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My start in graphics began in the mid-80's when I was
the school librarian for the Lutheran parochial school here. The
principal dragged us kicking and screaming into the 20th Century
by saying, "That's a computer (latest and greatest! Apple
IIe). Catalog all those books and we'll have an online (online?
what does online mean?) card index. Here's how you turn it on,
here's a floppy disk (a what? looks like a square 45 to me, only,
um, well…floppy!), type on this part, read it on this part.
And save often. (Save? what's that mean? Save it on…that?
That broken 45 thingy? Uh, OK…)." For the next couple
months I'm sure Bob the principal cringed when he picked up the
phone and heard one of us say, "Um, Bob…?"
However, it wasn't long before I figured out that box could
make pictures. They weren't very pretty and composed of dots (kind
of like boring ascii) and if you wanted them in color you had to take
marker or crayon and color them, but they were pictures! And this incredible
program called "Print Shop" allowed you to pick what pictures
you wanted! And you could print them! (That's another thing I'm glad
to say I haven't used in a while…the old dot matrix printer that
was so loud you knew from three classrooms away when your work of art
was done printing and you could go back and color it in…)
When we did get a computer at home I drew on what I knew, however
little that was, and bought Broderbund's Print Shop. It was greatly
improved and ran on windows (great, more terminology to learn, PC?
Mac? Huh?) and came on 3 floppy disks, which were smaller and no longer
floppy. the pictures printed in color on a relatively quiet inkjet
printer, the work was done on a color monitor, and wow…a hard
drive! (I didn't know what a hard drive was, but the salesman said
it was good.) 1.2 GB. GIGABYTES! Wow, I'd NEVER fill that up! Oh, wait,
maybe I would…
From then on I was hooked on graphics, and the computers got
bigger and faster and so did the programs that run on them. My first "real" graphics
program was PaintShop Pro 3, only now it's up to version 7.04. I now
use Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Expression, Macromedia Freehand,
Painter 6 and 7, and Adobe InDesign, CorelDRAW and Photo-Paint. In
the last year or so I have become increasingly hooked on vector graphics
and use Illustrator and Expression the most. I design cards, some from
photos for other people, some from my own photos and art and sell them,
and I do a bi-monthly newsletter for my family that goes out to 52
people, and have done brochures and newsletters for a local company.
I also do photo restorations, which I find very rewarding. There is
something about restoring a cherished photo that really is satisfying!
I'm married and we have four children, 26, 24, 17 and 12, and two perfect
grandsons, 7 and 4. (Oh, all right, "perfect" may be pushing
it just a tad but it is a grandmother's perogative!)
Currently I am teaching classes at a wonderful online school LVS Online. Go to my Classes page to get more information and learn how to enroll in one of my classes!
Contact Me
Disclaimer
All designs and images on these pages are copyrighted to me, Sara Froehlich and Northlite Designs. If you want to use something you see, please contact me for permission. Thank you!
©1995-2005 Sara Froehlich
Page updated on May 10, 2005