I like to think of New Year’s Resolutions as more like a plan than a list of solid goals.  The goal is, as always, to be the best mom, wife and artist I can be.  I figure if i get around to most of these, I’ll be okay this year.

TEN:  Quality reading for you and for your little ones. I know you are busy, but nothing fills the creative well AND gives you a little escape from your busy day like curling up with a book, even if it is just for fifteen minutes before you head to bed, while you wait for your kids or during lunch at work.  This lucky Creative Mom got a Kindle for Christmas! And for the little ones, make it easy and check out the book “Honey for a Child’s Heart.” You’ll find great reading lists for all ages.  This helps with that overwhelmed feeling you get at the library.  This year introduce your kids to the classics: Pooh, Peter Rabbit, Little Sal, Max and the Wildthings, Narnia… and on and on!

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NINE:  Exercise. I’m not talking about training for a marathon, although major kudos if you are! Just head out for a walk, take the kids or use it to de-stress from your day.

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EIGHT:  Eat Real Food. Less fast food, more fresh food.  Cut out products that come in a box with powder or are neon blue.  Avoid foods with high fructose corn syrup. Always have options like fruit and whole wheat crackers available for hungry kiddos.

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SEVEN:  Do Worthwhile Stuff. Take the time to find out about the cool things in your area AND DO THEM.  Find activities that teach your kids about nature, about doing good and helping others, about staying healthy, about history and geography and art. You might just find yourself inspired along the way.

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SIX:  Stay updated. Keep an eye on what is new and exciting in your creative field.  Get inspired by others who do what you do.  Join a critique group, go to a conference, take a class… and save up to upgrade your Adobe software (:

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FIVE:  Simplify. De-clutter your life a little and breath a bit easier.  No Mom does this better than the Simple Mom.  If you haven’t checked her out, you should!

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FOUR:  Find your Balance with Chaos. No one can win the war against chaos.  My husband, the physics expert, says it is impossible.  He even had an equation to prove it.  So, your house cannot be perfect, your kids cannot always be predictable and your hair will not always do as you wish.  Find your balance between laundry and playtime, between TV and sleep, between work and home.  And if you lose a tough battle one day, don’t worry, chaos will always be around to battle with tomorrow.

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THREE:  Stay Connected. This does not mean spend an hour a day on facebook.  Call  your mom.  Send photos of your kids to your grandparents.  Check on your little brother.  Send birthday cards.  Have coffee and playdates and cultivate friendships with people worth being in your life.  Find good professional relationships with those who make you a better creative person.

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TWO:  Fill the Well. Inspiration can be illusive.  You have to get inspired.  Every creative soul needs different things.  Mine likes antique stores, nature walks, used bookstores, quirky movies and art galleries. Seek out your muse, and don’t be afraid to have your kids help you find it.  Seeing things through their eyes can be the greatest inspiration you will find.

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ONE:  Quality Time. As a military family, we know all about quality time. This is the most important item on this list, and it can be forgotten, put off or faked too easy.  Turn off the TV and play a game.  Have a conversation, read a book and talk about it, go on a walk together, really pay attention to your kids one on one with no distractions.  You might be with your kids all day, but even on the busiest days try and take some time to let them be your sole focus.  Because you’ll blink and another year will go by.

This is a barebones example of a super easy, super fast method of producing a scrapbook page.  I’m using Adobe Photoshop CS3 on a Mac, but this tutorial is good with past versions of the software and is PC friendly as well.  You can make it from scratch in no time, or you can upload my template, complete with “beach” font and background photo. 

For this page you will create five elements: a background, photos, title, captions and simple embellishments.

I like to make these quick pages to be printed on borderless 8×10 photo paper. Then I can just slip them into albums, mail them to Grandma or pin them to my bulletin board. But, if your printer doesn’t do this format, just use a regular letter size and give it a trim when you are finished.  So, your first step is…

1. Open a new document:  Make your dimensions 8 inches by 10 inches and your resolution 300 (this is for print so we want a good resolution).

2. Add your background: Simple photos work best (like my photo of the beach), but you can also use another copy of one of your three main photos. Open your background photo and click and drag it into your new document. Using the Free Transform Command (detailed below) enlarge your photo until it fills the document.  You may need to zoom out to do this.  Then with your background photo layer selected in your layer pallet (usually in the bottom right) change the opacity from 100% to between 15 and 30.  Very nice. 

