I love art books episode 001: Overwatch Visual Sourcebook
Let’s get this out-of-the-way right off the bat. I love seeing others artwork. It inspires me… which makes me a sucker for art books. Every time there’s a sale on Amazon or I find one secondhand I need to buy it. So as opposed to leaving them on my shelf to get dusty I decided […]
The Art of Art #hashtags 2019
Instagram is such a great place for artists. It’s an amazing visual platform for you to get out and share your artwork. But the hardest thing on social networks is getting noticed. This is something I am fighting with myself. Working hard, posting every day trying to find people who appreciate my work. There’s a […]
Creating a Square Up Online Art Store
I’ve been sending out invoices to clients using Square for years now. It’s easy to use and they only take 2.75% for online transactions. It’s not great to lose additional revenue, but it’s really efficient. My clients can pay via credit card and I get my payment within 1 to 2 business days. When most […]
Schoolism Live San Francisco 2015 – Day 2
After an amazingly full day one at the Schoolism Live in San Francisco, day two began with me running behind. The BART, Bay Area Rapid Transit, doesn’t run on its normal schedule on Sundays so I was late arriving at the conference. Instead of being 10 rows from the front I ended up being three rows from […]
Schoolism Live San Francisco 2015 – Day 1
Today, July 18th, I was able to head to downtown San Francisco to go to a live Schoolism event. This workshop featuring some pretty amazing artists. I got a two day pass for this conference so I was able to learn from some icons of the entertainment industry. The weekend agenda went as follows; Day 1 STORY […]
Blog Post to Audio File
Yesterday, I found something great using my Mac. I normally find many great articles online about how to improve my art – Everything from how to better market myself to a new trick in Photoshop. The problem is I never find the time to actually read these articles. I always open the post in a […]
More Life with Subsurface Scattering
Subsurface scattering (SSS) is the phenomenon when light enters a translucent material and upon entering it the light scatters inside the material before either being absorbed or leaving the material at a different location. I know this sounds like a hard idea to grasp but it’s a good concept to keep in the back of […]
Helpful WordPress Plug-ins for your Portfolio Site
Now that you’ve got WordPress up and running on your site… you don’t? Well, this post assumes that you’ve read over my first post “Building a Portfolio Site using WordPress”. Now that you have read through that, let’s take a look at a few plug-ins that will help your site stay up and running. There’s a […]
Building a Portfolio Site using WordPress
When I first started my career I was working hard to manage extravagent websites to showcase my work. These sites were hard to maintain if you’re not a programmer, which I’m not. Luckily my brother is a web developer and is always happy to lend a hand but as his career has grown he has […]
Organize Inspiration with Pinterest
When I was in college taking illustration classes my instructor, John, had us sifting through old magazines looking for examples of illustrations. Once we found those images he would have us tear them out and put them into a three ring binder alphabetically by the subject that the illustration pertained to. At the end of […]
What is Adobe Configurator?
Did you know Adobe makes a program that lets you make your own custom panels/palettes for Photoshop and Indesign? Well not many people do, so lets talk a little bit about Adobe Configurator. Adobe Labs offers the free utility for Mac or PC and give it a try, but if you’d like to learn more continue reading. If […]
What is #sketch_dailies
For those artists on Twitter you may have started seeing the hashtag #sketch_dailies popping up in your feed along side a doodle. Sketch Dailies is a community of artists that do daily sketches based on a common theme. Sketch Dailies began as a warm up for Isaac Orloff and his fellow coworkers at the game company Storm8. […]
Photoshop Fireworks for the Fourth
For the Fourth of July I thought it would be fun to show you how to create some fireworks in Photoshop. There’s a ton of different ways to make fireworks but here’s a few tricks and filters you can use to create some quick digital fireworks. Watch the above video for the entire process of how […]
Process for creating a book cover: Legend of Halloween
In this post I’m going to walk you through my process for creating a book cover. A self-publishing author, Thea Berg, approached me to do a cover in her book series The Magical World of Sebella. The first book cover was illustrated by Wilson Williams, Jr. who sadly passed away last year. So I thought […]
What I wish I knew before starting out as an artist?
When I first began as an artist I wish I had known the benefits of sharing. Sharing your art and knowledge is one of the most important things an artist can do to build a following for themselves. Putting your artwork up where others can see it and getting feedback is the best way to […]
Spec Work, No Thanks
A little while ago a client asked me to work on a project with them. I quoted the job and waited to hear back, but the response I got took me by surprise. The response said: “Please move forward with the project, but we will only pay for the work if we use it. If […]
Photo Reference for Comic
Lately, I have been doing a lot of work on my comic book and when I get stuck on the pose that I can’t figure out I am not only the artist but the model as well.
Creating a vector graphic from a bitmap image in Adobe Illustrator
In this edition of the Once Upon a Sketch screen cast we show you how to use the live trace tool in Adobe Illustrator. In Adobe Illustrator CS two Adobe added a handy tool called the live trace tool which allows you to convert bitmap images into a vector based image very easily. Check out […]
Starting a Artist’s Texture Library with CGtextures.com
CGtextures.com is a great resource to find photo textures for your images. None of these photos will win any photography competitions. The images are, for the most part, flat and evenly lit and have straight on camera angles. And that’s the point. You add the interest when adding them to your illustrations, 3D models, logos […]
Preparing pencil sketches using Channels in PhotoShop
First off I’d like to start off with a quote from one of my instructors in college about working in Adobe PhotoShop. He said “There are a thousand ways to solve the same problem in PhotoShop”. This statement is 100% true. I know there are so many other ways to accomplish a nice clean line […]
Using Layer Masks in Adobe PhotoShop
In this episode I discuss one of the most helpful things I found in Adobe Photoshop. This feature is called layer masks. The use of a layer mask is to hide something you don’t necessarily want to get rid of. Watch the video to find out what I mean.
Fix Missing Images from Post on Facebook
While working on OnceUponASketch we are constantly posting our articles and posts to Facebook and any other number of social networks. When you post a link on Facebook it usually goes to the link and finds images that it then gives you the option of displaying in association with your post. Sometimes when we post […]
Finding Artists Groups on Facebook
A great way to spread your work around Facebook is by joining like-minded groups. Groups let you share things with the people who will care about them most. For artists it’s usually their artwork and news about the industry. Let’s look into how to join groups and then how to share with them. First Sign […]
Improving Your Facebook FanPage
Once you’ve set up your Facebook fan page you might think you’re done but there’s still a lot more work to do. You may get a few Likes at first but the goal here is to continue gaining momentum and continuing to spread the word. Spreading the word Now that your fan page is set […]
5 Steps to Setting up a Facebook Fan Page
This week on Once Upon a Sketch we are going to talk about setting up a Facebook fan page. Wilson and I recently both set up fan pages and we’re going to share everything we learned with you. It’s not a difficult process but it’s always nice to have someone to help you through it. […]