SLS Lines Blog News & Graphic Updates

I really LOVE making Halloween art! All of the creepy crawlies, ghosts, haunted houses.... zombies!! Pumpkins! Love that stuff. This year, I've put out a new Halloween set and it was a ton of fun to make. I kept it whimsical for party invitations, gift tags, Halloween bags or a good old Halloween coffee mug? I'd use it! Planner stickers? For sure. All good for PODs too, ta least if you buy it in my store. I have this set listed in all of the regulars like CreativeMarket, DesignBundles, etc. but they each have different licensing terms. Mine are a little more lenient here.

I've spent the last week or so creating graphics for my favorite time of the year - Halloween (and autumn too!). I am so not a summer person because I seriously melt in heat above 65 degrees. Fall is my time of the year! The weather is perfect, the trees looks amazing and there is tons of yummy candy up for grabs. Yep, sounds perfect to me.

 

Hello everyone! I'm back from a very long vacation this summer. We went to Europe to spend some time with my husband's family and friends and it was great. Super relaxing and fun. I'm glad to be home though. It was a long time to be away and seriously.... I missed my bed so much.

I didn't make any art while away but I've made up for it since then by joining in a bunch of art swaps. The set below is found poetry, one of my most favorite themes ever! It's ridiculous fun cutting out little bits of text to make up the silliest poems. Of course, you could go all serious with it but I like the weird poetry versions myself.

I've been hard at work on a new creator set for designers to use in their projects. This one will have multiple city buildings, including apartment buildings, stores, cafes and more! I've also drawn up lots of trees to pretty up your city along with people to place and cars to drive. There are even hills, roads and sidewalks to build your own fun city block.

And I just realized this set would be cool for endless runner / side scrolling game or app. And I want to make a game now.... easily distracted.

I finally had the opportunity to make an ATC tonight! WOO! It's been a while since I've had a bit of free art time to do what I want. I joined a travelling trade group over at illustratedATCs.com with the theme of art nouveau and this one above is my contribution. I was able to trade her for a super cool art nouveau cat!  The card above was created in ink and markers with a bit of gel pen thrown in for good measure.

I know, I know.... June is a ridiculous time to start posting about Christmas graphics but it's not me, I swear! I'd be putting this stuff off until at least September normally. But I noticed that I'm getting likes on an older set of Christmas Hats I made a few years back. This means my fellow creative designers are already on the go with their Christmas making graphics. I'm blaming them! LOL. I'm on board. Christmas graphics it is, regardless of the weather outside!

I do already have a set of Christmas hats I made a few years back but I wanted to do a brand new set with updated graphics and add in a few extras too. This new Santa Hat Set includes 16 different hats as well as featuring those same hats with lots of cool and fun labels like "toy maker" and "elf boss" - just for fun! You can also use your graphics editing software to add your own names and titles to the hats for extra personalization.

I've been sorting out all of my graphics and art over the past week since I bought a new computer and REALLY need to sort stuff out. I don't think I've sorted my file system in well over 5 years. You can imagine the mess, right? 

Above are some older graphics made new again! I pulled out some old cat illustrations to add to my portfolio but took a bit of time to give them an update. I have a thing for cats. They've always been my favorite pet to hang out with. I work with one super crabby cat and one ridiculously friendly cat lounging around nearby. 

Hello everyone! It's nice to be back to blogging again with my PPF pals after a short break. You may have noticed that I changed my website completely and my blog too. Quite a bit of work but so much smoother and easier to use. I'm glad to be back to blogging and visiting with everyone.

Above is my ridiculously chubby unicorn drawn on my iPad using the Apple Pencil and wowza, do I ever love that thing. I use it with Procreate app and it's so fun and easy. Honestly... I've completely given up using my Wacom, except for image editing. I never thought that would happen. 

I love a good piece of 10 minute art! These intuitive watercolor portraits are quick and easy to make. All of you need is watercolor paper, watercolor paints, a pencil and some inking and/or gel pens. Markers can also come in handy or colored pencils.

In my last blog post, Selling digital graphics: My pricing guide, Part One, I wrote at length about pricing digital graphic assets for sale online and how we're not doing ourselves any favors by under pricing. 

I’ve looked and no one really shares this sort of info so I’m putting it out there. Hopefully some of you will find it helpful to see how others work. And if you’ve been at it for a while and are quite successful, I hope you’ll share a little with the rest of us too.

I worked out how much I need to earn from my sets to break even and then make a profit. Please note that I’m really generalizing here! Some sets take more time, others take less.

 

This article is for people like me who sell digital graphic assets like watercolor clipart, fonts, icons, etc. to other creative designers. 

I want to add a caveat here – I am by no means a top seller! Nowhere near that. I started selling digital graphics about 2015/2016 and did well for about a year. Then I completely changed my art focus and stopped making any sets at all for a couple of years (aside from the odd one or two here and there). I’ve only just come back to making graphic sets this year, in the last month or two really. I’m simply sharing what I’ve learned… so far! I’m sure this article will grow and change as I learn more. I will definitely update one year from now (May 2020) and let you know how things have turned out one full year in.

When I'm making personal art, I often turn to my art journals and start with a textured background. I just love the look of little bits of old book pages, a bit of scrap paper and wonderful thick acrylics over top... and stencils too. I throw it all in there. And that's what I did for this new set of delicious mixed media backgrounds in shades of red, blue and brown. So many yummy layers that really came through in the scans.