You are too kind, gray!
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Printable View
You are too kind, gray!
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I can't really claim credit for this design. It's several hundred years old, and a low res version printed in a book at 2 bits per pixel. So I guess I restored it.
It's from a series called the Busha, a kind of happy mix between Lombardic and Art Nouveau.
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S0o why not share it?
It's attached in Xara format, and the letter inside can and should be deleted so you can put your own fancy initial there. That's what the "plates" are designed for. I've got about 20 to do yet, should I care to reproduce them.
Enjoy!
Gary
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That initial will do just fine. Xara's good for converting old low res work into a more printable format now. I just completed a similar low res to hi res work a short time ago.
I had to do this by hand, auto-tracing would have yielding nothing, as it was quite small in the book, and only one bit per pixel. I often could tell whether an area was originally a curve or the image was just dithered down unprofessionally!
Coming up very soon: a digital download of my 6th album of Christmas song arrangements.
I'll be posting the link in a few days so you can enjoy the music before the Holidays, or have plenty of time to delete the files and try to forget them.
I'm more or less kidding above!
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I think this took 92 bevels—the soft-side type—to complete a reproduction of some art we lost in a flooded basement.
It seems seasonal, no?
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Only 19 days to go, eh?
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My Best,
Gary
Uuuuoooo!
I like that a LOT!!!
Absolutely lovely, Gare, you keep amazing me!
Thank you, kind folks.
Take any guesses how many hours it took?
It was a replacement drawing Barbara had ruined.
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Many hours.
:)
But not as many hours as Bouton's 6th Annual Christmas Music Album!
(What a cheesy lead-in!)
Neither Barbara nor I have the disposable income to press scores music CDs this year, so the next best thing was to set up a standalone page on our website to serve as a download target.
The Details, IOW why you should bother with a 60MB download:
•On and off, I started in September to arrange or find arrangements on the web, to orchestrate, record, and then mix 20 Christmas songs, from 16th Century to jazz treatment of standards. If you've heard the other albums over the years, you'll know I've been sincere and diligent in my attempt to spread good cheer.
• By making them mp3 files, you can not only play them on your desktop, but also sych them to your phones, for travel, or stick them on a USB stick if your car has a jack.
All you do is go to
theboutons.com/2018xmasmusic,
click the button that has the smiley, accept the download in the d'box, and when it's arrived, pop the zip file, bring up WinAmp or whatever (AIMP kicks butt), crank it up to 11 (:)) and get salubrious.
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Happy Holidays to Everybody!
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The Admin and The Floating Mod
You were tipped over?
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No, it's just a dance.
And what a dance it is.... (chuckle)
There's one cut names "Skating".
My good friend and career-long Technical Editor Professor William Schneider (I get to call him Bill) wrote to me telling me that was the first cut to which he'd listened. This is why, from a tutorial on photo retouching quite a while ago:
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Bill just loves ice skating, so I thought a good, personal skating rink for him might be those kidney-shaped turtle ponds.
Fool Disclosure: The tune is from "A Charlie Brown Christmas", where Lucy, Linus and friends are ice skating. Not a "true" Christmas song, blah, blah.
:)
Hey, I just received an email from someone I don't know.
And the subject was "Increase your drive..."
I just tossed it in the delete folder.
I HAD to be spam, because I don't even play golf.
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I was just goofing around with an Escher-influenced design.
The I got the idea to tag the colors.
And I did it wrong, but you can still change the colors by selecting all, and then on the Colour Editor in HSB mode (is the best) drag the puck around the hue area.
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The Xara file is free, I'm giving to the community 1.) because the ClipArt forum area has cobwebs on it, and 2.) why not share?
Worse case is that I don't get credited, and that part of my ego has calluses on it. :)
Enjoy!
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Ya beat me to it, I was thinking of doing something similar or almost it, saw something like this but very simple on Pixabay, But family matters have taken priority and still do.
I would for sure give credit to ya when I do get to doing more, I thank you for sharing and allowing the community to use this creation.
Your flattery makes me blush, Sir!
I'm just trying to keep this Godforsaken forum alive. You see how much MAGIX promotes the product via an excellent channel. Not ever.
Here's a Golden Oldie in the Sprint of Christmas Past, I guess:
These are Xara Brushes, they are bitmaps so don't try editing them, and they are our Christmas Gift to our TalkGraphics community.
And I built them nine years ago, so jusr about every version of Xara Designer will take them.
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Here's how to play around (in the Christmas Spirit):
1. Download the zip file below, and pop it.
2. Open the Xara document in Xara. You can try opening it it Malware Pro, but your chances of success are dim.
Every different string of images are document strokes brushes.
3. As an experiment, select the popcorn stroke and the Ctrl+C it.
Press Crtl+N to start a new document and then press Ctrl+V to put the popcorn string on the page.
