This was my first watercolor. The friend who had been encouraging me to paint did landscapes and florals, and since I figured landscapes would require green and I didn't like green, I elected to try a floral. Who would know if a petal was out of place? Having had no lessons in watercolor, I had no idea how to use it, so I just dipped the brush directly into the tubes of paint and added water to it once it was on the paper if it seemed too dark. I still don't how how it's "supposed" to be done, because I've avoided taking any classes that might take the mystery, and therefore the fun, out of it for me. I just do whatever works at the time. Painting for me is a "correccidental" process: if it works the first time, it's and accident, and if it doesn't work, I just correct until it does. All in all I as pretty happy with the color and looseness of this first effort.

Flyers and brochures can be very expensive or very inexpensive, and it all depends on you. Most customers know fairly clearly what they want to say, and they have a general idea of the size they want, how they want it to fold (or not), and the type of paper and ink colors they like. Those are all variables that can make a big difference either way.

I help out with the nuts and bolts like phrasing and spelling but I spend most of my time in the arrangement of the words and pictures on the page, to create a visually pleasing document.

Graphics may be customer-supplied art or photographs. Make sure they're not copyrighted by somebody else—if you drew it or pushed to button on the camera to take the picture, you own the copyright; if somebody else did, they own it and you need to get written permission from them to use it. Alternatively, I have clipart sources or can create artwork from scratch. Even without graphics, a lot can be done with fonts and type sizes.

If the budget doesn't allow for fancy papers and multiple ink colors, one or two inks can be made to seem more expensive by screening the inks into different shades. You can see how that works by looking at the grays in your newspaper with a magnifying glass: black ink is laid down in dot patterns, and the size and density of the dots determines the shade of gray.

All contents are copyrighted by Charlotte Terhune.