3. Add your three photos.  I used three we recently took at the beach.  Open each photo and then using your move tool (the dark arrow) drag them to your new document. I recommend cropping them first using the crop tool, but make sure you leave a tiny bit of space for us to turn into our photo effect border later on.

Select each one in turn and using  the Free Transform Command (see below for details) resize each one so that you have one large and two small.  Keep your large photo centered and straight, and move your smaller ones to the top and bottom and rotate them slightly.

• The Free Transform Command:  This is one of my most used commands in Photoshop.  If you have mastered this skill, skip down to the next step.  If not, read on and become a Free Transform Master!
  Select the layer in your layer pallet containing the first photo you want to resize.  Make sure your Move Tool (the black arrow at the top of your tool bar) is active.  Then go to Edit–>Free Transform.  Or if you want to be really cool, just hit Command T on a Mac or Control T on a PC.  You now have a box around your photo! Hold down the shift key and drag a corner of that box in or out.  Holding down the shift key insures that your proportions will be constant.  You don’t want to squish your baby’s head or make your husband look like a reflection in a silly mirror.  You can also rotate the image by hovering your move tool near a corner and dragging when you see the circular rotate arrow appear.  You do not need to hold down the shift key when rotating to constrain proportions.  When your image is the way you like it, don’t forget to hit Return/Enter to exit the Free Transform mode.  You can always hit escape to exit the Free Transform Mode.

4. Arrange your photos.  I recommend placing your big photo right in the center so that is is your main focal point.  Leaving some room for a title and some text place the two smaller photos above and below your big one.

Now for the nifty photo effect with drop shadow! (I know this is what you were waiting for.)  In the layers menu select your large photo and open up the layer style menu by double clicking to the right of the layer title.  On the left of this menu box check the boxes for Drop Shadow and Stroke. Let’s start with stroke.

Photo border effect: Click the word Stroke on the left column of your layer style menu.  Increase the size to between 20 and 50, whatever you like best with your photo.  Set your Position to Inside from the drop down menu.  This makes your corners square instead of round. Then skip down to the bottom and select a nice white color for your stroke.  I like to use an off white, but bright white works great too for extra pop. 

Drop Shadow effect: Click the Drop Shadow on the left column of your layer style menu.  Set your opacity to around 75%.  I like an angle of around 120 degrees.  For distance, size and spread you can experiment with these for a shadow that you like (make sure your Preview box is selected so you can see what you are doing.)  I like a distance of around 15, a spread of 5 and a size of 40.

Now you can go in to your other photos and do the same thing, or you can use this short cut.  Hold down your ALT key then click and drag the little fx symbol in the layer of the photo you just altered. Drag it up or down to one of your other photo layers to copy the effect to that layer as well. 

5. Make your title:  Choose a good bold font. (I chose, appropriately enough, the Beach font). For the color I used a color from one of my photos, an ocean blue.  Experiment with different sizes and placements to find something you like.  Don’t forget you can use the Free Transform Command on text as well.

 If you downloaded my template and you don’t have the “Beach”  font you can simply choose another from what you have, or you can put the included font file into your font folder.   

6. Fill in your text:  Give your page a little content in a simple and smaller font.  I like handwriting fonts like Handwriting-Dakota.  You can place a couple simple paragraphs or you can place captions near each photo.  I wasn’t able to include the font I used in my template file, but any font of that style will work.

7. Embellishments: I like to have a little something extra.  For this page I added two “ribbons”.  Select your Rectangle tool and draw your two ribbons.  Fill it with the color you used for your title (double click the little square of color on your shape layer you just made to change the color).  Now draw the two inner rectangles and fill them with a complementary color, I chose a sand color to go with my ocean blue.  Move your ribbon layers up or down your list of layers to have them overlap your photos or go underneath them.

And voila! You have a pretty cute scrapbook page.  You can go on from here and do so many more things, but this tutorial is just to get you started.  I hope it helped.  Let me know if you followed it and how it turned out!

We, the work at home moms, are a misunderstood bunch. No one can really identify with your day to day balancing act except for another gal juggling the same combo of kids, clients, customers, paperwork and housework. 

