Colorization = Fun for Tracy

All that clipping! All those paths!

But, yeah, I love the process, the HOURS it takes.

Some people play video games. Others work crossword puzzles.

Me? I pick apart a black and white image and colorize it.

Of course, I have to add my patterns to the mix.

And then make a collage out of the results in the form of a postcard-style greeting card.

Old Vintage Fashion Plates

For recreation, I design all kinds of things just for fun, knowing they likely will never be a product.

I recently came across some fashion plates from the early 1900's that were fairly high res, AND in the public domain, I downloaded several dozens of them. (You never know when they might figure into a design project.)

But, they also fed right into my ongoing search to find things to apply my repeating patterns to. So, I opened a fashion plate in Photoshop, extracted the black outline, copy and pasted it into Ai, and used Live Trace on it. Live Trace almost always needs quite a bit of cleanup to get rid of its distinctive weirdness, and this time was no exception.

But when I was done, I filled in all the negative spaces, and viola! 

Here are two samples of the 5 I did, showing the before and after.

Another 18th Century Redo

This design had another large flower, but I changed the design by just using the one. I included the smaller bouquet, but fudged it a lot to make it different from the original.

The leaves took forever!

Digital Collage

I've loved so many collages and have always aspired to make them. I'm not a "blank canvas" artist/designer though, so I face fear when beginning.

Lucky for me, I have a library of over a thousand vector repeats and a hefty library of digital images, mostly vintage. A lot of them are already clipped. (Another thing I do in my spare time.)

It was simple then, to begin with a design I love, likely a pattern I've recently completed. This is the case here ... in fact, I've featured several of the designs in this collage in the last few weeks.

Television Ad - Vivid Vision?

I love this Vivid Vision ad that's in black and white! Or sepid rather than black, really. 

Not exactly vivid.

I did my own version, keeping the same off whites and off blacks.

New Etsy Store - Tracy Miller Prints

I finally committed to sitting here until my new Etsy Store was launched. As usual, I had to keep going back and tweaking things, but it's done!

Now I have a place to put all those retro looking images that I love creating.

The Four Seasons - A Set of Four Ready to Frame Prints Coming Soon

I'll continue to add vintage-effects cars to a collection before I launch my new Etsy store.

But I'm taking a break from the cars  with a series of children, starting with the four seasons and some sweet little girls.

I would again like to thank Dustin of RetroSupplyCo. at Creative Market for his brilliant Photoshop expertise. He makes me look like a genius.

Here's Winter:

Making Vintage Even More Vintage

I continue to create my car prints, and will until I have enough to open a new Etsy store.

Each one is so much fun to do, and something to look forward to doing when my real work is done.

This Volkswagen beetle is super cute!

Another Vintage Car - Little Red Corvette

A shout goes out to Dustin of Retro Supply Co. for his great work at Creative Market.

His most recent special effects Atomic Age Print Pack PSD is responsible for the aged effect on my Corvette image.

What fun! Can't wait to finish my workday so I can play with it some more!

NEW Vintage Antique Auto Prints

I'm not a car person at all, but I LOVE the look of old cars.

Little by little, I've created quite a collection of car drawings, and have just about perfected a process that makes my printable car images appear vintage in a modern kind of grunge way.

There will be an Etsy store coming as soon as I've perfected the printing and shipping part.