I’ve drawn with a pencil, pen and paper for many years, and
cut out many an interesting piece of clip art with my embroidery scissors.
I
was learning about “cut and paste” as soon as I was old enough not to eat
the paste–though I still had to prove myself worthy of the pointy scissors!
But now, I’ve got the computer as a fabulous tool for creating all sorts of
things ranging from professional websites for others and myself, magazine
articles and books, cards, signs and business graphics and calendars.
Once
in a while I reward myself with some time to play with my tools and let them be
my toys while I allow some creative fun for no better purpose than to amuse
myself and enjoy what I do. That’s more important for maintaining a creative
mindset and staying fresh than is often credited. For me, my work and my play
are very often overlapped, because I work in creative fields.
My work provides me with rewards for playtime too. As a member
of the Amazon Affiliates program, I can promote books, tools, and all sorts of
things that are available through Amazon.com in several ways. I can link to
products that I recommend and that may be hard to find elsewhere. I don’t sell
these items myself, but when people purchase via my links, I get a small
percentage of the sale from Amazon for pointing a customer their way.
Every
month I get this percentage total as a gift certificate, and I treat myself to
Something Cool or buy presents for others. I make sure that once a year I get
something that is a gift from me to me, and from the people who helped support
my art by purchasing items I recommend!
Quite
often it is books. I could never have too many books, and I particularly love
getting them from the Dover Pictorial Archive. They have thousands of
images freely available for use by artists. Up to ten images from a book can be used in any one
project without further permission. It is an incredible resource for artists to
use while still respecting copyrights.
Now many of these incredible resource
books are available on cd as well, and can be used without the bother of
scanning or cutting and pasting with the sharp scissors and glue. Resizing is a
snap because these images come in full resolution and in several
formats. I use many images from this series to have rubber
stamps and matrix trays made for my paper and polymer clay use. Shown on
above is Elegant Floral Designs with 139
permission-free designs ready to be used in a myriad of creative ways. Here are links to just four
of my favorites in this Dover series.
Click here to go see more than 300 dover clip art cds
Last
year I also treated myself to a Wacom Bamboo Tablet
with a regular mouse and a pen mouse.
It came bundled with Adobe
Photoshop Elements. This “pen” is actually a digital mouse that allows me
to plug in and draw using the tablet mouse pad.
I can use it to edit photos and graphics with greater control than is
easily available with a traditional mouse. When doing work that requires
intricacy, its an incredible help!
Plus its fun to play with too. When you
combine the Wacom bamboo pen mouse with the powerful tools in Photoshop and
add the clip art images as a design starting point, the fun grows in leaps and
bounds!
I’ve taken Image 036 (seen in black and white at the top) from the Elegant
Floral Designs book and colored it in, using Adobe Photoshop. First I
chose Image>Mode and pick RGB instead of indexed color,
because it gives me more options. Then I chose Image
>Adjustments>Color Balance and use the slider bars to turn parts of the
image green. Then I chose File>Save As and named the file036green.jpg so as to have a record of what
I'm doing and so I don't accidentally overwrite the original file.
I then chose Layer>New>Layer From Background which
changes the Background Layer's name to Layer 0. Layers allow me to manipulate
things separately in ways I can't do on paper., and some things you cant do to
a background layer--again I have more options this way.
Next I used the Magic Wand tool to choose the white background
and used the Paint Bucket tool to fill it in with a lovely rich red.
I had to
enlarge the view of the image and go back to fill in a few areas that had not gotten
filled the first time. Again I used the Magic Wand tool and the Paint Bucket
to fill in the areas as needed.
Then I added some yellow to the centers of the small flowers
and to the ends of the large floral motifs, as well as to the scallop trim at
the bottom. I used the Magic Wand and Paint Bucket again, this time using a
cheerful yellow. In the same way, I added a bit of darker green to the center
of the feathers in the scalloped edging. The next step gives the whole design
depth. I chose >Layer>Layer Style and added Inner and Outer Glow and
Emboss & Contour to the image. Playing with the various elements of Layer
Styles can change images in ways from subtle to outrageous, depending on what
you want. The best way to find out what each one does is to poke at the
settings and see what changes. I also used the Eraser tool to take away some
of the bottom edge, giving it a more accentuated scalloped effect.
Now I’m going to turn it into a holiday gown for a digital
paper doll! There are tools that will allow me to "gather" the piece
as though it were fabric. But I could use it as it is for many things–to print out gift cards,
decorate a website, or all sorts of interesting and fun uses.
Click here to see
the next part of the Digital Doll Art page.
