Well folks, we survived the first 100 blogs! We wanted to thank all the folks who visit our site and read our blog. We have grown so much since starting this venture last year and have been shocked at how many folks now walk up to us at events like local races, Amgen or Diva Night saying things like, “Hey, are you the people that do the GroveTribe blog?” It is kind of odd having folks walking up to us and knowing who we are when we don’t know them. To make is a little less weird we invite you to “like” us on FB so we know who you are! (Not to mention you get the latest updates and head’s up on sales and discounts for our fans!)
We wanted to do something special for our 100th blog so Dawn secluded herself in the “Tower” and spent hours upon hours creating a brand new design. We are pleased to introduce “Roadie” the bike hoarding dragon. (Dawn has hinted that she based the idea on me. Honestly I have no idea what she is talking about.)
Truth be told; Dawn has been locked away in Tower for several days revamping our website with more of her awesome graphics work. We have a new look and a host of cool new designs for our shop! Here are some samples of our latest gear designs and the “birth story” of Roadie. We hope you like the new designs and the new look. (Dawn asks that if you find any goofs on the website to let us know and we will send you a bumper sticker with our thanks.)
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| HOT OFF THE GROVETRIBE PRESS! Some of the new designs just created by Dawn and uploaded to our shop! |
THE ROAD TO "ROADIE" (by Dawn Grove)
I like to combine things that you don't often think of combining to see what you can get. At 3:30 in the morning my husband and I are awake and in the kitchen. He's washing dishes and I am talking about getting some new designs for our online shop. I wanted to pair bicycling with fantasy and came up with the design for "Roadie". For the next nine hours, from initial idea sketch to finished graphic, I only took a break long enough to get the kids and myself breakfast. This is the fastest I have ever worked and also the most complex graphic with over 70 layers.
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| The initial idea sketch done while I watched Chris do the dishes. (Great arrangement for me!) |
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| I redrew roadie to make the image larger (but still small enough to fit in our little scanner. I then inked over the pencil and erased to clean up the lines. This prepped the image for a clean tracing. |
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| Using tracing paper and technical pens to create a clean, more scannable, image. |
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| Roadie is ready for scanning. |
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| Roadie scanned in. The image did turn out a little big to fit on our scanner plate. I had to scan twice and merge the images to get the top of the wing. |
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| I repeated the drawing process with a bicycle (saving the bicycle as a template for use in other graphics someday). I scanned the bike in and merged it with the dragon image. By now my fingers feel like they are on fire! |
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| The coloring process begins. I fill in and tweak over 70 layers to get the variations in coloring. |
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| If you know Photoshop you can look to the right and see the Layers Menu. You can see how many layers are visible and that there are many more on the scroll bar! For someone who has never taken a class or read a book on Photoshop, this feels like a huge project! |
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| Inititally I wanted Roadie to be a black dragon but the graphic did not show up as well on items like shirts as it did on screen. My husband suggested the crimson and gold coloring. |
Speaking of support! Please take a moment to visit our online shop and order a little something to give to your favorite cyclist! (You can count yourself as your favorite cyclist! We won't tell!)
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