Category Archives: Creativity

Inspiration, Motivation and jump-starts to inspire creativity.

Pantone Guide to Communicating with Color

Three spreads from Communicating with ColorJust a few years ago, Leatrice Eiseman’s classic Pantone Guide to Communicating with Color, published in 2000, was out of print. In 2006 Eiseman came out with a second book continuing her color explorations, Color: Messages and Meanings. By that time, used copies of the first color book were going for nearly $200, way too steep for all but the collector.

I recently saw Eiseman’s 2000 book pop up again on Print and How magazines’ mydesignshop.com website in their “Deal of the Century” category. While it’s a bit too soon to make a hundred-year claim, I have to admit, Print and How magazines are offering those interested in the study of color a truly smoking deal.

Treat yourself and your designer buddies to a priceless holiday gift that you can be sure will be a handy resource for years to come. I’m delighted that I’m able to replace my tattered copy held together by rubber bands with a brand spanking new book for just $4.99. That’s really has got to be the “deal of the century!”

Young Wellesley entrepreneurs to sell greeting cards

While some store fronts stand empty in town center, a new cottage industry has sprung up in Wellesley this fall, and it’s run by sixth-grade social entrepreneurs.   Their product is recyclable greeting cards, and their manufacturing center is a couple of classrooms in Wellesley Middle School that constitute “House R.” Read more:

 

Image of the Week

High resolution photos are hard to find without purchasing. If you are looking for photos to use as backgrounds in your artwork, look no further. To download this week’s image, click on it. When the high resolution copy appears, right click on it to copy or save it. If you should happen to use this image as part of another image, we’d love to see what you’ve created.

bark-of-redwood-tree

Terms of Use: You can use this image for anything you wish (e.g. advertising, printed materials, product packaging, presentations, brochures, greeting cards, postcards, book covers, etc.) as long as you do not copyright it or resell it. Oak Creek Printworks and Oak Creek Marketplace, Inc. are not liable for any damages incurred by your use of the image. ©2011 Oak Creek Printworks

Add Natural Texture of Mulberry Paper to an Image

High resolution photos are hard to find without purchasing. If you are looking for photos to use as backgrounds in your artwork, look no further. To download this week’s image, click on it. When the high resolution copy appears, right click on it to copy or save it.

The 11×17-inch scanned image of mulberry paper can be used as a background in graphic design or photo illustration, crafts or greeting cards, and gives the appearance of natural texture. Any time you are printing and desire a paper color and texture other than white, consider scanning a natural, handmade paper, where each sheet is unique.

mulberry paper thumbnail

Terms of Use: You can use this image for anything you wish (e.g. advertising, printed materials, product packaging, presentations, brochures, greeting cards, postcards, book covers, etc.) as long as you do not copyright it or resell it. Oak Creek Printworks and Oak Creek Marketplace, Inc. are not liable for any damages incurred by your use of the image. ©2011 Oak Creek Printworks

Loretta Needs a Bookmark Sleeve

Loretta needs a bookmark sleeveWhat Loretta needs is a bookmark to save her spot. But Loretta’s kind of messy, so Oswald thinks she should protect it with a crystal clear vinyl bookmark sleeves.  Otis figures that Loretta would want to dress up her bookmark by adding a decorative 4-inch chainette tassel, which is available in over 40 different colors.

Save by combining the bookmark sleeve with a tassel by buying the sleeve and tassel combo set.

bookmark sleeve and tassel combo

 

Panorama phone apps stimulate imagination

moorpark college

This past weekend I was immersed in the unpleasant chore of paying bills, when I reached for a pen and instead, my clumsy grasp sent a cup full of pens spilling over the edge of my desk and into a box full of old cards. Reluctantly, I got up out of my chair and fumbled through the box, my eyes landing on some old photos stored in a clear plastic box.

Upon seeing the fading image my grandfather as head pressman of the print shop where he worked, I realized I had not scanned the photo, which I thought might make a good retouching project for my Photoshop students.

And then, much as I hated to, I had to stop myself from wandering off track, but when I saw this new 180-degree panorama image juxtaposed with the circa 1920 image of my grandfather,  I couldn’t help but marvel at the technology built into our mobile devices.