I have a hard time parenting and working at the same time.  My extra eager baby who is currently trying out the whole toddler thing usually requires both of my eyes and at least one arm at all times. So, even though my desk is set up next to my daughter’s play area, I rarely do more than check email and do small ancillary tasks while I’m on baby watch.  I do the bulk of my work during her two hour nap time in the afternoon and after she has gone to bed.  I’ll slip in more work time when she’s playing with Daddy if I need to as well.  But, sometimes it doesn’t work out that nicely. 

One of my very best clients is a fabulous lady named Roxanne. I am lucky enough to work as kind of a one woman graphics department for her two companies and the multiple projects she has going on at any one time.  We usually work at a reasonable pace, she calls me with whatever project she needs, and I calculate how many nap times and evenings it will take me to complete.  But, sometimes Roxanne, like every business owner, has graphics emergencies.

One seemingly normal morning I get a slightly frantic call from Roxanne.  She’s at a Kinkos in Virginia getting ready for a big sales meeting, and she needs me to email them the product layouts we’ve just spent the last week vigorously completing. She also needs a few alterations, a new design included, a legal statement added and a cover layout.  Oh, and she needs it in an hour.  After spending countless hours getting these sales boards ready for presentation my gut wrenches at the thought of such a big project crumbling.

I eye my ten month old, who is currently playing quietly like an angel with a pile of blocks.  It’s nowhere near nap time, and Daddy is at work.  Maybe she’ll just play nicely for an hour?  I always was an optimist. 

The first fifteen minutes breezed by.  Roxanne called.  Had I emailed anything yet?  I told her I was sending the first of the pages right now, and to call me if there were problems.  When I hung up the phone I felt two little hands on my thigh.  I explained in very clear language that if she wanted Mama to have nice things like new handbags, manicures and the Cuisinart Grind and Brew Coffee Maker (the fancy stainless steel one), she needed to play quietly and let me finish working.  She blinked her giant blue eyes at me, opened her mouth and let free a jumble of vowel sounds that sounded eerily like a rebuttal.  She paused to give me time to see the error in my argument. I kissed her forehead and turned back to work.  Her hands patted my leg furiously, and I’m sure if she could have stomped her feet yet she would have. I made some half hearted placating sounds and patted her head with one hand while I copied and pasted Roxanne’s legal statement with the other.  I could almost hear the impending explosion building.

I get the first batch of files ready a few seconds before Mt. Toddler erupts. I press send with my pinky finger as I slide down into toddlerworld.  She is immediately appeased.  The tantrum switch flips off, and other than the presence of two enormous tears clinging to her cheeks you would never have known she had just moments before thought that her mother would ignore her forever leaving her with all kinds of complexes and psychoses.  The angel wings once again sprout from her back and a halo bounces up from her wispy hair.   She is very proud of me for seeing the error in my ways.  Goooood Mommy.

Above us my computer makes a whooshing sound as the files are successfully sent.  My angel eyes me suspiciously.  The phone rings, and her wings and halo vanish.  Thinking it must be Roxanne I pick it up.  It is my neighbor with a pineapple emergency.  Julia starts fussing at my feet again, and I pull her up to my hip as I listened.  Did I hear the latest neighborhood news? Have I been to the new Starbucks? Did she tell me the new words her son was saying precociously incorrect this week? Oh, and did I have a can of sliced pineapple? My call waiting beeped in just as she was getting to the point.  I quickly told her I didn’t’ have sliced pineapple, and that I had a client on the other end of the line.  I was working.  She starts apologizing, and I tactfully click over to the other line.  

Roxanne, who could probably write a sister article to this one about how she had to get sales boards printed between soccer practice, a dentist appointment and a meeting with Millitary Spouse Magazine, was only a few octaves away from almost-time-to-freak-out voice.  Only half of the boards had come through!  Her kinko’s copy nerd guy was having a panic attack! 

I explained quickly in my best professional voice that I had actually only sent half of them, that I still had the rest and the cover design to do, but that I was doing it right now, and that it would be done in time.  She hung up and let me get back to work.

By now, my baby was firmly attached to my hip. “Do you want to play with your blocks?” I asked.  

She dug her tiny fingers into my squishy mommy tummy. No time to go for a run today, we had work to do!

“How about you help me on the computer?” I offered.

