Creating my own digital art work - or - WHAT I'VE BEEN DOING WITH MY SUMMER.

If you've been following along, you'll know that Teachers Pay Teachers (TpT) is what got me to thinking, "Hey wait.  I CAN DO THIS."  But then I wondered HOW I could make all that cool stuff I was seeing from teachers like Krista Wallden,  Miss Kindergarten, and the amazing Deanna Jump (who has made over one million dollars on TpT).

I already had Adobe Photoshop on my home PC and new some basics via my "Photoshop for Dummies"  book.  I scoured teacher forums like AtoZ to find out how teachers were creating the materials they were selling and learned about digital artwork.  I still wasn't sure that was the way to go so I decided I needed to try out some freebies before paying for it.  Enter Krista Wallden who offered dozens of free digital artwork packages (and still might) - PERFECT for the beginner like me to try out.  I downloaded free colored stars, borders, fonts, hands - all kinds of goodies and started this blog.  I created the background of this blog on photoshop and the header using PicMonkey.  Then I started creating my center signs on photoshop but started running into stumbling blocks.

For one thing, you can't sell materials on TpT that use copyrighted images.  Big no-no.  And while I was using some of Krista's images and others I'd purchased from KPM Doodles, you still have to give these folks the credit for the images you're using - which is only fair - even though they were free or your purchased them.  Now, my center signs actually have google images on them which may or may not be copyrighted.  But since I'm not selling them, it's okay.  The name plate owl images were purchased from KPM.  So I have to give her credit for the clip art.

So I started to think.... wait a sec.  If I'm every going to sell anything on TpT, then it would be beneficial to create my own digital clip art and stop using everyone else's.  So I started with my Puzzle Center sign, got on photoshop and started messing around.  First I thought I would free hand puzzle images, scan them, and then color them in photoshop.

But when I zoomed in, I could see sketch marks, eraser marks - everything shows up.  So then I decided to "draw" them in Photoshop.  But all I knew to "draw" with online was a mouse.  Try making a non-shaky free hand line with a mouse.  Yeesh.  After MUCH fixing, the new piece looked like this:

And it STILL looked like crap to me.  I'd seen all of these GORGEOUS hand-drawn images in Photoshop from other people and wondered how they did it so smoothly with a mouse.  So I got on YouTube and started watching video tutorials and finally learned what you all probably already knew.  I guess I've been living under a rock.

They're not using a mouse at all.

I know.  I was shocked to learn that I'd been making this as hard as possible on myself.  If only I'd known more about technology, I would have realized that they were using a GRAPHICS TABLET.  Hallelujah!  

The next step was to google graphics tablets and read up on what they do, how they work, which is the best for what I'm trying to create, etc.  If you aren't familiar with graphics tablets, they're basically a tablet that connects to your computer via USB port or wireless technology and you use a stylus to create images on your computer screen via the tablet.  From there you can manipulate the images and create your own digital artwork!

SO, after reading what seemed like a million reviews on Amazon about these tablets, I decided to purchase the Wacom Bamboo Create Pen and Touch Tablet.  It should arrive in a few days and I'll give it a try.

More on this later!