"Goggles"

"Peace"

Another poster I am creating for a friend of mine. There was a night that consisted of friends, fun and games...and a lot of pictures. There were a couple pictures in particular of my friend that I thought would be fun to do something with. I got a bit of a creative bug and away I went. And then...after I had done some neato things that I loved, I took a bit of a break and haven't been able to get back to it since. But as it turns out, I stopped at a good point because I now have a chance to consider different options for where to take it next...or if I even need to.My friend thought it would be awesome to ad in other pics of her "homes." This pic is one she chose. I'll see what I can do!And this is one that I would like to throw in there.

Ski Swap

An ad I built for Powderhorn Ski Patrol's annual Ski Swap. I actually took it on for a sales rep that was not my own, during the time when we were down an artist. They really wanted a picture of people carrying both skis and a snowboard. I just happen to have just the picture. It was taken of my buddy and I during a fantastic trip to Crested Butte last March. Once again, who knew I would be in another ad?

"You Or Me?"

"Leap"

This illustration came about from a picture I took of one of my friends and her sister who came to visit her. I saw a little something in it one day, and decided to get creative. The original picture makes me wish I could hang out with my sister, so in doing this, I decided to dedicate it to sisters and the crazy fun we have.
These two lady's are from Talkeetna, AK. So I chose to incorporate various bits of that into a collage.

Why Are We All Working So Hard Anyway?

I took this picture on September 15th, 2008 while at work. My coworker Cindy found this lil dude she name Otis under her deck one day. At the time she guesstimated he was maybe two weeks old. And being a lover of creatures, she felt the need to take him in. Being so young, Otis needed a lot of care. He needed to be bottle fed at least every two hours and of course needed constant love and attention. So for a couple weeks Cindy brought Otis in every day and we all eventually fell in love. I would get my very own visitation time. Otis soon came to acquire sight and a knack for playing w/ things and he especially loved chewing on my fingers and playing w/ my computer's mouse. He would come over a few times a day, and my hands would keep him occupied as he chewed on my fingers while I worked. On this particular day, I wore him out big time. He must have thought my keyboard looked like an ideal spot to catch a cat nap. He changed position a few times, but I was always able to work around him, except for the occasional change in my music's volume or the opening and closing of my disk drive. I found and ideal moment to capture Otis!
(Click on the picture for a link to The Daily Sentinel's Pet Blog about Otis)

I soon decided to join in!This is Otis w/ Cindy his second day at The Sentinel. In the time he was here, he nearly doubled in size.An Otis Update: 3.19.09
http://www.gjsentinel.com/blogs/content/shared-gen/blogs/communities/petphotos/entries/2009/03/19/the_computer_cat_grows_up.html

"Woods Lake"

A demonstration of how I turn random "doodles" into Digital Art :

Who The Heck Took The Pic??

The following are ads I've made using my own "photography":

This Farmers Insurance ad started out at a spec that was a full page going into the "How To Guide" special section that ran this last July. My rep didn't give me any details or ideas of what she wanted, so I was free to come up with whatever I could. I went on the internet looking for anything related to the Grand Valley and just decided to use one of my own pics. My rep had a very hard time selling it and it eventually came down to deadline. She ended up convincing the person in charge and that person convinced each of the agents to buy part of the ad so they could afford it.
The picture itself was one of the very first pics I took back in the beginning of June with my brand new Nikon Coolpix P80. A 10.1 megapixel, 18x optical wide zoom digital camera. I went up on the Colorado National Monument right after I bought it. The sun was just going down, and I thought it was the perfect time to play around.

This First United Methodist Church ad also started out as a spec. My rep gave me a piece of paper w/ a picture of Balanced Rock from the Colorado National Monument and the text that needed to be on the ad. She wanted a full color and a black and white ad so that the customer would have choices. I did a bunch of searching on the internet for images of Balanced Rock, and couldn't find anything worth using that wasn't already copyrighted. So I decided that night to go out and take my own picture. A friend and I ventured out at about 6 pm and found the rock almost too late. The sun had already started to set behind the surrounding cliffs, the rock was still lit, but only for a short period of time. (On a plus, I managed to convince the entrance ranger to let me in for free since I was only going about a mile up the road and would be about a half an hour or so.)
For this ad, I wanted to get the image to pop a little more, and give it a realistic yet not so fake look. So I applied a couple of different effects. The rock itself I isolated and there are actually two images, one on top of the other. The first layer is underneath and is the original picture. The second layer is on top and is the image of the rock that I applied the effect "torn edges" to. One looks real, one looks fake. I then took the top layer and did a "multiply" blending effect to it which blended the two layers with variations on transparencies. After that I created a background that I thought would look good w/ the rock and tada!
The customer chose to go with the black and white due to cost and it ran in last Saturday's paper and in this weeks Sentinel Weekly which comes out on Wednesdays

C M Y Knot???

