Tag Archives: art

I’d rather be Beneath the Sea

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Sheryl Checkman and David Dunleavy at Beneath the Sea

Designer, Sheryl Checkman with artist David Dunleavy at his booth at Beneath the Sea

I would love to have been beneath the sea today but since that wasn’t possible I did the next best thing – I took a bus out to the Meadowlands Expo Center to “Beneath the Sea,” the annual Consumer Dive Show. I got to listen to some interesting seminar presentations, which succeeded in further wetting my appetite to get back into the water. I re-lived past dives during a presentation on the Turks & Caicos Islands by Michel Gilbert & Danielle Alary, discovered some new Photoshop tips from Larry & Denise Tackett and learned about photographing models underwater with photographer Jason Heller. Jason’s newsletter, Dive Photo Guide is a great resource for underwater photographers. In between seminars I got a chance to catch up with some friends from the two dive clubs that I belong to: OceanBlue Divers and NYUPS (New York Underwater Photographic Society).

And that was just the morning.

After the seminars I set off to walk the show, make some contacts and see who else I would run into. I stopped by my friend, David Dunleavy’s booth to see his latest work and catch up. David paints beautiful ocean life paintings and murals. I even bought one of his t-shirts. If you like the t-shirt that I have on in the photo above, it’s one of my “Life is Balance® Neutral Buoyancy Scuba designs.

I joined REEF to show my support for the ocean environment. The Reef Environmental Education Foundation is a grass-roots organization helps conserve marine ecosystems by educating, enlisting and enabling divers and other marine enthusiasts to become active ocean stewards and citizen scientists. I bought a beautiful DVD  called “Sensational Seas Two” which is a compilation of various top underwater photographers and videographers and is narrated by Stan Waterman and Annie Crawley. It’s a wonderful view into the undersea world and all proceeds benefit ocean charities. I can’t wait to show it to my friends who don’t dive and always ask me what it is that makes me so obsessed with the sport!

If it’s in a photograph, is it really there?

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Red Tree in Central Park

Red Tree super-imposed over the Central Park West cityscape

Did you ever wish you could make up your own landscape? Painters do it all the time. They might take some mountains from one place and a lake from somewhere else and paint them together to create their own Shangri-La. I used to paint — back when computers were practically non-existent and I was a budding artist at the High School of Music & Art in NYC in the early 70’s.  I painted landscapes in oil on canvas. I was ok, but not destined for greatness as a fine artist so I traded in my paint brushes for a career in graphic design. It’s a way to earn a living, while still being creative, but sometimes I still get the itch to create just for myself.

Now with a digital camera and Adobe PhotoShop CS4, I can once again use my imagination to create new landscapes (and seascapes for that matter) right on my computer. I can add my own touch to nature!

How do I do this? I use the layers palette  in PhotoShop CS4 to combine the two photographs that were used to make up the finished image above. Each photo gets its own layer. The photo with the red tree is on the base layer and the buildings on Central Park West are on a layer above. I then add a layer mask to “reveal all” to the buildings layer. Now, making sure that I have the layer mask selected on the layers palette, I use the paintbrush to brush away the parts of the buildings photo that I don’t want. I adjust the opacity of that layer to give the photo a more distant look and making the red tree layer pop more. By using layer masks instead of the eraser tool to get rid of unwanted parts of an image,  my original images are untouched so that if I need to go back and add parts back in I can. When I get the composition the way I want it, and after I have saved the PSD file, I then flatten the final image and save as a tiff, a png or jpg file and I am done.

The above image is available for purchase at my Dive Art & More gallery

Below are the two original images that I used:

Red Tree in Central Park- original photograph

Photograph of a red-leafed tree in autumn

Buildings along Central Park West

Central Park West with the Central Park Lake in the foreground

Life is Balance at Surtex

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Life is Balance displayed at Surtex licensing show

Life is Balance displayed at Surtex licensing show

Surtex, the trade show for licensing art & design opened today at the Jacob Javitz Center in New York City. My agent from Looking Good Licensing is there representing my line, Life is Balance.™ I visited the booth and was excited to see my designs up on one wall of their booth. We already have a licensee, The Mountain, exclusively producing these designs on t-shirts, we are hoping the next few days at Surtex bring interest in further licensing the line. Fingers crossed! The possibilities are endless for this sport and activity related design series. If you’re in the neighborhood come stop by booth #512!