This Time of Caregiving

Dreams are illustrations
from the book your soul is writing about you.
[Marsha Norman]

This Time of Caregiving is a book published by Willowgreen, Inc. in 2007. It has four-color printing on the coated cover, and one color printing (black) on the uncoated inside. This kept the unit cost low enough that the retail price could be kept under $5.00.

The author, James E. Miller, is also known for his nature photography and took the photo for the book cover. Since the uncoated paper on the inside pages would not present his photographs in the most effective manner, he decided to use a series of pencil illustrations instead. I used his photographs as resources when I rendered the drawings but altered them to fit the space where they were to be used.

Jim Miller produced a CD version (audio) and a DVD version (video) of this book in 2008. Since these are companion publications, I used the same color scheme and image for the packaging as I used for the book cover design. These products may be purchased at the Willowgreen website.

Kitchen Table Stories

As a child my family’s menu consisted of two choices:
take it or leave it.
[Buddy Hackett]

This anthology of short stories and recipes is being assembled by The Story Circle Network. The book is 8.5x 8.5 inches and will be spiral bound.

The cover illustration started with the pencil drawing (right). The drawing was scanned and placed on a top layer in Adobe Photoshop with “multiply” applied to the layer. The color was then applied to layers below the drawing layer from front to back. For example, the apple tint is on the layer just below the drawing and the wall tint is on the first (bottom) layer. A flattened version of the tinted drawing was then positioned on the cover background in another Photoshop file. All of this was assembled in Adobe InDesign for the final CMYK printer file. Since the inside pages are one-color printing, a grayscale version of the drawing was also saved to use on the inside title page.

Monkeying Around

Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes.
Art is knowing which ones to keep.
[Scott Adams]

This is a carbon-dust rendering — a method used to give a continuous-tone, photographic effect to a drawing. The shaded areas are built up with a brush dipped into carbon dust.

I rendered this monkey skull drawing at a Smithsonian scientific illustration workshop in Highlands, NC. I can do better with models that hold still. I admire the skill of some artists who can render a drawing on the fly, but I’m too slow for that. I keep this drawing to remind myself of that delightful week of constant learning.

Cherokee Treasures

Wood is a living thing.
You may not have to rest when you are carving, but it needs to.
[Goingback Chiltoski — Cherokee Woodcarver]

Here’s an illustration I did that looks like pen and ink but was produced in a darkroom. Talk about old technology. I scratched this image with a hat pin into the emulsion of a piece of 4 x 5 sheet film then made contact prints. The subject matter is three Eastern Band Cherokee objects—one feather, a river reed mat and a wood carving,

Hallmarks, Logos, Icons etc.

[A logo] should look just as good in
15-foot letters on top of company headquarters
as it does one sixteenth of an inch tall on company stationery.
[Steven Gilliatt]

No matter what you call it, the mark by which a business or organization is identified requires careful design considerations. Once the design process is past the angst of what best represents the organization, my biggest concern is, how might it be used? A Time to Knit, LLC is a publishing company. Its hallmark needs to fit on book spines, business cards, and stationary. It needs to render just as well in black and white as it does in color.

This brings me to my first guiding principal—a logo usually needs to look as good in one color at a low resolution as it does in more sophisticated applications.

Unlike the logo above, the mark at the right does not render well at a low resolution. In this instance, that is okay. The lighthouse mark was designed to be used only to identify a series of publications that will be produced in high resolution printing—a collection of garment designs called, Great Lakes Chill Chasers.

A second guiding principle asks the question, “Will the mark be put to a specific and limited use or will it be used for an extended period of time across many media applications?”

The logo at the left is the most detailed one I’ve designed—usually simple line art is the ideal choice. This was done with a purpose. The city of Dayton has a logo that features a Wright Flier circling a globe. This guild is closely identified with its geographic location so the Wright Flier is used and the globe has been translated into a ball of knitting yarn.

Even though this is complex for a logo, it has been successfully reproduced using silk screening and embroidery—two uses best rendered with a simple design.

At the other end of the spectrum, the Shepherd’s Moon mark at the right was designed for website use only. Although the original art is high enough resolution to be printed commercially, it would lose a lot of its impact if rendered in gray-scale.