Her almost-too-large-for-her-head eyes threatened to eclipse her face.  Mommy’s computer was a giant, shiny, colorful, forbidden mystery.  I sat her down, facing the computer and started back to work. I only had one hand, so I was slower than usual, but I was almost ready to give myself a few good mommy points when my Skype ringer jingles and my mother-in-law’s face appears on my 24 inch monitor.  

My daughter and my mother-in-law immediately start up a game of peekaboo.  

“Hi Mom, I’m actually working right now.  I’ve got a deadline.”

“Oh! Sorry!” she says, as a sister work-at-homer. “I just wanted to tell you that there is a submarine on JAG tonight.  That’s all. Bye!” 

My daughter waves.  I make a mental note to tell my husband so that he can roll his eyes and have a nice rant about the inaccuracies of military life portrayed on television.  

Back to work. I get the legal statement finished and am almost done with the new designs when my assistant realizes there is a keyboard within her reach.  We play a game of “no touch” for a while until the phone rings again.  

Roxanne can’t take Kinko’s anymore.  She’s going to get a smoothie. But, she needs the completed boards in the next fifteen minutes if she is going to make it.

After the phone call, my assistant realizes that her job title is meaningless. I turn her around in my lap, incase some snuggling will suffice.  

She squirms and wiggles. I click and drag.  She whimpers and drools.  I copy and paste.  Almost finished.  

The phone rings again.  It’s my neighbor again.  “No I don’t have crushed pineapple either.  I’m working right now.”  

I finish the boards, hit send and start on the cover.  From my lap I hear a desperate intake of breath followed by that dreadful silence that can only be followed by a starving baby scream.  The cat bolts upstairs, and the dog heads for the kitchen.  In my rush I had missed a feeding.  I was almost done.  I just needed a few more minutes, then I could cuddle and nurture and bond, but right now, I was desperate.  I pulled up my t-shirt, pulled down my bra flap and latched her on.  Her screaming stopped, and her arms wrapped around my ribs like a vice.  A little guilty, and feeling a little ridiculous, I continued.

Five minutes of furious layout design and simultaneous nursing later, I only have a few finishing touches left when she starts to complain.  I keep going.  I can finish.  I’m almost there.  She pulls off and starts to wrestle with my shirt.  I’m saving the file when the smell gets to my nose.  

If you’ve never experienced the vast array of smells that accompany a weening baby then just imagine what green beans and pureed chicken might smell like after sitting for a week in a toxic waste dump next to a neglected sewage plant during a heat wave in a stagnant swamp. Even my newly minted mommy nose of steel had to take a moment.  This could not be ignored.  

I pick her up off my lap, releasing the worst of the smell.  I reel backwards, my baby at arms length, and I am halfway to the diapers when I notice that this was no ordinary poo.  This was a poo-splosion.  I had light greenish brown poop, complete with a few mystery chunks running down my thighs, and my daughter had poop down both her legs and up her back where it had erupted in a fountain of baby diarrhea.  And to top it off, I had also leaked breast milk all over the front of both of us.  

I rush to the bedroom, place my daughter in the bathtub and strip her down.  I turn on the water and then strip me down.  I pull down the shower nozzle that I usually use to wash the dog with and spray the poop off.  My daughter loves this.  When she is clean I dry her off and place her naked on a towel on the floor while I throw on something without body fluid on it.  When I am done, she is halfway to the living room. I check the clock.  I still have time! 

The doorbell rings.  I snatch her under one arm, hurdle the baby gate at the bottom of the stairs and rush to the door.  The cat, who is not allowed outside, takes full advantage of the chaos and bolts out the door as soon as I open it.  The UPS man hands me a package.  I hand it back and point him to my neighbor’s house.  Maybe it’s some pineapple.

I throw down a soft blanket, lay my naked offspring in the middle and sprinkle a few beloved toys around her.  Fed, pooped and naked, she practices “steamrolling” her toys (her Daddy would be so proud).

Roxanne calls just as I hit send. “You’re a lifesaver girlie!” 

We made it on time.  Roxanne made it to her meeting, fully prepared.  And my daughter and I roll around on the blanket together until nap time.  Then, it’s back to work on the next project. 

