Design + Illustration
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Pattern Bliss

At Pattern Bliss blog I'll be sharing my favorite surface pattern design inspirations, trends, a sneak peek my pattern designs, my favorite shoes, and, of course, cute dog pictures. Plus you'll get a glimpse of what goes on inside my studio in my sketchbook series.

Design Postcards: Love

Feeling all those warm fuzzy feeling today. Wishing you a lovely and loved day. xo

"Love has nothing to do with what you are expecting to get–only with what you are expecting to give–which is everything." -Katharine Hepburn

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Illustrated Cocktail: Mint Mojito Recipe

Illustrated cocktail for your weekend. (Mojito illustration and animation by Chris Olson)

Mint Mojito ingredients:

  • 5 mint leaves

  • 2 ounces white rum

  • 1 ounce fresh lime juice

  • ½ ounce simple syrup

  • Ice

  • Club soda or sparkling water

  • Lime slices, for garnish

Directions

1) Muddle the mint. Place mint in the bottom your cocktail shaker and use a cocktail muddler to press it. You should press on the leaves until they release the fragrant oils. T

2) Add the rum, lime juice, simple syrup, and about a handful of ice to the shaker, and shake it vigorously until the ingredients are completely combined and chilled.

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Sunisa Lee

Amazing things are happening for the Suni Lee. On Saturday, in her sixth meet of her freshman season at Auburn, the reigning Olympic all-around champion posted a 10.0 on the uneven bars to help the Tigers keep pace with LSU on Saturday. My sketch above features her skill on the balance beam during the summer Olympics in 2021.

Sunisa Lee is an amazing role model for athletes. I am in awe of her for winning the gold medal in the women’s individual all-around final in the summer Olympics in 2021. Not sure I captured her magic on the balance beam in this sketch. I love everything about her backstory—her perseverance as a gymnast and her respect for her role model and Team USA teammate Simone Biles.

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Animated Fashion Collage

It’s always nice to have the luxury of taking a break from your traditional work to explore something new and fun as a creative project. Do you ever switch gears and do something different creatively?

Today I’m sharing an bit about the creative process in my animated collage. I created it from fashion ads I clipped out of this month’s InStyle magazine, a lovely beach photo by Annie Gray and a vintage public domain illustration by John Edwards.

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Telling a Story with Photo Compositing

Editing a photo transforms your image and takes it to a whole different level. By combining two or more images in a photo composite also brings a storytelling element to the image. In this example I did several things:

  • Selecting the subject and removing the background.

  • Adding a black and white edit.

  • Adding color back into select areas in the image—the glasses and lips.

  • Carefully editing out specific elements such as the glasses chain and tattoos transformed the image.

  • Adding my botanical illustration to the background.

Black and White Editing

Some thoughts on adding a black and white edit. There are so many ways you could make this adjustment to a color image. I like to use Lightroom or Photoshop to adjust saturation to zero and next adjust the high and then low vibrance. You can also adjust the temperatures too.

To view photo retouching service options and purchase retouching services visit my Photo Editing page.

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How I Created a Magical Winter Scene Using Photoshop

In this digital illustration I created a glowy wintry scene at night from a daytime photo. Using a daytime photo to create a night scene is possible with the magic of Photoshop --and the wonderful teacher Anna McNaught. Check her out on Instagram here at @annamcnaughty.

Art process: 1) This winter scene at night digital art was created by me by starting with a daytime snowy cabin photo by photographer Ben Hershey on Unsplash . 2) Using adjustment layers to darken the overall scene and next painting with light to create a magical glowy look around the cabin at night. 3) Sparkly stars in the night sky added last.

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Using the new sky replacement feature in Photoshop

The newest version of Photoshop saves you time by reducing the number of steps in your photo editing workflow by using the new Sky Replacement feature. In the past, replacing the sky required multiple steps and careful fine tuning with masks and the pen tool to achieve a seamless look. Now with Adobe Sensei, Photoshop will do the masking and blending for you. In this project, I created a digital collage featuring Chinstrap Penguins.

This conceptual photography project includes Unsplash images by the following photographers: Derek Oyen (Chinstrap penguins); Renè Müller (sun); Guillaume Galtier (sky) and Karsten Würth (road).

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