Recently in Graphic arts Category

I've been a vampire fan since I read my first Anne Rice novel "Interview with a Vampire" about 15 years ago. I was fascinated about the idea of immortality and the allure of eternal youth. Yes, I'm a goth girl by heart I admit. ( I love the Cure!)

I will say that I was reluctant to read the "Twilight" series only because I had very high standards after reading the complete Vampire Chronicles by Rice. And felt "Twilight" would pale in comparison to the deep brooding characters from "Chronicles."

And then I was working on a page layout to coinside with the movie release of "Twilight" and became a little more intrigued. I borrowed the first book in the series the other night and am already more than half way through it. I'm hooked. The read is super fast and while the characters are not nearly as complicated as Lestat is from the "Chronicles" series I'm still finding them interesting and yes, beautiful.

Here is a sneak peak of my page layout for "Twilight."

The finished page will be published in the York Daily Record Nov. 21.

My day or should I say night started with me arriving to work around 5 p.m..

It's election night. And I'm going to be here awhile.

I've been updating my Adobe Flash interactive map about every 30 minutes.

It's hard, I admit it to keep updating the map. Knowing that Obama has been announced the next President. I'm kinda like well everyone knows who won, why keep updating... But that's not my call, and the numbers keep rolling in and so I keep updating.

I shouldn't be complaining, tonight is a historical night and I think it's cool that I'm a part of it.

To see my Flash election map in action click here

Ok, I admit it I'm a procrastinator and forgetful. Especially, forgetful, just ask my parents.

So, it's about 11:30 p.m. and my husband and I are getting ready for bed the other night. And I just realized oh sh#@! I totally forgot to create my centerpiece for Brad and Sue's Wedding shower at work. My husband, being so helpful first suggested I used a 2 Liter empty soda bottle and stick some flowers in it and called it a cenerpiece (see, I told you he's not very helpful.)

I felt awful, so instead of going to bed I set out to create a centerpiece. I drew my art using Adobe Illustrator.

Here is the art.

I sent the files into my work and when I came in this morning, I printed them out and glued each illustration to matte board. And that's how I finished the centerpiece just in time for the Wedding shower.

Here is the final full-color version of the Bailout Monoploy I created in Adobe Illustrator.

This graphic ran in this past York Daily Record/Sunday News Viewpoints section.

I had a lot of fun creating this graphic. Nothing fancy going on in the graphic, it's the symbolism of the game that makes this such a great graphic.

The stakes are high and the pace is fast but "you can't lose." Mike Argento's column in this Sunday's Viewpoints is a package dealing with the Bailout, or as I like to say "Bailout Failout."
And I had the pleasure of designing the page. Here is a sneak peek.

I can't wait for this to be published in this week's Viewpoints on Sunday.

Again, I'm not sleepy so I decided to work some more on my vector art of Audrey Hepburn...

And another look at the art with added details.

The highlights and shadows are a combination of the gradient mesh tool, gradients and blends. I did use the blur filter on the shadow behind her pearl necklace.

This image is the preview mode.

As a graphic artist my main job is to come up with and design layouts and illustrations from scratch. But sometimes I get my ideas from reporters I work with. My most recent page design is the York Revolutions playoffs layout. I received a preliminary sketch from Jim who is a sports writer.

Here's the sketch

So this gives me a basic idea where the writer is going with his idea. I then start building my package based on his sketch. The idea was to layout the players on the page in their playing position on the field. I drew a baseball field in Adobe Illustrator and brought in images of the players and positioned them on the field.

Here's a sneak peak of the final page, to see the enitire finish page check out tomorrow's sports section in the York Daily Record/Sunday News.