Vector Images & New Characters

Since I started working on my scuba diving designs, which needed to be vectorized to make good t-shirts, I’ve been screwing around in our sign program drawing other designs too. I can’t quite get the whole drawing and vectorizing in Photoshop, so I have to make do with this other program.  So once again, I’m gonna self-promote and share some of my new vector designs! A couple of these are available as t-shirts at my Redbubble gallery, and all are available on multiple products at my Zazzle store.

 

With my first series of vector image product, I would like to introduce you to Pynki Q! She’s just a lil blob of a thing I drew playing in the sign program.

As you can see, she’s available on stickers, in which you can change the background color. Also she has her own mug, shirts, and more!

And then there’s Pynki Q’s brother (or just the bluer version of Pynki Q), Pynki Q Blue!

Pynki Q Blue is also featured on stickers and is featured in his very own Birthday card!

And here is someone else I would like to introduce you too, he comes in several different colors, but is always happy to see you. I introduce to you Mr. Happy Bones! (I know, the names are gay!)

I also made a few customizable cards with a lovely floral vector I drew, that is also available on shirts. Just click the customize it button, and you can change the background color and the text to fit your needs!

And then there’s the lovely butterfly.

And a cute lil fishy!

The lil fishy lead me to draw this mini scuba cartoon, which I feel is a little better than the last one I tried. It is also available as a mug, sticker, and postcard.

I have a few more drawings done, including a guitar and a frog, but just haven’t uploaded and made anything with them yet. I hope you enjoyed my little preview of some of my new products.

Art by Karri’s Store front

New Store, New Products, New Designs!

If you haven’t noticed (and if you’re reading this, that’s not possible) I opened up a Zazzle store. It started just for my new Christmas images, then I brought in my older existing photography and digital abstracts, and now I’ve spread out to Scuba Diving designs! Why? Well, I was looking through Zazzle’s Scuba lines and noticed NOTHING for Michigan Great Lakes Diving. Can you believe it? I found state diver’s down flags for almost any other states but our glorious state!  I just couldn’t have that! So I spent some time and created a Great Lakes/Michigan Diver’s Line.

So far I have the 4 basic designs made that I have spread out and tweaked on different products. I actually got to design some t-shirts! I was so excited! T-shirt designs don’t really usually turn out for me because I’m more apt at photography and photoshop manipulation, not so great with the whole vector image scene. These guys were fairly simple vectors though. 

 

Now onto the Michigan Great Lakes Designs!

Mugs

Shirts

Of course there are slight variations, and different colors available.

Other Michigan Diver Stuff

To view all products visit the Art by Karri Store

Since I’m on the scuba diving subject, here are some other neat shirts I came across by other artists.

 

Scuba Diving by Dennis Holmes

Scuba Mug by Barbarasgate

Tee Shirt by Scuba-Tech

Oceans of Color by Eskasi

The Challenge: Show us your Creativity – Textures/Layers

The Challenge: Using a particular stock image, and using it to create brushes, textures, and or layers on your own image, to create a work of art.

The Goal: Well, to make the most creative, eye-pleasing work of art, of course!

This was A Photographer’s Craft’s latest challenge. Once again I took the challenge. It wasn’t as easy as it sounds, trust me. Especially since, at the time, I was in my slump.  The stock image we had to use was this:

The Catch: Not only did we have to try and be creative, we had to remember and share our processes in creating our pieces! Almost sounds like school huh? You can find the forum thread with these details here.

Being in a slump as I was, I didn’t have any new photography to play with, nor was I in the mood to take any. So, I dug through a bunch of “junk” images, old photographs I had no intention on using, but haven’t deleted them yet, you know the type. I came acrossed a photo I took this past summer of one of my miniture roses. Here’s what I started with:

And since I’m too lazy to go through all the steps I did again, I will just copy and paste what I wrote in the forum 🙂

Let’s see if I can fully remember this.

1. Overlayed a different texture over my original image. (Hey, there was no rule stating I couldn’t use additional textures!)
2. Did a layer mask and erased the textures from the actual flowers.
3. Played with the channel mixer.
4. Brought the stock image onto my image, free transformed it much larger than my image.
5. Flipped the stock image horizontally, moved it to where I wanted it.
6. Decreased the Red channel’s saturation on the stock image, almost all the way down.
7. “Overlayed” the stock image onto my image.
8. Did another layer mask to clean up over the flowers, so the stock image was behind the flowers.
9. Did a little dodge and burn (baby).
10. Went back to the stock image and did a select color rage on the background (the blue sky) Copied it, and pasted it on my image.
11. Set the new layer over as “Pin light”
12. Flattened image
13. Decreased saturation a little, upped the brightness, decreased contrast.
14. Did a little more burning.
15. Added a sepia photo filter.
16. Created a new layer, used a faux text paintbrush for the writing, switched that layer to “Overlay”
17. Adjusted the brightness/contrast again, this time increasing contrast a tad.

And Done!

And my final image, and entry was:

A Semblance of Yearning

I didn’t win, but I did take 3rd place!

The piece that took 1st place was:

Ode to Banksy by Adrian Rachele

The rest of then entries were:

A Year of Novembers by Dana DiPasquale

afraid of the light by andreasphoto

autumn collage by Adriana Glackin

in the mist by Aaron Schwartz

Autumn by Debbie Black

Ghosts of the New Desert by smallfox

Breath in Deeply Autumn Wind by Freelancer

Memories of Autumn by Misti Hymas

 

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All of my work can be puchased as premium art cards, and most are available as matted prints, laminated prints, mounted prints, canvas prints, framed prints, and posters. All in varying sizes. To see more work and/or purchase click here. (or click on a particular image)

Example Card:

Or, if you are more interested in bulk items, or other products such as postcards, magnets, mugs, US postage, and more, visit the Art by Karri Store.

