making a splash!

It can pour, drip, drizzle, splash, mist, downpour, shower, be intermittent, steady, occasional --- the descriptive list goes on.  Being a lifelong Oregonian I can really enjoy the rain - not that I always do, but I can. So here's to fall, heading into winter, and looking forward to good times!

Alander's Detective Day

Open publication - Free publishing - More picture book

My original pencil drawings colored in photoshop, this is a preview of a (yet unpublished) book by Bethany Dalton.

It's uploaded to a site called ISSUU.   A great way to view publications and I'll be using it more.

I took photographs of "Alander" and "Nonya" to use as reference when I sketched out the drawings. It was really fun to give life to these personalities with the multiple layers of colorings and brushes with endless possiblitities of manipulation in Photoshop.

Start packing!

This is a pencil drawing I did this summer while we were camping at the beach. Now it's colored in photoshop and  given a voice with the sentiment of Catherine Douzel.

Sometimes a cup of tea is shared
with a friend,
a book,
music,
an unfocused gaze out your window.

-but each cup is a journey of sorts
and that's a wonderful thing.

This print is now available in my etsy shop, you might want to check it out - but you'll definitely want to make time for regular journeys in this fall season.

Happy brewing!

coffee town

Coffee Town, where there is always something brewing. The lights are on in everyone's house as they find themselves adding to the general excitement of the village.

This pen and ink drawing was drawn in a yurt at the beach, scanned and colored in photoshop, and imagined long before anything actually took place on a piece of paper.

Soon to be available at my etsy shop.

I'm a little teapot

Original watercolor enhanced in photoshop. A new use for a cracked teapot, new life coming on strong! I love the old illustrations where the registration is just a bit off, I tried to convey that feel here.

Open for Business

Ahh peaches!

Open them up and you reveal the sweet, juicy and delicious, surrounding the heart or stone at the center. In the right hands the pit is more than just an inedible cast off, it's that very stone that holds the possibility of new beginning, new life.

Sometimes life is the pits, or maybe it's just all about the pits . . .  and their possibilities.

Here's two running!

Here is the final logo I developed for the Mt Hood Athletic Club's Running Club. It incorporates the swoosh and colors of their original club logo, and adds a fun and active element in the runners and shoe.
I enjoyed making the swoosh more active allowing it to weave it's way through the MHAC.  A great facility that really adds so much to the community of Sandy!

fall dropping in

Working on designs for fall cards! These are in the development stage, started of as scans of black and white ink drawings, and then colored in photoshop. I like the contrast between daylight and night-time fall. I ordered paper and envelopes and hope to get these finished and printed soon and into my etsy shop

new print completed!

Ahhhh, this one has finally flown in and landed. Actually this bird sits on the fence and prepares to fly. The inspiration is all around, good examples surround, the moon lights the way, and the time is right.

This print comes in both 8 x 10 and 13 x 19 versions. Printed right out to the edges, but with plenty of room to mat and frame.

Check it out in my etsy shop.

coming attractions

OK I went hiking in the gorge on Monday instead of drawing, and then there was the art museum on Tuesday, then back to work at both my jobs on Wednesday so I haven't posted on anything lately, but I am working on another raven piece and this is the first of the sketches.
Obviously not finished yet, but I plan to set him on a fence with other flying ravens in the background. I've got some good ideas on a detailed sky that I'm excited about too.
So that's where we stand, not idle, just not yet completed!

once again (as opposed to nevermore)

We went camping at the beach 2 weeks ago, and even though it rained most of the time, we enjoyed the comforting roar of the ocean, the fog horn in the distance, and the croak of the crows that are constantly scanning and assessing the camp sites waiting for their turn at ---- well, at whatever!

I took a bunch of photos that are giving me some great reference to work with. This started out as a pencil sketch, the pencil lines are still visible here and there around my finished print. Don't you just love the way crows are black and violet and blue? This will be joining my etsy shop pronto!
hopscotch graphics

as my dad always said . . .

