John Fraser Art & Illustration

Making The Most Of Keyboard Shortcuts One of the things that drove me crazy when I was first learning Photoshop was the constant need to glance down from the screen to see the keyboard shortcuts or hotkeys. The default locations for the tools I used were all over the place. Fortunately Photoshop lets you customize their positions and the hotkey setup I have designed for myself will probably be useful to others. Although the tools will vary from user to user I found it possible to concentrate about twenty of them into one location that I can operate without looking. I placed additional tools and commands close by so these…

Of Pixels and Pencils – A Traditional Artist Embraces The Digital World Someone once asked me if I would consider changing careers someday because, as he put it, computers would eventually make artists redundant. I couldn’t help thinking at the time that he didn’t really understand what it was to be an artist. Blacksmiths and cold metal typesetters have disappeared completely because their jobs could be done more efficiently by machine. But  just because the camera could reproduce a likeness of a subject more quickly and faithfully than someone using a charcol pencil artists didn’t disappear in the late 19th century when photography became ubiquitous. There is a certain magic…

Hello. My name is John Fraser and I’m a Professional Illustrator. I’ve always considered myself very lucky to be making a living doing what I love. I think with that privilege however goes a responsibility to pass on to others some of the things I’ve learned, especially to younger, up-and-coming artists. In this column I plan to walk you through many of the experiences I’ve had as a commercial illustrator and how that discipline has evolved and adapted to the digital age. Illustration is a time honoured profession that has taken on many forms over the centuries. Hand renderings illuminated medieval manuscripts and woodcuts accompanied the text in early printing…