You might be a hardcore graphic designer if…

1. You’ve ever had a fender bender because you were analyzing a font on a billboard.

2. You find yourself wanting to hit “Apple Z” when you mess up in real life.

3. You consider meals to be inconveniences.

4. You wake up in the middle of the night with logo ideas.

5. You have more fonts than you do songs in your iTunes account.

6. You’ve learned not to use the word “final” in any file name when saving.

7. You keep your monitor cleaning cloth on your desk at all times.

8. You dream in CMYK and RGB.

9. If you have to politely explain one more time why you can’t blow up your client’s 14 KB gif file to fit on an 11×14 poster…

10. You and your colleagues went out to celebrate when Adobe acquired Macromedia.

11. You recognize istock photo models featured in ad campaigns and other printed material.

12. You’ve actually paid money for a font.

13. You’ve featured an early version of a design project in your portfolio (you know, the one before your client made their change requests).

14. You can’t eat at a restaurant without critiquing the menu design.

15. You know who Paul Rand is and he is your hero.

16. You use words for Papyrus and Comic Sans that normal people reserve for serial killers and animal abusers.

17. You know more than 10 color codes by heart (OF COURSE #9a4b0c is burnt orange!)

18. You just opened Photoshop to look up #9a4b0c.

Creating a Moment in Time… My Latest Painting

I was recently commissioned to paint a lovely woman named Loma. She lived a long, happy life, and recently passed away in her 90′s. The family wanted to memorialize her in a painting, which will be displayed above the mantle in the grandchildren’s play room.

Loma was a vibrant, amazing woman, and had stunning blue eyes, porcelain skin, and high cheekbones. Sherry, my client, wanted the painting to depict Loma in her youth, and a traditional head and shoulders style portrait simply would not do!

Sherry provided me with several reference photos from the 1940′s, all black and white and showing signs of their age. I realized quickly that this portrait would be a challenging one, but I knew how important the project was. The photo we decided to use was of Loma sitting on an uneven bar in someone’s backyard. Sherry mentioned that Loma had always loved sunflowers, so it seemed fitting to have a field of the beautiful flowers in the background of the painting. I went on a search to find the perfect field – one that had a fence that we could place her on.

After selecting the reference photos, I used my Photoshop program and my graphic design background to lay out the composition and get Sherry’s approval before starting to paint. We agreed on details such as what color to make her skirt stripes, and whether she preferred a white fence or a natural one, and then the magic began…

I spent about 2 weeks working on this painting.  I was pleased with how it progressed, and enjoyed making decisions such as shadow placement, how to paint the sky, and what to do with the lower part of the fence and ground without reference material.