Interweaving vines with 3D text

[dcahall]

@wizard509, @BeanPole: Glad you have enjoyed. It has sure taught me a lot even though every time I look at the image I see something else that needs to be corrected. Oh well, the learning process is the most valuable part for me at this sime.

@Gary (or should I use Gare): I messed with the Clip tool some more and got it to work correctly. Not sure what I was doing wrong before but think I have it under control now

[Gare]

Hi Dave—

Gare or Gary is fine.

If you're the IRS, my name is Mr. Howard Feldstein and I live in Miami.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The Clipview has only a few rules but the nice thing about this feature is that it's non-destructive.

You can clip as many shapes as you like. The shape at the bottom of the stack on a layer is the "peephole" through which you see the clipped shapes.

To execute a clip, you press Q while all the candidates are selected.

To unClip a group, you press Alt+Q.

Now, if you combine or Convert to Editable Shapes, then the clipview process is destructive and everything outside the bottom Clipping shape is deleted. Except when you clip a photo. Photographs (bitmaps, images) stored in a document are never altered. To restore a messed-up image, all you do is drag a copy into the document from the Bitmap Gallery.


I trust you're beginning to forget about ArtRage?
<Gary gets serious for a moment>
Oddly, digital painting, at least to me, is a lot more daunting than "drawing". Xara lets you undo and move lines, something a lot more difficult in Painter, ArtRage or other paint programs. Xara and other vector drawing programs have very clear rules: all areas are made of strokes and fills. And all shapes you create can be moved around and scaled, also something darned hard to do when you paint in a paint program.

Look at the Outsider this month to see how talented individuals stretch the bounds of what a drawing program is thought of as capable of doing.

To me, digital drawing is a process that is a lot more forgiving than painting. I admire experienced painters' work; it's just some place I can go, not creatively.
</seriousness>

-g

[dcahall]

I was trying to use the Clip tool in the Photo flyout toolbar. That was the one I did not get to work correctly the first time.

I am not going to give up on ArtRage but I am seeing whole new avenues with the XP&GD that seems to be a better match for my talents (?). I like the painting possibilities but as I said, I am seeing the tool in a different light.

I did recommend your book to someone earlier today (if they can find it). This is the most sharing community I have ever seen. Those of you who have the talents are very good at sharing them with people like myself who are trying to learn. I have even shared some things with others today and felt good about doing it.

I look forward to the next exercises/challenges so that I can learn more. It is certainly giving me a lot of pleasure here in my retirement and making me wish I had some way to put these new found treasures to work (although satisfying myself is great feedback as well).

[BeanPole]

dcahall, angelize, & gare

Thank you for the very interesting thread. I have to admit this one was a tough one for me.

[stygg2003]

dcahall, angelize, & gare

Thank you for the very interesting thread. I have to admit this one was a tough one for me.

Nice one BeanPole, I'd say you made it look easy, love the snake. What techniqe did you favour for the weaving, Clone, Erase or Clip?

Stygg

[dcahall]

I tried all 3 and erasing worked the best for me. A trick Angelize suggest was before I started erasing, put a copy (of the snake or vine) in the back. That way when you erase if you are not exact, the one in the background will show through so and your inaccuracies with the eraser will not show.

I agree, this has been a fun thread.

[Gare]

Just a point of fact with the Eraser tool: Vector shapes suffer permanent editing when you use this tool, but on bitmaps (photos, pixel-based paintings, and so on), you're only masking an area and if you open the Page an Layer Gallery, you can edit and delete the mask. also, as long as even a portion of a bitmap is on the page and the document is saved, the "original" bitmap is stored in the Bitmap Gallery and you can drag a copy onto the page at any time.

[BeanPole]

Actually, it was easy. It was all the things that I did wrong that I had to correct that made it hard! I started out with the tutorial on "Interlocking Rings". This uses the combine shapes - intersect shapes. That was easy and worked very well. Then I did the name and interweaved a snake shape using the intersect shapes.

When I tried to do the line like Gare showed (an earlier post), I couldn't seem to get the intersect shapes to work so I ended up using the eraser. (Later I realized that if I had changed the line to a shape, the intersect shapes likely would have worked!)

For sure the eraser was easy and seemed to work the best for me as well. Ah! Just love that UNDO Button!