As I mentioned in my article on “grunge” apps, now that we’ve mastered the doctored image to near perfection, we’ve gone on to mimic effects like the vignette, the scratches, and the light leaks in this aged image. And now we can create 180-degree, 360-degree, and even cave-like images projections that totally surround.

As a kid growing up in the 50s, the Dick Tracy watch was science fiction. Who’d thunk that as an adult, I’d have my very own communication device far superior to anything Dick ever imagined? This week I’m into panorama apps, but note that this is not intended as a review or comparison of specific applications, but instead, a reflection of my limited experiences with panorama apps in general.

cartagena, colombiaTypically, if you’re shooting with a normal lens, you can achieve a panorama effect by cropping and zooming into a very narrow area of an image. That’s essentially what you get when you order a panorama from the drug store, or your local film processor.

Among its many automation features, Photoshop has a fairly sophisticated blending function called “photomerge.” These days, however, I’m into “quick and dirty,” but I don’t really see the “dirty” in an app like AutoStitch from Cloudburst Research. It’s incredibly simple to use and has impressive blending and exposure algorithms.

cartagena, colombia-panoramaI’ve been making images around the college campus where I teach, and one of the effects when shooting these panoramas that has intrigued me ever since I studied photography is that of the disappearing people. I’ll never forget the sense of awe I experienced when seeing the photographs of Ralph Eugene Meatyard. The children in the images had disappearing faces, an effect all photographers have experienced when using slow shutter speeds while the subject moves.

It’s one of those things that started me  thinking about how untrustworthy human vision is, and the fact that we don’t see something doesn’t necessarily mean it is not there. It just means that our senses are not acute enough…and you can extrapolate whatever you want from that. My next project is to turn some of these panoramas into bookmarks that I can include with the gifts I give during the coming year.

Featured Artist Pays for Mission Trip by Making and Selling Greeting Cards

Graydon McKoy holds "t-rex"Graydon McKoy is a nine-year-old boy finishing third grade, and is in his first year of home schooling. He lives with his parents on Wadmalaw Island in South Carolina, a very rural ­island with a farm rich history located in ­Charleston County. Graydon’s father, one of the few farmers left on the island, grew up ­farming with his father. Graydon’s mother has an advanced degree in biology but is now using her knowledge to home school the ­budding artist. With the background both of his parents have to offer, it is no surprise that Graydon loves the outdoors and every creature that inhabits it.

Since he was very little Graydon has loved books about nature and enjoyed taking walks to observe God’s creatures, no matter where, or how slimy they were.

In addition to searching for wildlife, ­Graydon cares for three horses, one German ­Shepherd and a cat, but what he really wants is a snake. His mother has not yet consented to that request, but they have spent the last three summers documenting the snakes they find on their farm. To date they have spotted over 13 species of snakes and look forward to ­participating in the annual springtime snake round-up that the local serpentarium conducts.

seahorse

Graydon’s art began at the young age of four, and highlighted the favorites of all little boys: sharks, alligators, dinosaurs and snakes. Thanks to a great art teacher from first grade, his talent was cultivated and his horizons expanded with the love for animals remaining as the main theme in all of his work.

In a span of just three years, ­Graydon has developed quite a portfolio, which his mother has saved, and scanned onto computer discs. His talent was put to use this year when Graydon’s family decided to go on a mission trip with their church to Costa Rica. They did not have all of the ­funding needed to pay their way, so his mother had an idea to use Graydon’s art work as a fund raiser.

She took some of his pieces that had been scanned and then put them on her computer and converted them into note cards. The cards sold really well, and not only raised enough money to pay for all of them to go to Costa Rica, but, also raised enough to pay for a home school trip afterwards.

As a result of this success, ­Graydon now has his very own business and calls it “Graydon’s Critters”. He is working on two new series; one focusing on Charleston and one highlighting the fish served at a local seafood restaurant. He ­continues to practice with mediums such as chalk, watercolors and oil pastels, but is expanding to acrylics and looks forward to learning how to mat his own work.

To see Graydon’s portfolio, visit his website – www.graydonscritters.com. You’ll also find Graydon’s Critters on Facebook.

marsh flounder

Grunging photos is all the rage in apps

pink snapdragon, unlatered

Original image, unaltered.

