During the 1990s, while lecturing around the country, Patty and I got to know Tony Matthews, who we would run onto at various genealogy conferences. Tony is an extremely talented artist. At the time he was producing some fantastic genealogy wall charts, which he would have printed in black & white, and then hand-color, making each chart a totally unique piece of art. We absolutely loved the charts, and gave them to various friends and relatives as gifts.
During the later part of the decade, Tony compiled a book made up of 92 unique black & white pedigree charts, most 4 and 5 generation charts.
With the advent of programs like Photoshop Elements, we now have the capability of scanning pages from the Paper Trees book, and coloring the features with the computer, just as Tony did with pen and ink and making each pedigree chart a unique piece of art, excellent to show off the family pedigree. Once filled in and colored, they can be output as a jpg file, and shared as a computer file – allowing the relatives to print in any way they like. Or you can print them out, and frame them, making excellent gifts that will long be treasured.
I am now making unique pedigree charts for my close relatives (don’t tell them!). Since I’ve had such a good time with this, I asked my friend, Tom Underhill (whose written several books on using Photoshop), to produce a colorful instruction brochure explaining how to color and fill in the names in the pedigree charts using Photoshop Elements 10 (other Photoshop versions are similar, but may have slightly different menus and tool bars). Anyone purchasing a copy of Paper Trees from Family Roots Publishing will automatically get a FREE copy of a colorful instruction brochure explaining how to color and fill in the names in the pedigree charts using Photoshop Elements 10 (other Photoshop versions are similar, but may have slightly different menus and tool bars). The brochure is made up for use with a Flip-Pal mobile scanner, but it’s generic enough that it’s useful for anyone using any scanner, and Photoshop Elements.
Paper Trees is also a unique collection of hand-drawn family trees and charts which you can fill in and color by yourself. All of these beautiful designs are original, and they are available as clip-art for use as cards, announcements, book covers, section dividers, reunion T-shirts and mugs, newsletter designs, research aids, or for any of a thousand other things.
Filled in by hand, calligraphy, or type, and hand-colored in pen, paint, or computer program (like Photoshop Elements), each of these family trees is guaranteed to be unique, and each illustration – whether elegant, whimsical, or just plain folksy – is a joyful celebration of your family. Uses for it are limited only by your imagination.
You can scan or copy & photo-reduce the family trees for use as note cards and stationery, or you can enlarge them to show family detail at its optimum. Remember that each of these family trees is an ancestral tree. The tree starts with you, and each generation back doubles in size, showing two parents, four grandparents, eight great-grandparents, etc.
You’ll have a great time with these illustrations, and you can pass them on finished or unfinished, as printed items or computer files, to be treasured as keepsakes or to be embellished and completed by others.
To Order, Click here: Paper Trees: Genealogical Clip-Art, by Tony Matthews; 100 pg; 92 charts; Paperback; ISBN 978-0-8063160-7-9; 1999; Item GPC3832; $18.76