Epilog: The cat was gone for a few hours, but did finally decide to come home and vomit a few times on the carpet.  The dog loved this.  My neighbor found some pineapple from a friend down the street. Now almost two, my daughter has her own place to “work” right next to me.  Crayons are her current medium of choice. The JAG episode about the submarine was completely ridiculous.  And, if you want to see what a few work-at-home-moms can accomplish, check out Roxanne’s booming business and “THE Original Design Company of Military Wives™!” at www.janewaynegear.com 

1. Type your word: Using the type tool pick out a font and write your letters.  A simple block font will work best.  I used Arial bold. Size the letters to fill the workspace.

2. Turn your type into shapes: with your word selected, Go up to Type –> Create Outlines.  You should now have shapes instead of type.  I like to fill with a medium grey so that the next step is easier to see.

3. Bevel: With your new word shape selected go to Effect –> 3D –> Extrude & Bevel. Refer to the image below for your settings. I’ve highlighted the settings I have altered from the default.  For this example I set the Position to Front, the Extrude Depth to 50pt, the Bevel to Classic, the Height to 5pt and click the bevel out image instead of the bevel in image.  If you check the Preview box you can check out your bevel and you can adjust the settings to how you like it. Congrats! You finished the hard part!

4. Expand: Your new shape will look a little funny and off center.  Now you will expand the shape so that each surface of your newly beveled masterpiece is its own object. With your shape selected go to Object –> Expand Appearance. You should now have a group of shapes that look similar to the example below.  

5. Make your Gradient: Now for the fun part. First you need to create a gradient to be used on the face of your letters.  In your gradient tab create a new linear gradient using 30% grey and 60% grey (you can grab those colors right from your default swatches tab).  Then drag white right into the middle.  You can adjust the gradient to make a sharper or more diffuse highlight. You will need to make your angle 90 degrees. Now go into your group (you will need to double click to go into the groups or you can ungroup everything.) Fill in the faces of the letters with your new gradient. 

Note: you don’t need to use grey! Try other colors, or for a sleeker chrome look try brown on the bottom and blue on the top.

6. Shading:  Now you will need to fill in the beveled edges with the appropriate color.  This is just a guide, you can certainly be more detailed.  You can also place gradients in your vertical edges for a more detailed look. Use the example below to get you started. 

7. Embelishments:  Whoo Hooo, looking good! Now you can add some details.  I like to add a highlight on the top edge by simply drawing a white line.  Then you can add a white star shape for an added gleam.  If you want rivets, just bevel some small circles and place them in the corners.  Add a drop shadow by going to Effect –> Stylize –> Drop Shadow.

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial.  If you try this out, please return and let me know how you liked it.  If you have tips or suggestions for my next tutorial please let me know!  

Don’t get me wrong, Goodnight Moon is a fine book.  I just wanted something a little more… pretty. And, perhaps something that could help me wind down from a stressful day as well. 

One of the most common questions I get asked when I tell people that I am an illustrator is, “Oh, do you do children’s books?”  In the past my response involved a detailed description of medical and scientific illustration, visual communications, logo creation, layout design and perhaps a bit about Norman Rockwell.  Some lucky people even got to learn about the evils of stock illustration and the orphan copyright bill.  Nowadays, I just smile and say, “Yes!”

The Bedtime Book is now available on Amazon.com in paperback form, and hopefully soon in hardback as well.  The words to the book are a poem (an Elizabethan sonnet written in iambic pentameter, to be exact.)  I chose this form because I specifically like the way a sonnet sounds as you read it aloud. The rhythm is soothing but not forced, and the rhyme scheme is subtle. I chose images that my then 10 month old daughter could recognize: the sun, the moon, flowers, our cat, the bathtub, her books and toys, etc. And, I chose words that calmed me down as well.  It is almost an evening mantra for mothers and fathers.  And, I’d much rather be reminded that another evening has come and the world is calming down, than to say goodnight to that bowl of mush one more time.

Available now on Amazon.com

1. Scan that sucker. I’m not going to spend a lot of time telling you how to work your own scanner.  Just make your resolution high (300 is good).  

2. Darken that line.  Open the scanned file up in Photoshop and save it.   Now comes the first fun part.  Go to Image –>  Adjustment –> Brightness/Contrast.  Increase both the Brightness and the Contrast sliders until you get a dark line, but not so much that you loose detail.  You can also go to Image –> Adjustment –> Levels and use that panel to darken your lines and brighten your background if you are more comfortable with that.  Either way you do it, the goal is to get a dark line and a white background. 