Last week I had one of the most frustrating conversations up to this point in my working adult life. My adorable sales rep Judy came to me and and asked me which colors we could use if a customer only wanted to pay for one color. I said thats easy, we print in CMYK...Cyan, Magenta or Yellow along with the obvious, Black.

She looked and me kinda blankly and said innocently, "What color is Magenta?" I explained it as basically a florescent hot pink. Looking very puzzled as to why we would use a hot pink she asked, "well, what's Cyan?" I also explained it as yet another florescent bright blue. She looked even more puzzled. She asked me, "well why is it just those colors?"
The frustration begins. I had to try to explain to someone that knows nothing of the four color printing process why it is those four colors and not any other color (I am not certain how long she's been working in the paper, but I figured all reps would have to know this just for their customer's sake). Now I still don't understand myself why those colors, I just know that when they are combined they can make up pretty much any color in the alphabet.
Poor lil Judy tried so hard to understand, but without actually seeing the colors, she just wasn't grasping what I was saying. Which is understandable because I was definitely not giving the best explanation. I learned out of a text book which explained every step in maximum detail. So much so that I'm pretty sure I blanked out while ready and missed most of what the book was trying to tell me...(don't judge, I don't like to read and it was really really boring). We eventually called it quits.
Just yesterday, Judy came back to me, asking me what Cyan and Magenta are. To keep it simple I told her I was gonna make some swatches for her and print them out so that she and her customer would know exactly what they were looking at. I gave her a quick piece of paper w/ the CMYK colors on it and labeled them appropriately, and she said "Oh, thats what they look like." And off she went.
Still not satisfied with the example I gave her, I piddled around and whipped up one that is very clear. I even thought to include the RGB colors, just so she would know what that meant.Lemme tell ya, this seemed to help her out so much. I explained that when in any major printing process there are Four plates. One is Cyan, another Magenta, another Yellow and another Black. And that those four plates with those four colors are layered on top of each other. And once laid on each other, depending on the different percentages of each color, they combine to create any other color.
Like: 50% Magenta + 50% Yellow = Red
and 50% Cyan + 50% Yellow = Green
and so on.
After the visual explanation, she seemed to get it. She even said, "Oh! I had no idea that's what CMYK meant! We both still have questions. A major one being, who thought of Cyan and Magenta? (she is fascinated by these two colors). We determined that is was some man some time ago...but then we figured it was probably a woman...and we OFFICIALLY determined that is was a woman, a wife who's husband took all the credit for figuring out that these four colors are (what we now call them) the "MAGIC FOUR"
...on an ironic side note...I had to convert the example into RGB so that it could be properly viewed on the web. Because unlike Print, the Web works in RGB....wicked!

"Where's Your Flair...Missy?"

The internet seems to be coming a long way. I can remember my very first experience w/ it. I was in the 6th grade. Basically all I was taught was how to type in the url, and how to press the stop button. WOW! Now days its like a virtually interactive whole other life. And for kids these days well, it is their life. Facebook just so happens to be fully arming people for this "lets be socially active and have fun w/ our friends while avoiding the real world" lifestyle. But I will admit, being a "Y'er" myself. I do get a kick out of the fun little gidgets and gizmoos. Facebook's applications can be a quite amusing waste of time. And beyond that, one application in particular gave me a little inspiration to branch off and just make my own.

It is known to all as "Pieces of Flair." Basically you can browse around and find hundreds of buttons others have made or Facebook has provided, or you can create your own simply by uploading an image an sizing it into the interactive pre-made button layout that is provided (of course you must have Flash being that the interactive web is the future of the internet).
While looking for crap, I was inspired to well, make my own crap. With of course the hopes of someday turning them into real buttons to be warn by any who wants them.

