About the Artist

Professional Artist Andy Nortnik got his start working as a graphic designer for a small ad agency in Denver Colorado in 1989 after graduating from The Colorado Institute of Art (now known as the Art Institute of Colorado) with an Associate's Degree in Visual Communications. Moving up the ladder quickly, he became a screen print artist at a small sign shop, a production artist for another ad agency and then found a very creative position as the Senior Artist for the Sales Division of the Fortune 100 Company MCI/WorldCom. After devoting 5 years to the Creative Department of MCI, Andy honed his skills as a cartoonist, illustrator and digital artist and eventually became a very busy freelance artist on the side as well. After playing the role as Art Director for a Fortune 500 Human Resource company and then moving on to Art Director for Arthur Andersen Consulting, Andy was finally able to save up enough money to pursue his lifelong dream to become a full-time, professional freelance illustrator and opened his own design studio in the year 2000 where he freelances and sub contracts his services today for such clients as Cabelas, Mall of America, Grease Monkey and others.

After perusing the clip art market for some time, Andy decided to combine his love of art gone by with his digital illustration skills and venture into the niche market of vintage style clipart, illustration and designs. Growing up in the eighties, Andy loved to watch the black and white reruns of I Love Lucy, The Andy Griffith Show and Leave it to Beaver and ached to relive a simpler time gone by … the "fifties" generation of his parents' childhood. So, living vicariously through his nostalgic illustrations, Andy now specializes in retro and vintage style art including World War II pinup girls (otherwise known as "nose art" or bombshells), classic holiday art, western art and assorted clip art that he sells from his online web store. You can purchase and in many cases, instantly download high quality vector and web-ready art from his official website. Andy's main client base consists of graphic designers, T-shirt printers, sign makers, silk screen printers and those needing classic 1950's nostalgia style art in a hurry. Since most of Andy's collections are available via instant download, and many of the illustrations are color separated using Pantone Matching System colors (PMS), the customer can literally be using Andy's clip art within minutes from the time it is purchased.

Here are only few clipart collections Andy offers from his official Web store:

• Pinup Girl Clip Art - Pinup "pin up" girls, cheesecake models & WWII bombshells bomber nose art graphics for digital printing & T-shirts!
• Retro Clip Art Volume I - Retro & vintage style clip art, ad art, billboards, signs & logos from the 1930s, 1940s & 1950s! Free retro fonts too!
• Retro Clip Art Volume II - More vintage style clipart, advertising art, web art & templates created as if from the thirties, forties & fifties!
• Vintage Clip Art - Diner, kitchen, cafe, coffee house & housekeeping clip art! Cooking & recipe drawings for homemade gifts & craft projects!
• Western Clip Art - Old west art like cowboys, rodeo & rockabilly images! Poker, gaming & gambling clip art & free western fonts too!
• Christmas Clip Art - Classic Christmas and holiday images including borders & frames, Santa, kids, decorations, antique toys and more!
• Halloween Clip Art Volume I - Retro Halloween clip art for greeting cards, invitations & party decorations! Classic horror movie monsters too! Perfect for tee shirts!
• Halloween Clip Art - Volume II - A classic collection of devil clipart, pumpkin clipart, cat clipart, moon clipart, skull clipart, witch clipart, and mom, dad, boy and girl in costume clipart.
• Cartoon Clip Art - Over 600 cartoon clip art images on CD ROM including ad art, logo art and T-shirt templates too!
• Cowgirl Clip Art - Western, rodeo style cowgirls and gun slinging vixens from the old west!
• Dogs and Cats Clip Art Volume I - More cartoon dog & cat clip art than you can shake a tail at! Great for scrap booking!
• Dog and Cat Clip Art Volume II - The companion collection to "Dogs & Cats Volume I" ... more dogs and cats clip art and cartoons!

Andy can be reached via his website http://www.andynortnik.com and is available for freelance work and custom illustration too.

What is retro clip art?

Retro or also known as "vintage" style clip art or "line art" is artwork that was generally created between the decades of the 1930's, 1940's and 1950's through the 1980's. Although much of the artwork that was created by the artists before the 1950's is now copyright-free because it is in the public domain and the copyrights have expired, artist Andy Nortnik chooses to create "new", high quality, high resolution retro-looking art, in color and black and white that has the same appeal as the nostalgic art created by wonderful artists of the classic periods. Many of the so called "retro clip art websites" that offer their clip art today are owned and operated by self-proclaimed "artists" who actually scan other artist's artwork from old magazines with an imaging device such as a scanner and then resell the images online for profit in their new, digitized form. Andy prefers to create new, unique artwork from scratch with a retro feel and to give the proposed vintage clip art customer options to the other low quality, black and white scanned, and for the most part expensive, art images that are being offered at other so-called "retro clipart" sites. In fact, most of Andy's image collections contain between 50-75 images in three industry-standard formats and are available for the same price as individual images sold at most competing sites!

Take a look at any one of Andy's images and you will see that love, hard work and quality resonate from each image. There's no scanned clip art here! Just high quality original art at a reasonable price.

More information can also be found at the WikiPedia web page on Retro.