3. Clean it up.  Now take your eraser tool and get rid of any stray spots or lines.  At this point, if you are happy with your line drawing you can continue to color right away.  If your lines are a bit weak you can duplicate your layer (Layer –> Duplicate) Then change the top layer from “normal” to “multiply” in the drop down menu at the top of the layer panel.  This can darken your lines a bit.  Now flatten your image Layer –> Flatten Image.  

TIP:  At this point I like to make my pencil lines look more like ink lines.  I do this when I want a clean look rather than a sketchy look or if I want to do some alterations.  If you have Adobe Illustrator CS2 or higher you can take advantage of the Trace command.  

-Place your cleaned up drawing into a blank Illustrator file.  File –> Place

-Go to Object –> Live Trace –> Tracing Options

-Go ahead and check the preview box so you can see what you are doing.  Now you will need to play with the settings to find what you like best.  For black and white line drawings I like the Black and White Logo setting, but the default setting works fairly well, as does the hand drawing setting.

-When you’re done simple copy your newly traced drawing and paste it into Photoshop.

4. Add some color.  In the Layer panel change your line layer to “multiply” and click the lock button so you don’t accidentally color in your line layer.  Now add a new layer below your ink layer.  Name this fabulous new layer “color”.

5. Okay NOW add color, really. Now we add spot color to each section of your drawing.  Some drawings are easier to do this way.  If yours doesn’t have a lot of closed sections then you’ll need to skip down to the hand painting section. Select your ink layer.  Using your Magic Wand tool select a section of your drawing you want to color.      Now switch to your color layer, and using your paint bucket tool fill that selection with your desired color. Yeah! Color!  Now repeat this process with each section of your drawing.

TIP: In order to eliminate some white background pixels from showing through after you have your section selected go to Select –> Modify –> Expand and type in 1.  This expands your selection just enough to give you a clean fill. 

6. Time for some handy work.  For the sections that are not closed off you will need to use your brush tool to fill them in.  Zoom way in and take your time.  Make sure and color in the color layer so you don’t alter your ink layer.  

7. Shady Characters.  Now lets do some simple shading.  Using your magic wand tool again select various colors.  Now, using a large, soft brush with a low opacity drag a bit of a slightly darker color on the correct side of your selection.  Repeat this process as needed. 

8. Finishing touches.  Now add another layer and give your masterpiece a background.  You can add more elements using the same technique to add to your work.  Congrats! You’re a digital artist. 

I hope this was a little helpful.  Photoshop can be a daunting program, but it really can be a lot of fun to use.  This simple method only touches the surface of what you can do once you dive in.  Please add to this with any advice or additions you have.  I’ve found that there are as many ways to create as there are artists, and digital media is certainly no exception.  Good Luck!

Since I was young I have always considered myself a visual artist.  I loved crayons, play-doh, scraps of fabric, rolls of newsprint and piles of wet sand.  Anything I could make something pretty out of was fair game.  But, what about words?  

I never considered myself a writer.  In fact, English class always required a bit more effort for me than my other classes. (Okay, not as much as say, calculus or neuroanatomy, but I always had to work at it.)  Even though I loved to read, I had language arts confidence problems.  This was due to some mild dyslexia in elementary school, fear of public speaking and the complete and utter lack of spelling ability.  

After a summer of hard work on my mother’s part, I discovered the general difference between some of the peskier letters (like b and d), and I quickly caught up to the rest of my class.  But, the effort left a certain resentment of sentences and paragraphs behind.  As for the public speaking aspect of English class, I would have sold my little soul for the chance to get out of reading aloud.  Perhaps these two are related, or perhaps I was just a bit shy, but there was always that black cloud looming over English class.  Today I might have to read a paragraph of Huck Finn aloud to my class.  The world might end, I might implode and tomorrow everyone will show up at school wearing “Becky is stupid” t-shirts.   

I blame my dad for my lack of spelling ability.  He was worse than I was.  But, I also credit him with my creative spirit.  Who cares if you can spell chorus, chifforobe or fuselage.  Can you make one?  Even in high school I was constantly getting docked points for spelling.  I could remember the rules, but the rules didn’t always apply, and I couldn’t tell if words “looked” wrong on the page or not because, lets face it, there are way to many words in our language for me to visually memorize them all.  My teachers always used to tell me, “Look up words you are unsure about.”  They also told me to turn in my papers on time. I’m not sure they realized just how many words I can’t spell.  I was not going to be able to do both.  Fortunately, I came of age just before one of the greatest inventions of the communications age became ubiquitous.  Without which I would never have been able to spell ubiquitous. The spell checker had arrived.  I was saved. 