Sentinel Sessions in B/W

This ad ran for one month in the paper. Every week the text changed, but the same graphic was kept. This was the ad that ran it's last week. To fit a female performer, the customer wanted a more feminine graphic.
This ad ran in the yearly special "Country Jam" section. This customer severely wanted her ad to be re-vamped. She loved it, had no changes and will be back next year. :)

This ad ran in both the "Rest Assured" and Relay For Life" special sections. It was originally a long shot spec ad and the customer ended up loving it so they bought it.
This company was not pleased with the lack of results they were getting from their previous ad which had ran for months and in many special sections. They were ready to cut their contract. My rep asked me on a long shot if I would spruce it up a little to see if we could get them to keep advertising. The ad ran once and they pulled all the ads scheduled for the next month. :(
This customer was also not please with his previous ads. I actually designed the previous ad based off the example he gave me. He loved the previous ad...I thought it looked to much like a business card...oh well. After his month running with the previous ad was up and he wasn't happy, my rep asked me to come up with a whole new concept for him that hopefully he would buy. He was very wishy washy about advertising in the paper and has not yet chosen to continue with this new ad. As far as I know, this spec is dead. :(

"YOU GO GIRL!!"

My dear artist/designer friend just recently burst into the GJ community with a logo that found itself stuck to the side of one Monster Mean, not so green, crime fighting Machine. This article appeared in todays paper and tells the story of the Mean Machine. But the article reads very newsy and no mention of how the most important part came to be. Her blog gives the details of the logo itself...
...CHECK IT OUT!! http://leannadesigns.blogspot.com/2008/07/down-to-business.html

"Daily Grind"

"Accidental Art"

"TRAPPED"

"The Mysterious Case of the Traveling Laughter"

I DO what I DO

So I was cruising the I-State w/ some peeps this weekend w/ the top down. We were coming back from Glenwood and their "Strawberry Days". I was a lil bored,so I thought I'd play around with angles and the sunset.


I later had some free time. So I thought I'd play with this picture a bit. I saw something when I was zoomed into the pic on the camera. I am not so sure why I chose what I chose. I think maybe because it looked like a Guess ad. I thought cool, maybe I'll make a Gucci ad. I'm not so sure they sell eye wear.

As I was working on it, I remembered an upcoming ad that I was planning on starting the next day at work for an eye wear company here in town. I thought, how neat would it be if I could do something along the lines of my Gucci ad for this company? So the next day I showed my ad and shared my thoughts with my sales rep. She said "That is way cool. Lets just use you!" So I said ok, but if I find something else I'll try that too. So I made the ad using me, based off my Gucci ad, and another version featuring a woman looking at the camera w/ regular glasses on.

My rep went out and sold the ad today. The customer loved it...and had absolutely no changes to make! My rep bought me a very large chai, left me a cute note and was so excited,she told everybody in the company about my ad and how I am the model and how they plan on running the ad many many more times. And I am now famous...Woooowa!





7/22/08 Eyemart Update:
These ads have been created all as specs based off my first ad. My main goal is to make eye wear as individual and relatable to each subject as I can. There will be even more to come.

This version is actually going to print tomorrow 7/23 in the "Summer Home Improvement" special section. I chose to play up the fact that they sell safety goggles. It was originally a full page spec, but the customer didn't want to pay that much because they had already spent a lot in July.










This version will be going to print 8/1 in the "Back To School" special section. My rep wanted me to make it fun and make it have to do with kids. I chose this girl cause she's basically telling me to get off my duff and get her some new glasses. We were very excited about this one because the customer chose to stick with the full page ad! :$)

8/8/08 Eyemart Update:
This version was a spec intended to go into this years "Answer Book." Unfortunately the customer could not afford to advertise in the special section. This ad may never see the printed pages :(

cervesamusicafestiva!!

This last weekend I attended an extraordinary little event known as Summer Fest. Ok, so I slept a little late and showed up a few hours late. But I managed to make it just as The Riveter was gearing up (they are one of my favorite GJ bands. I also work with the lead guitarist and the heart shaped bass player...she is one of my mentors and the woman responsible for me getting my job at The Sentinel). Let me just say, If you are a light weight like myself, $25 will get you one really awesome rockin good time! $5 to get in the silly orange plastic fence...the rest to booze it up with! I saw a lot of things that day. But must of all I saw my all time favorite thing to watch...Older Folks Gettin Jiggy!! Oh man did they ever. The little kids were super cute too. I have discovered my new favorite beer. Durango Brewery's Blueberry Wheat!! Delicioso! The day rounded out with the Pineapple Crackers (another favorite band of mine) and no memory of the amount beer consumed. Somewhere around 5-6 cups and at least 10 testers (half cups). Way way fun way to kick off the summer. Can't wait till next year!