No, no, not like that. I mean cleaning up art. So you can put it on backgrounds, make repeats etc. for licensing. I don't think most people have any idea how art actually gets "fiddled with on the computer" to make it ready to go on products. Its an interesting process. I'll show what I'm doing at the moment with my pajama kitties from a couple of posts back.
(*I did have a whole post showing them in a repeat, but took it down because I do want to license them, and got all paranoid about showing them around too much. I do appreciate everyone's positive comments about them, both here and on Facebook!)
So here's how it starts.
I have the kitty in red longjohns, who I've called "cat 1". He was done with colored pencils on Stonehenge paper. When I scanned him, the paper texture showed up. So I took the eraser tool in Photoshop and carefully went alllllll around, erasing up (what I thought was) close to the edge of the image to make a nice clean background.
(click images to see them bigger)
What I should have done FIRST, which I did in this next step, was use the lasso tool to cut him out of the background, then plunk him down onto a new page with an "empty" (or transparent) background. THEN, all I had to do was clean up the small space just around the edges of the figure, not the whole page. Which I then did. I enlarged the image to 300% so I could see it up close, and got in there with a pretty small brush (9 pt or less) and cleaned it all up. So now the little guy is very clean, and resting on a totally empty background. Or is he?
I made a new file and put a solid color over the whole thing, then dragged the new 'clean' kitty over on top to see how he'd look on a background. ACK! Look at all that white around him! This is what happens with colored pencil work, where the "edge" of an image isn't well defined. What makes colored pencil work so nice and soft looking is often a sort of gradated-out edge. But it makes it much harder to gauge where to erase, exactly, and keep the soft edge while still making it clean enough to put on a background.
This is what it looks like when you look up close. Look at all the little 'white bits' that I thought I'd cleaned up. YUK.
And yet another direction. Baby fabric.
I had fun doing this. This is a little character I have in development. Hopefully he will be on lots of 'stuff' one day.
Doing fabric requires knowing how to do "repeats". This design is an example of a "toss repeat". I designed the fabric as a 12 x 12 square, which can be repeated endlessly.
If you would like to learn how to do this too, I HIGHLY recommend Tara Reed's series on how to do repeats and get your art in a licensing-friendly format.
Get it here. Tara is a wealth of information on the licensing biz, and very generously shares it with everyone. I also have her
Mock-up Magic series, which teaches you how to put your art on products to show manufacturers. Also great!
We are having quite the apocalyptic storm here today, so its a good day to stay in and do art!
"Daddy's Home!" © Paula PertileI'm starting a new series of art for some books, and am trying to work out the style I want to do. Part of me wants to do simple watercolor. Part of me wants to do detailed watercolor/gouache paintings. Part of me wants to do my usual colored pencil thing. Who will win?
This was done with colored pencils. The background alone took forefreakingever. If you do colored pencil, you know what I'm talking about. And in this case, I'm not sure the final effect is all that much better than if I'd done something else. I kept going though, because I wanted to see it through. Oh, its beautiful, yes, but I think the subtle gradations and layers upon layers of color build-up get lost a bit.
Try as I might to do a quicker or simpler style though, I just don't think I have it in me. I like tight, detailed work. I love to render. I do not love to just whip things out. The art I'm attracted to is tight and detailed. Every time I try to do something 'fast' just to be practical, I'm unhappy with it. So I will soldier on in my quest for the perfect style/medium/technique.
And I will post results.
In other news, there is new addition to our little family. Willow - a sweet orange kitty who's been sneaking in through the cat door to eat and play with the catnip toys since just before Isabella died. I finally caved in and told her she could stay - and now she sleeps on the bed and is quickly training me to her preferences. She 'covers up' food she doesn't like (like its something in the litter box) and meows her approval if I get it right.
Sigh.
My local art store is having a BIG SALE on Thursday, so I plan to go stock up on a thing or two.
There are also gardening chores and general 'sprucing up' things to be done outside, now that the weather has turned to sun, finally.
Tomorrow I'm listening in on a phone call with Mary Engelbreit - one of Tara Reed's wonderful
monthly "Ask" phone calls she does. I can't wait!!
Happy St. Patrick's Day, a day early! Don't forget to wear your green or you'll get pinched (do people still do that?) Me, I'll be having my corned beef and cabbage and boiled potatoes and carrots- mmm.
Slainte!
greeting card done for Marcel Schurman (aka Papyrus)I dreamed about licensing my art last night. You know something is really on your mind when you dream about it! (Like those waitress dreams I used to have back in school, when I waitressed to pay the rent, and then dreamed about waiting tables all night long!).
The reason I was dreaming about licensing, no doubt, is because I listened in on TWO teleseminars about art licensing yesterday.
The first was a licensing class presented by J'net Smith, of
All Art Licensing. She is the licensing agent responsible for making Scott Adam's
Dilbert character what it is today -
BIG. She knows her stuff. I've listened in on a few of her presentations, and have always been pleased with the information she shares.
The other teleseminar was a talk about Branding by
Paul Brent, presented through Tara Reed's
Art Licensing Info series of seminars. Paul Brent is a BIG name in licensing, and the nicest man, and he shared so much really fantastic information in the seminar.
Tara Reed is a licensed artist and super helpful font of information about the whole licensing industry.
If you are interested in licensing your art, I would recommend checking out both Tara and J'net's websites for starters. I have some of Tara's ebooks on how to do repeat patterns and also her product mock-up templates, which are great! J'net has some product templates too, as do other people. (Product templates are 'blanks' of plates, cups, napkins, mugs, shower curtains, etc. etc. etc. for you to apply your art to to show manufacturers how your art would look on their products, so they will get all excited and license your art.)
greeting card done for NobleWorks
This is just a really brief post about all of this - I'll probably come back from time to time and share more info as I delve into this more. In the past I've licensed my art for greeting cards to a few companies, but would like to do a
lot more. I'm quietly working behind the scenes to put together some collections and a body of work just for licensing.
I'll add some links to sites and blogs here in the next couple of days.
But for now, its off to work I go!
I was lucky to have just finished this piece yesterday, seeing that it is perfect for Illustration Friday. It's part of a series of Jungle Friends that I've posted about before here. I'm excited to be getting back to business after a great week with visiting relatives. I taught Art Vista to the 6th grade today. Later I'll help break down the kids' art show, and supervise my kids' homework, so I guess it's really tomorrow that I get back to business.
I've been learning a lot from licensed artist, Tara Reed, lately. I purchased her one of her ebooks on How to Find, Interact and Work with Manufacturers. You can buy it
here. It was great! Her
blog is a great resource for licensing information. I also participate in her monthly conference
calls. I really enjoy talking to other people who have the same goals as I do.
Thanks! As a novice, this is great information for me. So glad you shared it.
Another way to go about it is to chose "Mark"? (sorry, mine´s in Swedish...) and then chose "colour area". Pick the white colour and change "radiation" until you´re satisfied. Of course, it´s difficult to get a perfect result, but it helps a bit. I guess you still have to go really slowly with the eraser...
Your work is so lovely. What patience!!
Not sure how well it will work with a pencil crayon edge, but after capturing the selection in Photoshop, look along the top bar and choose
– Select/ Modify/ – Contract (or Expand depending on which side of the edge you are on) – start with 1 or 2 pixels
Then again – Select /–Modify/ – Feather – choose 2 or 3 pixels
then paste it onto your transparent background – may need some experimenting, but I think it will help with the clean-up.