Gary Bouton's Xara Stuff

[Gare]

A lot of feathering and linear transparency.

-g

[Gare]

This was an exercise in masochism: all the shapes are beveled.

Hey, I wanted a centerpiece to a fancy sidewalk.



—g

[Rik]

I like that very much, Gary.

[Gare]

Thank you, Rik.

I'd like to say it was a labour of love, but mostly it was just labour.

;)

-g

[Gare]

I did this to illustrate color space as a space, a more tangible visual than trying to describe, in this case, HSB color space.



—g

[csehz]

It is really self-explaining like it very much

[Fred vanderZee]

Gary, your reply is both eloquent and informative.

I always compare vector drawing to sculpting with clay. You start with some basic shape. By adding and removing clay you work slowly towards a final sculpture. The process of vector drawing follows a simular flow, as you've so aptly described above.

The thing I like most about Xara is that it allows you to 'sculpt' your image in an intuitive way, with great artistic freedom to experiment and refined perfection if needed.

[laser1]

Superb art and fonts...

[wizard509]

I echo laser1, very nice Gary.

[Gare]

Thank you, both.

I cannot claim that the lettering is mine, though. Blambot-free and commercial comic book typefaces

is a terrific resource for hand lettering. I have a small but functional collection. Sift through his pages and notice there's a "F" for free and a "Pay" for not-free. If you're into comic strips, patronize the guy.

I haven't used my drawing board in a few years; Captain Apex there is a hand drawing I scanned and finished in Xara after some auto-tracing, and I've been doing hand lettering for decades, but digital fonts that faithfully represent the tone and humanity of a hand-lettered phrase is a real time saver as long as it represents your intention.

I think I did three poses of him; here's the last:

The halftone dots are a little exaggerated, but hey; you can't spend forever one one single piece. One of these days I'll make a Giveaway of the Month on the Xone of seamless tiling halftone dots in common comic book colors such as flash and orange and green so members can clip shapes to the "textures" and make your own authentic vintage comic books. Today, the "Graphic novels" use high-resolution printing and you don't "see the dots" anymore, but I'm kind of nostalgic for the days when comic book paper was of the quality you used to wrap fish in, and the resolution was something like 35 lines per inch. :)

My Best,

Gary