Art Design Studio Fine Art Tips / Creating Art in Small Studios. Yes it is a design studio located down town of our small mountain town

This new portrait of JKF was drawn on Wacom tablet then colored in Photoshop.  The free coffee-paint brush provided by kanonliv from Deviant Art added nice accent to the piece.  The print is now available in my shop.

Beautifully designed tape dispenser by Artemy Lebedev.  Do not know if you can buy it anywhere.

I really loved all the unique, innovative props used in this clip to present this very interesting topic.

Great article on Trader Joe's, written by Beth Kowitt, for Fortune. She includes some interesting findings regarding this privately held company which I love to go to for my everyday grocery shopping.

Here is a short excerpt from the article:
"A closer look at its selection of items underscores the brilliance of Coulombe's limited-selection, high-turnover model. Take peanut butter. Trader Joe's sells 10 varieties. That might sound like a lot, but most supermarkets sell about 40 SKUs. For simplicity's sake, say both a typical supermarket and a Trader Joe's sell 40 jars a week. Trader Joe's would sell an average of four of each type, while the supermarket might sell only one. With the greater turnover on a smaller number of items, Trader Joe's can buy large quantities and secure deep discounts. And it makes the whole business -- from stocking shelves to checking out customers -- much simpler."  You can read the full article here.

It's almost 1:30 am and I've been on my tablet drawing. Just couldn't sleep until I had to try the tablet again. I am beginning to get a better feel and control of this tablet and the drawing turned out much better this time.

I have an external hard drive and other portable devices with lengthy USB cords and I usually un-plug them from the device and leave it in the drawer until I decide to use it. I am always bothered by having deal with the long cords. Griffin makes these short USB Mini Cables and they are exactly what I've been looking for.

These three universally useful USB cable adapters are perfect for your computer in one handy kit: USB to mini-USB (used in cameras, MP3 players and many portable USB devices), USB to micro-USB (used in smartphones and compact USB players), and USB to Apple's 30-pin Universal Dock connector (used in iPod, iPhone, and iPad). Compact and pocketable, this kit is great for laptops, mini-notebooks, and more. Tuck handily into your backpack, handbag, or carry-on.

These drawings are my first attempt at using the Wacom Tablet.  I am barely getting used to the idea of using this tool and as you can see, the drawings look quite clumsy but I think I am beginning to like it already. I don't have a whole lot of time to use it today but hopefully I can get the hang of this soon.

Someone from Craigslist is selling me this Wacom tablet for $85 dollars and I am suppose to pick it up today at 5:30pm. I can't wait to plug this thing and draw something right away. I have been wanting this for a while and for whatever reason, mainly because of the cost, I didn't get it and now I am pretty excited to use it with my mac. In the past, I would have to resort to drawing using pen-tool in Adobe Photoshop or in Illustrator or with mouse or draw on a separate sheet of paper and scanned the image onto the computer. But having this tool and to be able to draw on screen will be pretty cool. I would like to see how this will affect my work flow. I know that this is the older, smaller version and I've been reading different reviews to see if the size or the older model will cause much limitations compare to the new, bigger versions available. But so far, the reviews seem to suggest that for how I am planning on using, I shouldn't have any. Let's just hope that this thing will work!