Because Xara stores pasted stuff in the document itself, you now own the popcorn string in the new document.
4. Choose the Freehand tool. This guy is the one to use with preset strokes.
5. Go to town. Unless you live in the suburbs. See the next figure.
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You're welcome, and celebrate any holiday you choose: Hanukkah, Christmas, and any others I'm not aware of!
Happy, happy from Barbara (Admin) and Gary (unofficial clown)
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This is not a sleazy advertisement for Amazon. It's not even a classy one.
It's Bouton™ Slice of Humor.
Which most ignore.
Very nice brushes, Gare, thanks a bunch!
Happy holidays to you and Barbara and thanks for both the order (Admin) and the fun (Art) at TG!
You're more than welcome, Boy!
The sad thing is that if I'd posted this on the ClipArt area, no one would have seen it. I've already got the last two submissions on there and no takers.
Which means one of two things:
1. Yes, I am fun, and the response is good on TG.
2. I ought to set up a Sabrette's frankfurter and gyros cart on the corner of this thread, because I get a lot fo traffic. :)
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@Gare
I shall give that ole college try, again I am very thankful for many assist here of the community, as well as the opportunity see and or use the art work of the much more talented here when able to.
Enjoy the Holidays with your family / Merry Christmas... May it be Joyful...
I've still got my eyes closed and it's still dark. What now? I've been like this for two days. Merry Christmas to you and yours, Gare, and I'll take two dogs with all the fixings.
I was wondering whether that line about what we used to call "The Umbrella Room" in Manhattan would "play" outside of New York!
I guess it does! :)
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Have a terrific one, everybody.
Give your loved ones your love,
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-g
I found this piece of free vector art on a free clipart site, but it didn't "translate" to Xara very well. And although there are a few superfluous control points here and there, it's overall a pretty clean reproduction and I give my version away freely here.
Now, unless you have Glaser Stencil installed, you won't get the look of the 2019 numbers. Not to worry; I used blends between copies of the characters, and to modify the numbers, say for example to "JOY!", move the blends over to a clean area, and then highlight the characters in wireframe view quality and replace them one at a time, then move them back into place.
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And may all your Christmases be bright,
Love,
Gary
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Thanks, Gare. I downloaded that and pulled it all apart. Nicely done and very effective. Cheers.
I feel this composition really belongs to my Xara work, rather than non-work (?), because creating and rendering the cups and mugs were idiot's work—I can attest to that—while designing the labels in Xara took much more time.
Cheers, guys, have a Colonial cuppa.
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—Gare
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Clever, Gare. Well done! ...and thanks for the wake up brew...ymmmm.
You're most welcome, Fred! Good to have two people on tg. Here's to making it three. :)
This is a piece I did in Xara, and then used Nik's Filter Suite to smear darker tones and add a little grain.
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—gary
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I like the texture, Gary. Adds another layer of interest.
Thank you!
I did it, to tell the truth, because I was not confident the piece would "play" at something more photorealistic than a bunch of extruded primitive shapes.
IMO, it's a piece that falls apart if you only use one drawing. Together, in the cold type box, they seem to work.
My Best,
Gary
I like your choice of Square Meal Hearty font for this!
Fabulous work as always, Gare.
(May I be added to the list of people on TG) ;)
Okay, Bob,we're up to a whopping 6 tg members. Hold on while I build an extension to accommodate all the people—oh, Gary P. on the mod forum makes 7 now oh god. :)
Love, love, love Stu Sadler's Font Diner fonts. Both whimsical and either Retro or immortal.
Stu'd WordPress site is down at the moment (how embarrasing!); keep trying Stu's Font Diner to see the whole store.
He, in cooperation with Bitstream, also have some Web fonts over at FontSquirrel.
And there are some free fonts (but buy one or two for good Karma, eh?) at
dafont
I have been created my own Xara splash screens ever since miromax stopped designing them back with version 5 Extreme. I'm putting them here in my Xara gallery rather than my non-Xara gallery, because although I often create a splash image with a non-Xara program, I lay the screen out, design it, and ultimately export it from XD.
And besides, the splash screen is for Xara, not non-Xara!
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—g
Well Gare, I finally did something with your lime, it's not simple.
Mostly it's a photo manipulation. The lime is yours, the text and stream made up, assembled in Xara almost everything else is bitmap.Attachment 123468
THAQT is funny, Larry!
I'd never had thought of this on MY own!
Is there also a Tequila Nebula and a Salt Quadrant out there? :)
Here is yet another splash screen I designed (photo plus mostly Xara layout, text, design) eons ago...
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I took the colours from MAGIX's abstract original splash and tried to make it equally abstract, but a little more artistic. Some day, I will try to put these bitmap strokes into XD's Strokes Gallery. I created them using ArtRage.
OMMMMMMMMMMmmmmm....
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Took me long enough to do something with the lime Gare.
Ah well at least I came up with something.