I think a lot of visual artists struggle with some or all of these things. As far as I am concerned these are all great reasons to enjoy art class way more than English class.  But, just because the medium isn’t perfect doesn’t mean you can’t create beautiful things with it.  Just because you hated English class doesn’t mean you would be a lousy writer. I had to lose my favorite hobby to realize this. 

Something strange happens when your art becomes your work.  You feel overwhelmingly grateful that you are able to do what you love to make a living, but you’ve lost a little something too. True, I don’t do diagrams, logos and web pages as what I consider my “personal artwork”, but the creative process is similar.  I still did artwork for personal enjoyment, but I needed something different.  I needed a new creative outlet.  

My rocky relationship with words had already begun to change.  In my high school senior english class I won an essay contest.  Nothing big, but enough to boost that language arts confidence just enough to get it rolling.  It wouldn’t be until graduate school, when drawing was working, that I would try out some creative writing.  

I started late at night, while my pen and ink and paintbrushes were sleeping.  I didn’t really have a story, I had an idea.  I had a grand feeling, an overall concept.  If it had been a painting I would have taken a big drafting pencil to a large piece of newsprint.  I didn’t have any training, I hadn’t gained my obsession with books on writing yet, so I started with what I titled “story sketches.”  I wrote about the characters, the setting, the relationships and the backstories.  After that I started writing scenes. It was jumbled, unorganized and completely new and wonderful. 

As a visual artist, the hardest part of writing novels is the inability to see it all at once.  I can’t stand back and study the piece in whole.  A story must be experienced over time and not all at once like a painting.  This was my new challenge.  This more than anything, more than spelling or grammar, was what made my new hobby difficult.  Because of this, I now make huge wall sized sticky note charts as I plot new stories.  I might not get anything out of it, but being able to stand back and see all of my story makes me feel good.  It looks pretty cool too, you know, visually. 

Gradually, writing has become more than a hobby for me.  It has become another art.  I might not be published, and writing might not pay the bills, but I’m a writer now, just like I’m an artist. 

As the last remaining digital artist still using a PC I was tempted to change over several times, but I had three major roadblocks: PC software, PC using clients and a PC gamer husband. 

I knew that I needed a new computer, and I was impressed with the iMac.  But, I own expensive Adobe software.  To buy the Mac version of this software would have cost me as much as my new computer.  So, I was shopping for another PC.  But, a quick stop in the Apple store changed my life.  I found out that Adobe will transfer your license from one platform to another, free of charge.  All it took was a phone call, one piece of paperwork and five bucks for shipping, and I had the Mac version of CS3 ready to install. I did have to sign an ominous sounding document called a “Letter of Destruction,” stating that I would destroy my PC version.  I figure on using intense neglect as my destruction method.  With this major roadblock cleared joining the bright and shiny apple people was looking doable. I still had a couple more issues though.

When I was in grad school we had a Mac lab and a PC lab. The department kept them in separate rooms so that an enraged, sleep deprived student having file compatibility issues would only destroy half of the computers if he snapped three hours before his thesis presentation.  It was file compatibility problems like these that kept me working on windows.  I certainly didn’t want to send completed projects to clients using PCs only to have them not work properly or have formating issues. This problem was valid ten years ago, I think it is almost irrelevant now.  It seems that Mac finally realized that file extensions are a pretty good idea.  I’ve transfered files to and from my Mac and my PC and emailed to and from other Macs and PCs and other than a few “permission” problems that were easily fixed once I made friends with Finder I’ve had no problems.  I can even open Microsoft Word documents in Pages as well as save Pages files as Microsoft Word documents.  My PC fanatic friends may never even know I have forsaken the dark side!  At least my file extensions won’t give me away.

I have had one last Mac to PC roadblock hanging around for the last ten years.  My husband is a gamer.  Although there are some ways around this, such as using Bootcamp to run Windows on your Mac or buying the Mac versions of popular games, there is a much better solution, one that will not only help improve your marriage, but it will get Weird Al off your iTunes.  His and Hers computers.  You’re a grown up, and it is 2008.  You don’t need to share a computer with your spouse.  

