The Undiscovered Country

Sometimes a person has to brag

But it ain’t braggin’ if it’s true, now is it?

Nor is pride always a bad thing. Taking pride in our accomplishments - in moderation - can also be a good thing, because it increases our confidence.

I admit ambivalence when I started my signature shop, "Invalid Item" . Creating graphics based on what an individual wants, and not something pre-made, is scary. I simply had no idea if I could accomplish the task. My graphic and artistic abilities simply aren’t that great.

So far I’ve been able to make my customers happy. In fact, I finished one the other day I’m particularly pleased with:

I couldn’t meet all of likenion's requests, but in the end he was happy with the results.

It also shows why I love Corel Draw, and drawing vector graphics verses raster. In case you don’t know, vector drawings are based on lines and objects. No matter how close you zoom in on it, the drawing remains sharp. Cad (computer aided drafting) is another example of vector drawing. Raster drawings are based on dots, so the closer you zoom in, the fuzzier it gets, and you end up looking at a bunch of different colored squares or dots.

Vector graphics are easy in that each object is individual. Any element can be moved, resized and colored without effecting any other object. For instance, the above consisted of the four corners, the background, the text, the cougar, and the wings. I can also move certain objects above or behind others.

I started with a brown cougar from my clipart collection, changing the colors to black and gray (each color is an individual element, which made it easy to change the hues). I cut the wings off of an owl graphic (is that cruel?). Each feather was an individual object, making it easy to change the colors. The corners were also from my clipart collection, though I did change the colors of those as well. The background and text were the only elements I created from scratch.

Once finished, I had to save it as a jpeg, but that’s easy. Corel Draw allows me to convert in almost any graphic format. If I need to make any changes, all I have to do is change the original vector drawing, and convert it again to a jpeg, or whatever format I need.

I think that’s why more artists are using computer paint/drawing programs, because fixing a mistake or making a modification, no matter how small or large, is easily accomplished.

If you want to see more graphics I’ve created I invite you to check out my gallery: "Invalid Item" 

Strange, though I’m not writing much aside from here, I can create graphics with little difficulty. Besides my signature shop, I create some of the graphics and graduation certificates for "Invalid Item" . Good thing. It helps to know my brain isn’t so mushy it’ll start leaking out of my ears soon.