Earlier in the year, over the summer I had the great pleasure of seeing my art out in public again. Previously, my art appeared on digital billboards all around Lansing. However, this time my art was on a bus! The Capital Area Transit Authority (CATA) partnered with the Arts Council of Greater Lansing, and the result was Art in Motion. CATA selected the work of several artists to decorate buses.
CATA and Cats
The Arts Council approached me about taking part in Art in Motion, and I knew exactly which art I wanted on a bus. My regular followers won’t be surprised I decided on some of my cat art. Yes, I make a lot of cat cartoons. I live with five cats after all, therefore cats are always on my mind. Even though I wanted to use the same art as my billboard, I knew it was a good fit for the bus.
Making the Art Fit
The art in question is my Free Cats digital print. Like the billboard in the past, I knew showing all of the image wouldn’t look great on the bus–the full image would be much too small for the CATA windows.
So, I decided if you can’t go small, go big. Instead of shrinking the image, I picked a favorite portion and had it “fill the frame.” The result was large, colorful, cartoon cat faces filling every inch of the bus windows. The upside to starting with a piece of digital art was, I could easily manipulate the image and not lose any quality.
From Coloring Book to CATA Bus
My Free Cats art originally goes back to a coloring book I self-published several years ago. I gave my wife Stephanie a copy of the coloring book, and one of the pages she colored was the Free Cats art. When I decided to make the page into a print, it required a multiple step process. Firstly, I snapped a photo of the page Stephanie colored. Following this, I used Stephanie’s color choices as a reference for my digital coloring the final art print.
Did this process take a lot of time? Yep! However, all of the work paid off in the end. Free Cats remains my best selling print, not to mention also using the image for merchandise, a billboard, and now a bus.
Thank You CATA
A big thank you to CATA for giving me this great opportunity. I received many social media messages from people who saw my bus over the summer, and it always made my day. I was even interviewed for the CATA blog about Art in Motion. They also recorded a short video of me talking about my art on a bus.
Where will my art appear next? Time will tell! Thank you again to CATA and the Arts Council of Greater Lansing.
