Here is something I was just working on about a week ago . . .
There are two card designs, for Mother's day (for my mom and mother-in-law). I was frustrated with not having figured out something sooner, but I'll be able to send the digital picture to my mom, and give a printed version to my mother-in-law (and also send her a card, but it will get there later). I had prints made, to make cards out of, today-- and this was really an evolutionary process, so I thought you might be interested in seeing how it came about . . .

​Here is the original color pencil drawing: 

​And when I was editing the scanned image about a month ago, I hit a key accidentally which brought about a different, more "glowing" look to it:

So I saved this variation, and when looking for a picture I could use to make a mother's day card, I decided to try to do something with it. So first I selected the main section of the picture, as I wanted to use it to make a "bouquet"--

​Then I put this on a bluish background and added some stems, leaves, and other details-- (to make a"glowing bouquet")

​It looks OK from a distance, but it wasn't the look I wanted for a mother's day greeting. So decided to go back to the previous version, and thought, "I'll just print it out as an art print, instead of making a card . . ." and went to get 2 prints made.  In looking at the prints more closely, I decided to cut off the bottom part where the soil in the pot is . . . because the colors just looked kind of strange (maybe because of printing ink differences or just because the colors ARE kind of strange).
 
So then it looked odd to have all the short, chopped-off stem bits at the bottom of the bouquet, so I cut around the bottom flower edges, doing some experimental trimming with each print-- and the final shape for each bouquet turned out to be a little different.

Next I glued the cut-outs onto some nice paper, for cards (as seen at top of this post).
 
What's kind of funny is that in the finished cards the flowers turned out to be up-side-down from how they were originally drawn . . .  it just seemed like it looked better to have the haze (and straight cut line) at the bottom. 
 
 So the cards were finished, but I still wanted to send a digital picture to my mom . . . and so used the earlier design, but added some text--

So that is my long story about making cards and trying things out with images . . . 
I think sometime I want to try selecting out the main bouquet area of the too-much-stars design, just to see what that looks like by itself (it could be interesting to look at a group of very hazy/starry flowers).
 
It took a really long time to do this whole process of experimenting, but I had a good time working on it, so wasn't terribly upset with myself about staying up until midnight and not getting anything else done . . .

The first day of this school term, we were given our first assignment for Graphic Design II. 
It wasn't very difficult . . . we needed to go buy a chocolate bar.  I almost couldn't believe my good fortune . . . I think this was the best assigment ever, and after class I went to several stores, in search of chocolate . . . we needed to take pictures of the bars and the displays, too.

The idea was to use it to look at how the packaging was printed and put together, and to use the chocolate inside to put into a unique wrapper (that we each would design).

We could choose a country to use as a theme in making the design, and I decided on Iceland. I liked the idea of using an image of the Northern Lights somehow. There were several steps in the project, including marketing research and creating a "persona" who would be interested in purchasing your product.  My persona was an "Urban Art Lover" -- someone who likes to travel and also loves beautiful artwork.

Then we all designed wrappers, printed them out and put them around the actual candy-- Voila! chocolate products that were our own brand designs.  

This fall I took a class in InDesign. It was good to start getting acquainted with this software, for designing books and booklets.  Also had a Typography class, and learned many things about letters and type-faces.  Below is one project done for Typography; it is a blend of three different text sections, placed together in a design.

It is kind of a snapshot of fall . . . the weather, and the trees losing their leaves mixed in with autumn colors..

Also, this fall I took lots of photos of leaves . . . everywhere I went it seemed like I kept seeing these wonderful, colorful, interesting shapes and sizes of leaves, and since I didn't usually have my camera, I was glad that cell phones can take pictures.  Will put a few of them below.

This last photo was altered in Photoshop, to increase the speckly appearance of the pavement and bring out details in the leaf.

Also have been making lots more drawings.  One of these was of a leaf, so will put it here:

It was a busy summer . . .studying digital photo and also web video production.  Now fall is here, and it is a new term, this time with 20th Century Art History -- and a class in Adobe Illustrator.

I can tell already that the skills I'm beginning to learn in Illustrator will be very helpful for doing artwork using the computer.

Here is my first project--  it is a house built (from a reference photo) using shapes and lines:

I tried this variation, too -- made from a special setting in Photoshop Elements:

For the final project in Photoshop, I made two art prints; they used a lot of different Photoshop steps and techniques.

​Here is one, called "Whoosh!"

And this one is "Watery World"

Making the marble for the counter/table was a new challenge; I was excited to see how it turned out.

The Photoshop class I'm taking is great!  It is really interesting, and I'm being taught much more than I can remember  . . . but in time and with practice, I'm sure it will all come into place.  Here are some pictures from making the first project-- it is for cutting and pasting (from files the teacher provided) -- The butterfly was made first, and then reduced in size so more things could fit in.