Moonflower Musing: Adobe's Photoshop turns 25...

I graduated from Art School the year Photoshop came on the market....hum, talk about bad timing. When I was in college the new technology was not in the Art Department, it was in the computer labs with the word processors and printers, only a few odd ducks had desk top computers of their own and
I do remember the cold lonely, food and drink free labs late a night when a paper was due the next day.
In the Art Department, we were still being taught layout with graph paper, rulers, T squares and those rub off letters. In the dark rooms? Well, I still have a really cool black and white photo of my roommate standing in a cereal box, a masking matte cut out of card stock to block the light. It all took a little luck, or a lot of paper to get it right.
Back then the debate of computer generated art was much of a discussion, or the evilness of it and the cheating of it. How wrong we got that should be a reminder not to predict the future because most of us are really bad at it. I do think paper and pencil, figure drawing and learning observation are still the foundation of any art program, digital or not...

I graduated in 1990 with a BA in Art and an emphasis in Child Development, going into college intent on getting an Art Therapy degree and then meandering to Tennessee to get my masters. I left college in love and followed a boy to Denver where he was attending law school.
We were married his second year at Denver University and I taught preschool. I could have continued in my studies, checked into the Colorado Institute of Art where I am sure everyone was becoming very much aware of what exactly Photoshop was and good do, but I didn't. I wanted one thing, to get my husband through law school, move back to the West Slope and start having babies...

Which we did and all the while I was developing my craft, alone, no internet, no social media and ignorant of what was happening in the digital world of Adobe and computer generated art and was blissfully happy...

Then...

My girls got older and I found my voice as an artist in fabric collage illustration and what do you do as a freelancer to get your name and your services out to art director? Well according to my schooling, that would be sourcebooks, yeah I know. I really knew then too, but so remembered my instructor holding up a copy of The Black Book and it becoming in my mind a testament to truly making it as an illustrator.

So in 2008, I laid out a few thousand dollars to advertise not in the Black Book, way way out of my price range, but in the Graphic Artist's Guilds Directory of Illustration...

The same time, I also shucked out a couple more thousand dollars to go to the Society of Children's Books Writers and Illustrator's LA conference....

Yup, 2008, the year most would say was the start of the "economic down turn." It sounded that way, sitting in the grand ballroom of the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza Hotel, listening to the publishers from New York try to put a good face on the layoff and restructuring the New York power houses were going through at the same time poo poo this new idea of independent publishing.
Yeah...late to the party again.

But I took the jump. I was a decent photographer and had already made the switch to digital, but had never edited a photograph and had no way to lay it out and design an ad. So I called the people at the directory who kindly told me they could do it, for almost the price of buying Photoshop. I bought Photoshop and had a month to learn how to use it and make a decent ad, the deadline looming...
Luckily an artist friend told me about lynda.com...

Lynda, well actually Deke McClelland became my best bud, me intently watching and listening to his CS3 One -on One class, over and over again.
Good or bad, I got it done...

putting ads in #26 and #27 the following years and at least once in PictureBook, more for nostalgia.
What did I get for a whole heck of a lot of money spent? Well, definitely did not make my cost back by the dollar. It is hard to say if it was the source books, my website or postcards, but National Public Radio found me...

As did Cricket Magazine Group...

Plus an art director in New York whose firm only worked for Broadway. I was considered by a few publishers and art reps, all intrigued but in the end not all interested enough or with not a firm enough idea what to do with me, I pretty much invented or brought to illustration a new medium, as I like to say, putting a new spin on the traditional art form of applique and needlework. One art buyer I chatted with said it was not unusual for those of us with very unique styles to not get a lot of work, but the work we do get is big and that has definitely been my experience.
And through it all, I kept learning Photoshop, mostly by discovery new ways to do things in the process and I kept using the CS3 version, it more than enough to meet my needs of photo editing and simple layout. Until...
Until, I decided to take my destiny in my own hands, instead of finding someone else to give it to and started a publishing company...

Read here, to find out about my days writing a novel as well, in those quiet years of being a stay at home mom.
Now, I've going back to Adobe again, knowing I would be needing its software and this time subscribed to the Creative Cloud and not only updated my Photoshop, but download Illustrator and InDesign as well.
And I went back to my old friend, lynda.com to learn what I need to and again, not with all the time on my hands, but with deadlines looming of bookcover design and such..

This time I think I managed to be on the front wave of something new, the new era of publishing where those of us looking out on canyons and isolated roads...