Although I haven’t put my cute little Apple sticker on my car quite yet, I have been  enjoying my new life as a Mac user. I have found that compared to their Microsoft counterparts, Mac applications are, once you get over your bad PC habits, easier to use.  In Windows there are a ton of ways to do any one thing.  On a Mac there is usually only one way, the easiest way.  I like to think that your Mac is like a woman.  Once you realize that doing things her way is the best way, life is good.   Finder and I have good days and bad, but we’re learning to work together.  I still try and close windows in the upper right corner, and the whole command/control key thing is hard to relearn.  But those little things are worth the elitist high I get when I think about the next big Windows virus that will strike all of those stubborn PC users.  

I’m a big fan of iLife so far, especially iPhoto, and Mac’s MobileMe is pretty cool stuff.  Backing up my work often helps keep me from having random anxiety attacks, so I love iDisk. But the best thing of all, the thing that tipped the scales in favor of Apple… It just looks so seek and sexy sitting on my desk.  And, let’s face it, Apple has some awesome designers working for them, designers who don’t get overruled by the engineers.  Everything from the keyboard and mouse to the instruction manuals to the website tutorials radiate that sleek and shiny Appleness.  Even a die hard PC user has to admire that. 

First, some digital image facts.  Image resolution is given in pixels.  Image size is given in inches (or centimeters if you’re into the metric fad.) File size is given in bytes (usually the Kilo, Mega or Giga variety.) Screen resolution is 72 dpi (dots per inch.)  A good quality print resolution is 300 dpi.  That means that an image on screen, say from the internet, looks great on your computer, but when you go to print it out it looks a little fuzzy or pixilated at the same size. Your eyes can see more detail on printed images than on screen. 

So, lets say you have an image of your baby that you want to email to your entire address book.  Since screen resolution is 72, and you don’t want to alienate all of your friends by filling up their inboxes, you, as a courteous e-mailer, reduce your image resolution to 72 and your image size to around 5 by 7 inches.  Now your baby photo will delight your friends instead of infuriate them.  But, let’s say you also want to print this photo out for yourself.  Do not try and increase the resolution.  IMAGE RESOLUTION CANNOT BE INCREASED.  I know they can enhance the reflection on someone’s contact lens on CSI Miami to see the license plate of the bad guy, but in the real world that would take some kind of magic spell or a deal with the devil.  So, always keep a copy of your original photo if you reduce your image size for email or web.  Now, go back to your full size photo of that baby of yours and print from that.  Keep in mind that anything under 250 or 200 dpi will start to look pixilated.  Don’t try and blow up a small digital image to an 11×14 to hang on your wall.  It’s better to have a good quality small photo than a large crappy one.

There are many image organization programs out there now that will not only organize but resize and do minor edits such as cropping and red eye reduction. I highly recommend iPhoto or Picassa. 

How to Reduce Image Size in Adobe Photoshop…

So, you have the industry standard, top of the line image editing software, and you have no idea how to use it for the simplest task.  Don’t show fear! Click like you know what you’re doing.

1. open your photo
2. go to file -> save as  and save this image under a new name. I like to add simply “sm” at the end of the files I am shrinking (ex. baby_sm.jpg . Now you won’t shrink your original image.
3. go to image -> image size.  Make sure that the box marked “resample image” is checked.  This allows you to alter resolution independent of size.  
4. Enter 72 in the box marked resolution.
5. Now enter a new height or width, something around 6 or 8 inches wide is ideal for most emailed photos. Notice that your height and width are connected so you only need to enter one, the computer will calculate the other. 
6. click okay. Go to file -> save.   See, it’s simple! 

• I mock up the look of the website in Photoshop. Putting rollovers on separate layers and leaving space for text. I send a copy of this to the client for approval.
• I open my Photoshop document in Fireworks. (When I first got fireworks I had no idea what to do with it. It seemed like the clueless bastard child of Photoshop and DreamWeaver. I have since apologized to the program for any kind of negative comments I may have made.) In Fireworks I slice it up, add rollovers and links. Then I export this file to .html. Sooooo easy.
• Next I open this .html file in DreamWeaver. I add text or other content and upload to the server.

So, a big thanks to Adobe for making my job more fun, less frustrating and for allowing me to work faster so I can make enough money to pay for your software.