As I mentioned in a previous post, another instance of creative serendipity struck me a couple of weeks ago, and I’ve been running with it ever since. I stumbled upon a new lettering style as I was using my Tombow brush pens and I’ve continued to play with it to see how much I could perfect it.
A photo posted by Cindy Garber Iverson (@cindygarberiverson) on
A photo posted by Cindy Garber Iverson (@cindygarberiverson) on
A photo posted by Cindy Garber Iverson (@cindygarberiverson) on
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I found a new lettering challenge on Instagram that I can already tell I’m going to enjoy immensely–#TogetherWeLetter hosted by @lissletters (I’ve reposted the prompts below). There’s a lot of latitude in what you can do with the one-word prompts.
As I was working on simply drawing the letters for today’s prompt “Learn”, I happened upon a new technique for me. I achieved it completely with my Tombow brush pens in various shades of blue (except for the white highlights that were from a white Sharpie). I got the three dimensional effect by layering the colors on top of one another to create a smooth gradient. I will definitely be exploring this technique further. Maybe I’ll do this challenge’s prompts like this for the whole month. We’ll see.
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Since I don’t do client design jobs anymore, one of my favorite endeavors is the design work I am asked to do for my church’s local congregations. I don’t get paid for the work in *moolah*, but I get paid in more beautiful ways like I did with this design job.
I was given complete creative control over coming up with a poster and flyer concept for a luau fundraiser for the young men of our congregation. It’s really fun when I get that much creative freedom. It gave me the chance to try out a new medium for drawing some Tiki graphics. I hadn’t anticipated that my new set of Tombow brush pens would be so fun to work with. Boy, was I blown away with what I could get out of those things! I was pleasantly surprised at the wood grain effect I got out of them.
Now I’m finding myself looking for an excuse to use them again. *hee hee*
After scanning in the drawing of the Tiki guys and the monstera leaves, I combined them with vector graphics I drew in Illustrator for the background and the word “LUAU”. To round out the whole thing, I found a fun font called “Tiki Tropic” at dafont.com that fit with the playfulness of the design.
And here’s the finished design…
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I did this hidden lettering piece after I saw today’s challenge prompt “Little black dress”. I was channeling Audrey Hepburn the entire time I rendered it.
After I got done with it, I liked it so much that I decided to scan it and bring it into Photoshop for a quick clean up so I could then take it into Illustrator and make it into a super-clean vector graphic. Once I had the vector graphic done, I brought it back into Photoshop to lay it out into a pattern for leggings and an all-over print t-shirt for my Society 6 shop. I think the leggings and the coordinating white tee (bottom left) would look really cute worn together.
I used watercolor pencils for this doodle I did based on a challenge prompt on Instagram (click the image above to go to my Instagram post to find the prompt link). I liked the end result so much, I decided to make it into a pattern for an all-over print t-shirt design on my Society6 shop.
Then I thought that the shirt was so cute, I made it available on other products. Click on any of the thumbnails below to go directly to my shop.
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I love that camellia season here in the San Francisco Bay Area coincides with all the pink and red hearts of Valentine’s Day. I took this photo and shared it on social media. After I did, a friend suggested that I make it available to buy in prints. It is now available at my pixels.com shop.
Right on schedule, the ornamental pear trees are in full bloom and laden with white blossoms. We found a whole parking lot full of them. I had to take a pic with the street lights shining through. Being under the canopy of branches felt like being in a magical wonderland. It reminded me of what Anne Shirley in Anne of Green Gables called “the White Way of Delight”.
I know Valentine’s Day gets a bad rap (especially among singles), but I can’t help but LOVE the colors of February! Even if you don’t have a Valentine, just revel in all the beautiful colors of red, pink and purple.
Today in church, I heard a talk based on this quote. This image came into my mind, and I rough-doodled it during the remainder of the talk. When I got home I redid it in color.
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I have a Pinterest board where I collect a whole bunch of fun vintage photographs (like the one above) from the middle of the 20th century. I call it my “vinspiration” board (vintage + inspiration = vinspiration). I’ve toyed with the idea of somehow using those photographs as inspiration for future artwork. But there are a lot of artists that do vintage-style ladies really well–Liana Hee, Brittney Lee, Gabby Zapata. I wasn’t sure I wanted to enter that big of a pool when I’m just dabbling at getting my feet wet with a nice creative wade.
Then lightning struck my brain! I’m really good at sketching kitties. Why not make all the “girls” be vintage-inspired fancy kitties dressed up? It just might work. So this little gal is my first one in what I hope will be a long-lived series of fancy kitties.