Passport to the Arts

I’m so incredibly excited to be a part of this event tomorrow at the Northwest Museum of Arts & Culture in Spokane, WA. I have a giant pad of paper with instructions on drawing Spongebob, I printed some giveaway booklets on cartooning, and a few prints of my work. I’ll be drawing with the kids and I will be wearing a shirt I screen printed, and have the press on display with the tools. This will be so much fun.
ARTS AND CULTURE: Garfield, Roosevelt, and Linwood elementary schools are introducing the arts to students this month with individual events at the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture.
The events celebrate all art forms and gives kids and their families an opportunity to engage in activities as well as meet working artists in a variety of professions –literary, music, visual, dance, and theater. Numerous artists from around the area will provide hands-on experiences for students.
Roosevelt launched the Passport to the Arts last year and, thanks to grants, the other two schools were able to sign on with MAC nights of their own this year.

Support Living Artists T-Shirt and Screen Printing

Just finished printing off another silkscreen t-shirt for my Etsy Shop. This “Support Living Artists” shirt is flying off to Maine.

I thought some people curious about screen printing might like a peek at the process behind it. The press here is a home made four color press, but I’m only using one color for this tee.
If you’d like your own Support Living Artists t-shirt, you can buy one from my Etsy Shop: http://www.etsy.com/shop/jacosta Only $10 in the US.

Make your own Light Box for professionally photographing products for Etsy.

A light box is a great help to product photography. It’s made to create balanced lighting for product photography. Side-to-side lighting helps to eliminate harsh shadows and give an even appearance to products. Top-down or one-angle lighting will often distort a color from side to side.
You can make a light box for very little money. I had all the items here except the lamps ($8 each at Walmart) and bulbs.
You will need:

• One tall box (at least 2 feet)
• One sheet of white posterboard
• Two sheets of 11x14 tracing paper
• The longest ruler or yardstick you own (I used an 18” ruler)
• X-acto knife
• Sharpie marker
• Wide packing or masking tape tape
• Two adjustable-neck lamps
• 60-watt GE Reveal lightbulbs

Essentially, you cut two windows on the sides of the box, and fasten tracing paper over the windows. The front of the box will be completely open, and where you will be photographing from.

You will align a white piece of poster board from the back wall, curved at the back corner, and onto the bottom of the box. Tape it at the top. The curve is very important for photographing, so adjust it as neccessary. The flatter the paper, the more light will be reflected. A too-deep curve will end up with more shadow in the background.

Setup your lamps at the tracing paper windows, and start photographing!

This wonderful tip was found at: http://buffaloetsyteam.blogspot.com/2013/07/photo-tips-3-make-your-own-light-tent.html

Hello! I went through my collection of scans of how to draw, illustrate, cartoon from all over the internet and dumped it into this hopefully useful repository!