Example Product:

Feature: The Innocence of Youth- A Child’s Portrait

For those of you who don’t know, I also am one of the hosts of Redbubble’s High Key group. High Key is a style of photography/editing in which the image has prominant high key tones. If you would like to learn more about it, check out the groups forum.

The High Key Group just finished it’s first challenge, The Innocence of Youth- A Child’s Portrait. The rules were simple, all entries had to be high key, and a picture of a child(ren).

The Top 10

1st Place: My Dance by Rosina Lamberti

Such Potential by Damian Riches

Every Little Girl Should Have Fairy Wings… by Martie Venter

Behold by Shelly Hiebert

Beautiful Dreamer by Corinne Noon

Pure by Basia McAuley

Wishing by Pamela Jayne Smith

Nara’s Eyes by Tamara Brandy

 

Sibling Love by Karri Klawiter

 

Van by Natty JD

Congratulations to winners!

Be sure to check out the artists other works too!!

Arachnid Feature – Color on Color: Camouflage

I am one of the hosts from Redbubble’s Arachnid Group. We recently hosted a challenge titled Color on Color: Camouflage. The rules to this challenge was to take or create (we welcome all art, just ends up mostly photographs) an image, in which the Arachnid had to be the same color as its background. i.e. A green spider on a green leaf, or a brown scorpion on brown dirt. You get the gist of it.

We only had 18 entries this time around, but they were a great 18 entries. If you would like to see all the entries, follow this link. Don’t forget to take a look at the artist’s other work. Their linked names will take you to their profiles. 

On to the top 10 images:

1st place went to Gozza with her beautiful piece, Practically Invisible

The rest are as followed:

Gotcha!! by robkal

Ruby Lips by Chuch Gardner

You Have to Look Twice… by Ann Palframan

Color Coordinated Spider by LoisBryan

Goldenrod Crab Spider #3 by KaneSlater

Goldenrod Crab Spider by Leyla S. Ismet

Yellow Crab Spider by Dawn81

Come Closer…I’m waiting… by Yool

Look Close by Jared D White

I would like to thank the participants for their outstanding work!

Congratulations to you all!

New Cards

I know, I know, I know, my last several posts were about Christmas cards. But what can I say? They are just so much fun to make!  Here’s my latest set, available in my Zazzle Store.

Simple, yet satisfying 🙂

New Santa Holiday Cards!

I put together 2 more Christmas cards today. They are both available as high quality art cards at Redbubble, and in bulk on Zazzle.

*** TODAY ONLY (DECEMBER 2, 2008)***

****FREE SHIPPING ON ANY PRODUCTS AT ZAZZLE!!****

enter code CYBERZSHIP08 at checkout

offer valid till 11:59pm PST

 

On to the cards!

(note: clicking on the card images will take you to my Redbubble work, not Zazzle)

Click here for all Holiday cards through Redbubble

Click here for Zazzle Holiday Products.

Holiday Cards!

For the past month I have been trying to come up with an idea for holiday cards. My mind has been a blank. I tried a few things, but nothing jumped out at me. That is… until last night 🙂 So I bring you my lastest work in the form of holiday cards.

It’s a start at least, right?

New Calendar: Flora

I just put together a new floral calendar called Flora. I have been holding off on doing a floral calendar because I wanted it to have a theme. I wanted it to have simular editing, either all manipulated, or all natural photography. But then I thought, huh, I constantly change my techniques, bouncing back and forth from this style to that, so why not allow my calendar to reflect that too?  So I bring you my latest calendar Flora!

 

Additionally, I have added my lattest Digital Abstract, Techno Luminescence, to my Digital Abstract Calendar.

Almost all of my images in these calendars can be puchased as premium art cards, matted prints, laminated prints, mounted prints, canvas prints, framed prints, and posters. All in varying sizes. To see more work and/or purchase click here.

Example Card:

The Challenge: A Light bulb, A String, and A Key

Who doesn’t love a good challenge? Especially a photography challenge. It makes you think, it broadens your horizon, it pushes you outside your comfort limit. Recently I participated in a challenged hosted by APC. The challenge, of which I chose to except, was to make a creative image using a light bulb, a piece of string, and a key. You could add anything else to the image, just as long as those 3 images were clearly visible.

Although there was not a huge turn out in the challenge, some amazing images were created. All different approaches and all different styles.

My original idea was to take a light bulb, and try to stab a key into it. Or at the very least, get a whole in the light bulb, and stick the key into it. Then I was going to set it up to look like it is laying in blood. Well if you know anything about light bulbs, they don’t break with a nice neat whole, they shatter. So I ended up working with a shattered light bulb. I set out some plastic bags, covered w/ white paper, layed out the light bulb, well the pieces at least, and created my pool of blood. I knew I was planning on taking the image in black and white, so I used good old fashioned maple syrup for blood. Since I had to have the key and string in the image, I tied the string to the key, and carefully layed on my bloody scene. Then I set my camera to the sharpest, highest contrast, black and white setting, then upped the exposure. (I was also going for a high key look. ) Set it on the tripod (I was working inside with poor lighting) and started shooting at several different angles. After a short trip in Photoshop, honestly, I did some minor editing, decreased contrast, cleaned up the edges, where the sheet of paper ended, etc. This was my final image (You might recognise it from my new banner above):

I took 2nd place in the challenge. First place went to Adriana Glackin.

Here are the rest of the entries:

Are you up to the challenge?

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All of my work can be puchased as premium art cards, and most are available as matted prints, laminated prints, mounted prints, canvas prints, framed prints, and posters. All in varying sizes. To see more work and/or purchase click here. (or click on a particular image)

Example Card: