Donal Jolley
I am a completely self-taught artist and designer whose roots in the design business are found in the printing business. At the beginning of the desktop publishing revolution I was working for a large printing company in San Diego, California, running the prepress department. I worked alongs other lithographers and San Diego's best designers, overseeing the process of transforming the designer's ideas into print. Over time I became known amongst the designers and sales representatives as someone to go to with difficult technical questions, and my reputation in the city's printing scene grew.
I took an acute interest in Photoshop, Illustrator and QuarkXpress way before the advent of layers and layer masks, taking basic classes in each application (as well as PageMaker, Freehand and Director). After resigning in 1994, I began freelancing, sharing a bedroom office with our newborn son prior to building a small room in our garage to serve as a new workplace. During those early years I taught advanced level design courses with an emphasis on Photoshop and Illustrator at Platt College in San Diego, as well as workshops for professional designers and prepress operators trying to expand their technical knowledge of both applications.
Beginning in 1995 I began designing for a couple of Christian ministries, who quickly became our main clients. Over the course of the next 13 years my work became well known and widely circulated. Book covers, logos, a few album covers and especially the top magazine of its kind, Turning Points, helped me earn a reputation for stellar work of the highest quality. Many publications tried to emulate the magazine without a lot of success until we parted ways in late 2008. Since that time I've permanently retired from the world of religious design.
Work began being published many years ago in major design books and magazines, starting with Cher Threinen-Pendarvis' "The Painter 3 WOW! Book." Since then I've been in each subsequent version, and was commissioned to replace Jack Davis as the cover artist for "The Photoshop WOW! Book" series, a great honor and accomplishment. Many more examples and gallery images were included in the contents of Linnea Davis and Kristen Gillespie's "The Photoshop CS/CS2 WOW! Book" as well as their next version, "The Photoshop CS3/CS4 WOW! Book." The latest WOW! series to publish my work is "The Adobe Illustrator CS5 WOW! Book" written by Sharon Steuer, also a great honor as the vector-based application is so far removed from the raster-based Photoshop and Painter applications.
Other work has found its way into many different places, from Wacom's website showing tricks and techniques to Photoshop User Magazine and many other publications and websites.
In 2009, Cher Thrienen-Pendarvis and I released "Beyond Digital Photography: Transforming Photographs into Art Using Photoshop and Painter," published by Peachpit Press. The book provides many different techniques to achieve traditional media looks using digital media, and is aimed at novice to advanced users of either Photoshop or Painter. My expertiece in Photoshop and Photoshop Camera Raw is used throughout the book to show readers both borrowed and completely self-developed tricks and techniques to emulate wildly different styles of art.
In addition to design and art, I am a skilled cartoonist and illustrator. I've nearly put the finishing touches on a second book, which remains under cover. It's hilarious and heart-warming, and currently is being edited by my good friend Linnea Dayton.
I use my cartooning and excellent kid skills as I volunteer weekly at Children's Hospital of Atlanta, where I've drawn, joked with and consoled many children and their families before making kids take literally thousands of my drawings over the past six or seven years - whether they want them or not. I'll be writing more about those interactions on my new blog, "JolleyBlog."
I live just north of Atlanta, Georgia in a community called Johns Creek, with my bride of over 24 years and the two of our children still left in the nest. .