Grunge isn’t new, but the ability to add it to image on the fly using the new crop of camera apps for mobile computing promises to take schmutz to a whole new level. I’ll be looking at some of the free and nearly free apps that can assist artists in realizing their creative visions.

It seems, as a culture, we’ve mastered the art of creating pristine photographs. Photoshop has provided artists with the tools, and those that master them can retouch, repair and restore images to better-than-new, if there is such a thing. One only has to search websites like istockphoto.com or veer.com to find an abundance of stock photos, illustrations and videos, whose rights can be purchased for $.99 and up!

Now that our collective consciousness has been saturated with dust-, scratch-, and stain-free images, some photographers, illustrators and graphic artists are spending their processing time adding just the right amount of grit, grime, and goo to their images to set them apart from the increasingly ordinary flood of work on the cheap stock market.

And no, grunge isn’t new, and neither are the type of edges seen in the altered images of the snapdragons. Well before Photoshop or digital images, photographers distressed their prints using a variety of methods not excluding grease and toxic chemicals.

There have been techniques to achieve the rough and tumble, aged look seen in the snapdragon images since Adobe Photoshop© first appeared in 1990, but in order to achieve many similar effects, one had to first understand the relatively complex processes required to achieve similar results, and then implement the techniques on machines that crunched the data while you showered and ate breakfast. Only then could you could view the results of your commands, and then the results were unpredictable at best.

Instead of waiting hours, it now takes just a few seconds to render results on the newer, faster generation of mobile devices. And because most of these apps are so easy to use, I’ve been transferring images to my phone to alter them with apps instead of using a full-blown image editing program like Photoshop. For only $10, you can download enough apps to to mess up even the cleanest images beyond recognition. Here are just a few of the photo apps that photographers, designers and artists can use to create dramatically altered images:

pink snapdragon

Grunge effect added in photo app, picfx. I found effects resulted in edges very similar to Photographic Edges' edge masking templates, with added features for textures.

pink snapdragon with grunge and aging

After applying the grunge effect, I applied a second, aged paper effect.

Clear bags protect greeting cards and more

clear bags for mailingClear bags aren’t just for greeting cards and note cards. These crystal clear sleeves have all the benefits of double-sided full color envelopes at a fraction of the cost. Clear bags are suitable to send through the U.S. postal service,  provided you follow a few simple rules.

A clean, white label area on the inside or outside of the package, preferably, but not necessarily, with a bar code. Bulk postage, bar code and address information can be printed directly on the the mailer, while postage stamps must be canceled; therefore they must be affixed to the outside of the sleeve in the proper position. It’s always best to check your design, printing and mailing plans with your local post office to confirm current postal regulations.

Benefits of clear mailers are huge. There’s no question that we’re hooked and will open “The Printer’s Glove of Choice!”. There’s some depth to the package, so surely there are samples inside, and the Golden Arches help seal the deal. The Aflac mailer, like all of Kaplan Thaler’s (Aflac’s ad agency), advertising, is enticing and clever. Because the envelope is see-through, the duck’s layered feathers reveal a unique die cut brochure, different enough to catch anyone’s eye and encourage them to open the envelope.  Aflac’s mailer does not disappoint, unless, of course, you were expecting sound effects.

You can find clear mailing envelopes in a variety of size and seal styles by clicking on this link on the clear bags page.

Aflac ad opened

 

Pantone’s spring fashion colors fill out new tassel set

pms spring 2011 fashion color tasselsBookmark enthusiasts will find 10 each of 10 new spring fashion colors in this brand new tassel set. Save 20% by buying tassels in sets and be prepared to display your artwork or photos on bookmarks complemented by trendy colors.

In addition to artists, photographers and printers, bookmarks are an inexpensive and useful marketing tool for all sorts of businesses.

The designer has complete control over what’s printed or crafted on the fronts and back of the bookmarks. Customize or decorate the bookmark to make a great gift, a gift adornment, or a stocking stuffer.

Both the small and large vinyl bookmark sleeves are sold in the Oak Creek Printworks store, and have a hole punched at the end to string an adornment of beads, charms, or, to keep the price down, a 4-in chainette bookmark tassel.