All Things Important Monthly Newsletter

June 2023

Our next Member Meeting is

Wednesday June 14th at 7pm

This month we welcome artist and HAS member Mary Fish for a presentation on felting. Mary's journey into the art form of felting started with her acquisition of a spinning wheel that introduced her to wool as a medium for creating items of necessity. From there, in her words "I took a class in felting and I was hooked. There’s wet felting (very strenuous, not my favorite) and dry felting – flat felting and sculptures. My heart lives there – using wool fleece, roving, yarn, silk and very pointy needles to create everything from children’s toys to landscapes and all manner of things in between.

I kept a small sketchbook with me wherever I went. It’s come in handy in so many ways over the years. I’ve been away from creating with fiber for several years taking care of family. That little sketchbook kept medical notes, my secret stress, little moments of memory and joy. Felting doesn’t weigh much, but it’s bulky and therefore not something you can pack up and take to the ER or nursing home. Now I have the time to go back to my studio, sort through my materials and go back to creating on a larger scale."

We are looking forward to learning more about felting from our fellow HAS member Mary Fish on Wednesday evening.

Voices of Emerging Artists

by Isabelle Colantounio

All About Adobe Creative Cloud

Adobe Creative Cloud is a popular online program where you pay monthly to get access to Adobe’s programs like Photoshop, Illustrator, and more. For this month’s article, I wanted to highlight some important features and unique programs that are offered in your subscription. From the basic programs that are well known to more specific programs, I will discuss how I make use of all of the aspects of my creative cloud account.

First, the most well know programs are Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, and Premiere Pro. These three programs are some of the most well-known and can be used in many different fields. While these programs do have major benefits and are extremely useful, there are many more programs that can even further improve your projects.

Some programs that I have used for graphic design and can be used for promotional materials are Adobe Express, Fonts, Color, and Stock. Adobe Express is similar to Canva, where you can create posters and graphics for organizations, resumes, and even social media posts quickly. With Creative Cloud, you have access to all templates for your projects. For Adobe Fonts and Stock, you can access different fonts and stock photos to use in your projects. This is useful for graphic design, resumes, or even building a mockup of a project. Adobe Color is also useful when mocking up projects, where you can use different concepts in color theory to create color pallets using their tools.

Next, some more specific programs include, Mixamo, Aero, Dimension, and Animate. These tools are mostly used in game design and animation, and these tools range from working with 3D asset animation, general animation, AR, and general 3D. I personally have tested out these programs, and they are useful for experimenting with using 3D art in different projects.

Lastly, some more day-to-day focused programs include Adobe Portfolio, Fill & Sign, and Scan. These programs are all simple to use and are perfect for everyday use, and help you get even more out of your creative cloud membership. Adobe Portfolio is a portfolio creation program where you can set up all of your art and use a free domain included in your subscription (custom-paid domains can also be used). Adobe Fill & Sign is an app on your phone where you can sign your documents easily. This can be helpful to have on the go and use whenever needed. Lastly, Adobe Scan is used to scan documents, which can be helpful to have high-quality scans right from your phone and easily track documents with your phone.

There are still many more programs on Creative Cloud that you can download and use for all of your projects. I highly recommend experimenting with as many as you can and making use of the various features as well as the various apps that they have been adding to the subscription. I have personally found many of these programs very useful and look forward to all of the new programs they will be creating.

All information on these programs came from the Adobe Creative Cloud Page: https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud.html

Succession Planning

Last but not least, we wanted to mention that our fearless leader Ron Weiss is going to be stepping down from the position of President after a three busy years. We are going to need to fill the position of President for HAS and we are entertaining the idea of making it a co-president seat where two people could share the role. Everyone is busy and to volunteer in this capacity is often too much for one person to commit to. If you would be interested in having a conversation about what the position entails we would be happy to take the time to explain the extent of the responsibilities. Or, if you would like to nominate someone who you believe would be a good fit please reply to this email and we will respond to you with next steps. Thank you for being part of HAS!