Gary Bouton's Xara Stuff

[Gare]

I wanted to do something that sits comfortably between photorealism and illustration:



My Best,

Gary

[Rik]

Pretty cool, Gary.

Now. What would you write on your photo-realistic illustration?!

[Ron Duke]

Very nice Master Gare. Did you convert lines to objects, OR, how did you do the rings?

[Gare]

Thank you, Sir Ron!

What I did was draw lines, convert them to shapes, and then filled them with your "standard" goldish artifacting—linear deep gold to light gold gradient to the horizon, and then sort of a mirror of the linear gradient at the bottom. Which isn't photorealistic...first, cheap notebooks don't have gold rings (!) and if they did, they'd be picking up some of the white paper with light blue rules at the bottoms of their reflections.

Fool disclosure: although I was pleased with the result, my intention was to use the drawing as custom icon for TXT files. And I did .

My Best and the Beginning of Happy Holidays,

Gary

[gray]

I like the way you did those rings, Gary.

[Gare]

Thanks, Gray. Truth is they need more pieces and more work, because their apparition falls apart were I to provide a closer zoom into them!

Imagine that: vector art that only works at one resolution!



My Best,

Gary

[Gare]

This floral kaleidoscope pattern is not a product of the Extrude tool. It's 100% vector and scalable. It was a product of a lot of hard work eyeballing how the simple design would look extruded and shaded.



The reason for this remark is that I also offer it freely to the community as clipart, attached.

Enjoy!
Gary

[Ron Duke]

Wow, great work and commitment! Im trying to learn such patience. Its so hard for myself!

[Gare]

Wow, great work and commitment! Im trying to learn such patience. Its so hard for myself!

You are being far too kind and generous, Ron...although I appreciate a pat on the back every so often. :)

1. Begin the "pinwheel" out of one composed piece was easy—you define a center for the entire piece with a horizontal and vertical guide, position your single piece to define the radius of the finished composition, then put the piece in rotate/skew mode to be able to reposition the relative center of the grouped shapes.

2. Then you decide on the number of "petals" you want, Ctrl+Shift+O to Options, divide 360 (in your head or on a calc) by the number of desired petals, and then set the Angle Constraint in the General Options tab to this value.

3. From there, you turn on Snap To for objects, you right-click+drag a rotation handle until a copy snaps into place, repeat n the correct number of times.

(I wrote this for the benefit of everyone reading, so I'm not talking "down" to anyone, okay? :) )

As for the single grouped object, Ron, it was based on 20 years of observing what you see and what is hidden when you extrude a profile (a path-based shape). Plus given a light source, which areas would be shaded and which would be in shadow or semi-shadow. My piece isn't technically 100% accurate...there are still some places that optically merit a shadow, but I tended to call it quits when the finished iece looked finished.

It helps to be a physical pen and ink (and pencil) sort of artist from birth, but it also helps facilitate this stuff if you get into modeling early in your career. I "grew up" (I've never completely grown up) with a modeling program almost synchronously with CorelDRAW, my first drawing program. It was then that I carefully investigated what extruding does to a 2D object, and its impact on its surrounding space.

I had some time on my hands because I'd just had both hips replaced, and decided it would be best to keep sedentary for long periods of time until I was healed!

Here's the beginning of an example if you'd (or anyone) would like to work through my sparse instructions. There's a swatch I put at the far left of the color line called "Dull pink Lemonade". The spade piece is entirely color-tagged so you can make your own pattern as many petaled and any colour you like.



Thanks to Igor for inspiring me with his fantastic geometric work HERE.



My Best,

Gary

[Ron Duke]

Good stuff Gary! I downloaded the file to my "Gary Bouton" folder.
Extremely kind of you to post the tut, also.