Big world, small things. A fly.

[buckobeck]

Thank you Gray. Your airplanes should be in a book too my friend.

Speaking of things that fly, and since we both have a penchant for things with wings, here's a moth I've been working on for quiet awhile. Been going back and forth to it between my other projects trying to get it just so, because I wanted to do my favorite creature of the night justice. The Cecropia Moth is North Americas largest moth, and it's a beauty.

I collected moths and pinned them when I was younger, now I would much rather draw them or take their pictures. I actually like this drawing better than any photo I've taken of them.

Thought it would be hard to create something like this in Xara, but once again it had everything I needed. I see some great insects coming down the pipes!

[gray]

Wow Mark, amazing detail in that work.

[buckobeck]

Thank you Gray. I wasn't happy with it after I started looking closer. Here's an updated one with more details and some minor fixes. I may refine it yet more.
This is much better.

[wizard509]

Thank you Gray. I wasn't happy with it after I started looking closer. Here's an updated one with more details and some minor fixes. I may refine it yet more.
This is much better.

Mark,
Everything I have seen from you so far has been excellent, and this is no exception. Keep up the good work.

[Ron Duke]

The powder effect on the wings came out really nice, Mark. Nice illustration.

[buckobeck]

Thanks Ron. I thought that turned out well too,a great use for semitransparent textured noise.

[buckobeck]

Drew another dragonfly this time around, using a color palette that Bill Taylor; aka (Soquili) created from one of my favorite dragonfly photos back in 2009. The same photo I used as a reference for this drawing. I've been itching to draw this ever since then. I miss this gentleman. He made me feel welcome as I became a new member of talk graphics and was always there with kind words and encouragement. I attached his original post below and the Xara file (to honor Bills giving nature) for you to pick apart and see how it was made, you'll need Eye Candy for a small few of the fills but most of them come with Xara. Thanks for the memories Bill, this ones for you.

Xara file -Attachment 110861


Very nice dragonfly Mark.

I hope you don't mind I made a palette file from some of the colours.

It is a Photoshop type swatches file that can be used in Xtreme as well as some other applications.

For use with Xara Xtreme simply unzip the .aco file to your Palettes folder.

For Xara Xtreme Pro 5.1 that would be C:\Program Files\Xara\Xara Xtreme Pro 5\Palettes

Start Xtreme then open the Color Gallery. Right click on the Dragonfly_by_MarksRGBD65 folder and click on the Show on Color Line option.

The palette was created using myPANTONE Palettes version 1.5 available for free at Pantone.com. http://www.pantone.com/pages/MYP_myp...pg=19567&ca=75 scroll down to find the myPANTONE palette download link. You will need to sign up for free with myPantone to get the free application.

Attached Thumbnails

Attached Files

• Dragonfly_by_MarksRGBD65.zip (430 Bytes, 103 views)

Last edited by Soquili; 22 December 2009 at 07:55 AM.

Soquili
a.k.a. Bill Taylor
Bill is no longer with us. He died on 10 Dec 2012. We remember him always.
My TG Album
Last XaReg update

[pauland]

Really nice.

Great to hear about Soquili.

[buckobeck]

Thanks Paul, always good to hear from you.

Just curious. Do you think the Gaussian blur is effective for creating the out-of-focus illusion of depth of field? Or is their another method you know of and might share?

[pauland]

Sorry, no words of wisdom about blurring things, except when it comes to taking bad photographs.