Hmmmm, this really isn't a negative, pessimistic saying, it's just  - well, true! We have said it often enough at our house and it seems to lighten the frustration of the moment and remind us that it's just one of those little rules of life, true not just for us, but in general.

This is a seek preview of the giclee print that will be offered in my Etsy shop very soon!

out & about on two wheels!

I'm back! Yes I can manage my Etsy shop and keep up with my blog. I have 5 sales, one from Ohio, how exciting (I will refrain from using an exclamation point after every sentence even though I'm tempted to). Here is a print I'm offering from a pencil sketch.

 There's a couple different versions, not really sure which one is my fav.

Just in case you are interested my bicycle credentials go way back to when I was 20, and worked in NW Portland as a Bicycle Delivery Girl for Peter's Office Supply on NW 9th and Flanders.

sigh, those were the days. (!)
See these listings at my Etsy Shop, Hopscotch Graphics.

hopscotchgraphics.etsy.com

Yay! My etsy shop is open and ready for business! I am hanging some of my prints at the Troutdale Starbucks, where I spend MUCH of my time, and I also have a special deal for my first shop customers . . . free shipping!

Here's the code: coffee

I am still learning the ropes to having an etsy shop, so give me an hour to make sure that I get the code activated, and then make my day and order away!

For first time visitors to my blog, you can look around and see some of my graphic design work in past posts, some development of the pieces currently for sale in my shop, and even a few rants. Thanks for stopping in, and be sure to contact me through my shop if you have any questions, or just want to initiate a conversation.

Thanks so much, Melissa

Click here to return to hopscotch graphics at etsy.

. . .blowing in the wind

a whimsical little drawing I did on Sunday, and painted in today. There's just something about coffee isn't there. I'm getting smarter and did the original quite large at about 20" by 18" or so. Now I'll have options as I crop it into the different sizes19x13, 8x10, and 4x6 for my upcoming etsy shop.

What's up?

A few days of sunshine, and we are all thinking about our gardens, right? Oh so hard to be patient in life. This was an ink-on-tracing-paper drawing, live traced in illustrator and colored with the trusty blob brush.

and then there was . . .

Davis & Graves. I came up with a logo, and then incorporated it into business cards, letterhead, envelopes, web assets, and here -- two of four signs that I designed.  The wave - starting at the lower left - represents the clients that come looking for assistance, and then progressing to the upper right -- move in a positive focused direction, up and onward toward their personal goals.
Great guys, know their stuff, look them up!

Buzzin'

When we were in Greece, there were the biggest bumble bees. They weren't intimidating because they were just so task oriented, and bumbled their potted plants exclusively.
This guy is fat and looking for work. He's a photoshop colored pen and ink drawing, each section with it's separate mask, and an outline mask to brush up the line work.

stretching the sketching

So, I took a pencil sketch and scanned it, opened it in Photoshop, erased the border, adjusted it with levels, and then choose a background and outline color with adjustment gradients. Then just played with textures and colors, and a sketch gets a facelift!

inspired, spires

An original pen and ink on plastic film I scanned and then colored in photoshop. I added the sky and river details I drew at the beach last week - just for fun.

heavy lifting

T-shirt, poster etc. design for Mt Hood Athletic Club. It started out as a "weightlifting" comp, then "power lifting", and finally "benchpress". But it all goes to help support the Sandy Community Action Center, and that's a great and worthy cause.
Designed in Illustrator.

spring trilliums

It's Trillium time on the mountain, that means spring is here! This one is a drawing from a photo that I took last week at Wildwood Park. Colored in Photoshop using all the different layers of masked flower pieces. --and no Trilliums are not that yellow, but it won't print so brightly when I get around to actually printing it, but here it is rather brilliant, I hope it's enjoying itself!

Seeking to be well adjusted

Isolating the pencil drawing using threshold in adjustments, then choosing a fill with a gradient enabled me to play around with colors more before committing myself. It was actually more efficient than opening the original jpg in camera raw as I took the original illustration into photoshop.

