Creative Postcard Club: Pantone Blocks

A seemingly easy round this time: fill 15 half-inch square blocks with Pantone colors and arrange them however you wish.

15 blocks of color is a lot of color! Especially since I was determined to use a different color for each block.

I turned to my favorite theme: Art Deco. The very formal and gridded structure of the layout suited the Art Deco style perfectly. The most challenging part was to figure out how to make the color progressions flow smoothly. My first few attempts created a bit of visual chaos until I found the rhythm.

Enjoy!

Creative Postcard Club—R50 Stamps

I’m pleased that I was able to participate in the Creative Postcard Club’s 50th round. Congrats to Travis on a fantastic milestone!

For this round, I knew I wanted the theme of my stamp to be Art Deco. But the genre encompasses such a large variety of work, I wasn’t sure what to narrow it down to. I spent time thinking and researching and decided on “The Art of Wine” in the Art Deco style. I did many a thumbnail sketch and somehow, they just never felt right. So I put them aside for awhile and I was listening to a story on U.S. Postage stamps and they mentioned that typical themes on stamps are the flag, flowers, or American art/artists. Bingo! My idea was born: American Art Deco, represented by an American flag.

Below: flat color version in Illustrator.



After a few sketches, I followed my usual procedure and scanned my sketch into Adobe Illustrator where I set up my colors and layout. I then imported that file into Photoshop where I added textures and lighting.

Below: final image and final image with stamp border appplied.

Creative Postcard Club—R49 Numerals

This was a tough assignment for me. While I did actually vote for this theme, in general numbers make my eyes glaze over. So to find a meaningful number/numeral for me would prove to be the most challenging part of this assignment.

So I thought about numbers and did a littel research and then I realized that there was one number with a storied history that would work quite nicely, 13. While I don’t personally find 13 unlucky or bad luck, most people do. I decided to take advantage of this stereotype and create a creepy image.

I used some new tools for me: A Faber Castel Brush pen and my new Moleskine notebook to hand-render the numbers which I then scanned into Photoshop where I added texture and lighting to give the number the proper mood.

Click here to learn more about the Creative Postcard Club.

Shameless Self Promo: Creative Post Card Entry Featured in Online Mag!

My entry in the Creative Postcard Club's Round 42: Found Letters was used to illustrate an article about the Creative Postcard Club in issue #4 of the online magazine, Rancor'd Type! You can download issue #4 of the PDF here.

The article starts on page 8 and my entry is on page 14. Be sure to check out all the other great entries!