lucy drawing
After scanning the original drawing at 300dpi and saving the image, I start by making a duplicate layer, leaving the original image intact and hidden. If you make a mistake or change your mind you don’t have to start all over again. The duplicate layer can easily deleted. That way you can experiment with different styles and filters but still have the option of going back to the original design.
Usually, scanned pencil drawings will need to be darkened and enhanced to look good for printing, in my opinion. I often use the automatic color correction and color variations in Adobe Photoshop Elements to darken and enhance the image. To create the oval border, I use the select tool to create an oval around the design then invert the selection and fill it with color. To make the image suitable for a large poster, I increased the image size to 11″ x 16.5″. Save a copy of the image as a png file for uploading. If you are going to be using the image for email or the web, also make a jpg copy.
This is my published image on Zazzle.com
Hi!
I found a really neat blog site that I hope you all will visit. http://inkwellalley.blogspot.com/
There is lots of great reading. I copied this from their site, “Inkwell Alley is a growing community where our main goal is to feature and help artists, writers and creative entrepreneurs to achieve their dream. We take pride in helping others reach their goals. Our community is based on the premise “it’s not who you are, it’s who you can become.”
I’m still in the “what you can become” stage, and need all the help I can get. Thanks, Inkwell Alley!
