Lettering breakthrough

I spent a ton of time this year drawing individual letters, coloring them by hand, and scanning them in and then having to clean up the scanner noise. I had done one experiment years ago to put lettering over a background, and it occurred to me yesterday that I could paint strips of color and scan in black and white text and fill in with my prepared strips instead of doing each letter separately. So these images....

became these:

In order to make the image/logo image background transparent in Photoshop try the following:

1.Right click the image layer in Photosho or use the dropdown layer menu to select ‘Layer From Background’.

2.Select the Magic Wand Tool from the left panel and select the image area you want to be transparent using the Magic Wand Tool. Once selected, click ‘Delete’ on your keyboard. With that done you should see the transparent background (a checkerboard pattern) around the image.If some background areas remained non-transparent, repeat the magic wand for each of those areas.

3. Drag in the background image you want to use and size it behind your main image (or just use the paint bucket to drop a solid color there).

4. Use the paint bucket outside your image (in this case around the letters) to drop white or whatever background color you choose. If your color is digital, it will be one smooth transition. The variations and grainiess in the watercolor meant I had to use the paint bucket on numerous areas and then clean up small bits with the eraser tool, but it's worth it for the paint-on-paper look I want.

Finally I drug that whole block of text into the bookmark I've designed to hand out at the book party Burke's is giving me on Thursday, December 5th from 5-8pm. It's part of Cooper Young Night Out, so stores will be open late and Santa will be in the pavilion. I've never had a book party before, and I'm super excited, which is why I'm diving in with this extra bit of fun. Here's the back of my bookmark to go with my new book:

I got fired up about the possibilities for this last night, and I decided to make a digital font of these bubble letters that I can just type into Photoshop (once I download my font) and then fill with my paint samples. I got iFontmaker from the Apple store a couple of years ago and have been playing with making my own handwriting font. It's a super easy to use, draw with your finger on a phone or (recommended) a tablet kind of program. The web addresses on the bookmark are in a font I made called Memoir (which is a free download if anyone wants it just for fun). I've drawn out half of this new alphabet. I did all these letters for P is for Possum, for the cover of Memoir of a House and for Portal, and then all the letters in M is for Memphis. I think I'll use it enough for it to be worth the trouble. This is the fun kind of rabbit hole you can go down with your main show (Rowan Oak, up into January at least) up on the walls already and your book in hand for the holidays. I always enjoy some extra play after a big push.