A little bit of silliness never went astray!
Over the past couple of months my husband and I (no, I am not the queen) have been trying to plant our own vegetable garden. This is not as simple as it would usually sound as we live near Cape Point and have baboons for neighbours. And as you can surmise, baboons eat vegetables.
So the plan is to build frameworks with chicken wire around our vege garden to protect it from our hairy adversaries. A challenge to say the least.
So what has this got to do with art?
Well, during our spates in the garden, we have come up with some witty vegetable ‘catch-
phrases’. I was wondering how to incorporate this new avenue into my art and have come up with a bold solution.
The vegetables have given rise to new unfounded inspiration…(picture opposite – ‘Can you handle me?‘: Warning! I come with many different layers…and I can make a grown man cry!!!). This has led me to create the….*drum-roll*…
In a moment of pure silliness I invented a joke shop, which I have named The Vege-Tate Gallery, that hosts a number of incredibly cheesy vegetable quotations accompanied by my digital artwork of these tasty morsels.
I wanted to make the designs simple yet effective. At first I contemplated freehand drawings and then scanning and cropping them into a T-shirt design but decided to go the digital route.
This involved my hand, the mouse and the simple paintbrush program that most Windows packages come with.
I then transfer these crude drawings into Photoshop, where I can put them on a transparent background and ‘clean’ them up. Finally I add the text and upload it to the site (at the moment I am using RedBubble but you can also do this on Zazzle – see my previous article for all the goodies you can create there).
Voila!
Another gift idea for Christmas in the (shopping) bag…
How can you do this?
If you struggle with the graphics side of things, you can use photographs instead. Ever taken a funny photo of a child or pet? – well, use that! Everyone has at least one crazy catch-phrase they can use as an excellent and unique gift idea for that someone special.
The wonderful thing about both these sites is you can have the gift sent directly to the person, so it is simply fantastic for those relatives and friends overseas! No excuses.
Can’t be bothered?
Visit my ever-growing store and have the hassle taken out of Christmas shopping.
This is my first batch of vegetable produce:
Feel free to post some of your creations here for others to see and get ideas from.
Painting underwater scenes are quite involved as they require a lot of layering. This ‘wash’ of blue that needs to be repeated until the desired effect is achieved, needs time and patience…and I paint in acrylics – for those who paint in oils the process takes even longer as the drying time is slower.
Cherie Roe Dirksen 