I have always just loved cats, and kittens are great, but nothing beats a sweet old cat - sigh.

the waking of sleeping cats

Sleeping cats can be awakened by photoshop. Original drawing on tracing paper with pencil, then many layered and textured selections. Rudy, that's the name of this favored cat of all time. This is brighter and yellower than it will appear when printed. I have my monitor 20% reduced as I work on things so what I get when printed is more like what I see as I work. But here on the computer screen it's a little overpowering.

say cheese

Two photos, he smiles in one, she smiles in the other. Just stack them on different layers in photoshop and erase out the part you don't want, to reveal the one you do want. Why should a nice smile go to waste?

sometimes you feel like a nut . . . .

. . . sometimes you don't. Colored or uncolored versions of a tree that was originally drawn to be scary. Adding leaves, grass and color I hope has made it into a springtime tree awaiting growth.

the optimistic bee

I noticed a young woman's tattoo the other day, it was a bee. With a name like Melissa, that means bee, I had to ask her about it and she told me it's meaning.
This time all the work is in illustrator. I used a nice irregular border on the shapes to help give it a more organic feel.

what would you see?

So, if you were sitting in this tree, what would you be looking out at?
I created the shadow of the tree by taking the colored layer created with a mask, overlaying a new color on it and then transforming it to look like it was laying on the ground, how easy!

"I've learned", or "I've heard"?

Happiness and growth? - oh, is that my current condition? I know that journey thing, but blisters along the way are a reality. So, "I'm learning", or "I'm striving to learn", or "I've heard" are perhaps more true than "I've learned". Anyhow the reality of this lesson is worth seeking out because I'm definitely lost in the foothills, and I might as well be gleaning what there is to know, and finding the happiness that surrounds me.
On to technical notes: Original airbrushed work I did some time ago, with a new background, rearranged sections, updated coloring - the works. I love photoshop!

Sandy Centennial

Here is a logo I developed for the city of Sandy and their upcoming 100 year anniversary. It can be seen currently at the city's website. http://www.cityofsandy.com/  I liked adding the cross-hatching details over the gradients to help it achieve an older and hand-drawn feel.

Signage for SCAC

I developed these logos for the Sandy Community Action Center with input from Sandy Lazenby and the Board of Directors. The "S" in Sandy shows people helping people, and they were especially interested in bringing the food box into the design. Both the logos are a bit longer horizontally than vertically, so I added a blue bar at top and bottom to take up that space and act to set the logos off like a partial frame. On the big sign, everything was kindof floating around, so I added the blue boxes, which is consistent with the business cards and brochure look.

MAMA Campaign

 
I was asked to work on an update for the MAMA Campaign/Midwives and Mothers in Action that incorporated the use of their old logo) on the left. The old web banner was pretty generic looking, and didn't actually use the title "MAMA Campaign", so I clarified that in this new version you can see at http://www.mamacampaign.org/

This is a great organization and a wonderful movement that wants to make good maternity care options available for women. Check it out, talk it up, support this worthy movement.

Sandy Community Action Center Brochure

Trifold brochure for our wonderful center, serving families in the Sandy area. The notebook was one I had hanging around here, scanned in and then worked over in photoshop. I took out a busy background on the santa photo and enjoyed seeing it become a central happy item for this inside page.

clear thinking

Is there a better place in life to be? 

where have all the mousies gone?

Did you know that the way to identify a Douglas Fir cone was to identify the little mousies that are running to hide and disappearing under the layers of the cone? ( see their tails and hind legs?) Now you do.

lost in the woods

Did you ever play "lost in the woods" when you were little. I did and it's amazing how different your own backyard or the familiar park would actually look when pretending it was the deep and dark unknown.  Of course it was no fun to play unless you had a good friend to cower, hide, bravely fight and eventually triumph with. My friend was Annette.