Roxanne Baldwin's Artsy Blog

Yes, computers are awesome…but I’ll get back to that in a minute.

It occurs to me that I have done many drawings (including the one I’m working on now) of the sycamore tree out front.  I have however, never posted a photo of it, so you can see it’s beauty for real…so, here’s the view of the tree from my window, Queens row houses and all.

So, now computers………..

I love the fact that I can go into a desktop publishing program, or even these days, a good word processing program, and come up with something professional looking by scrolling and clicks of the mouse.  Such a difference.

When I was your age (Yes, this is one of those) cut and paste was done by hand.  My parents enrolled me in a course in it, figuring that if I was going to be an artist, this would provide me with an income.  I was really sure that by the time I was 25 I was going to be rich and famous….but I went along with it anyway.

It was a matter of taking little printed papers with letters on them, and lining them up perfectly so they could be photographed for print.  Of course, if you drew a line in regular pencil, that would show up to the camera.  If you erased that would look even worse.  But there was a solution…..

Non-photo blue.

This was a color that was invisible to the black and white camera.  So, graphic artists used it to painstakingly line up letters.  Did I mention the pain in painstaking?  BTW, I completely failed at cut and paste.

I’m sure there are very few, if any, graphic artists who do cut and paste manually.  However, Prismacolor still makes the color.  I think because it’s a beautiful, clear, intense color.  It’s perfect for skies, imho.

So, here’s a detail from “Making Peace with December”to give you a taste of what I’m working on.  Also, a good example of Non-photo blue.