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Here's a montage of few bits and pieces I've made during the last few weeks. As TalkGraphics is my spiritual home and as an incentive to myself, every now and then I'll try and post a summary of what I've been up to. My new art toolbox now contains Affinity Designer & Photo, VectorStyler and ArtRage Vitae (all Mac versions).
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Maybe you need to draw a diagonal through the heart on your profile image. :)
Very nice, creative work. I have always maintained that graphics software is just a set of tool, and a good artist will figure out how to make the tool set work for what she/he needs.
Thanks Gary. (new profile image added, until I think of a better one!)
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good to see you having fun... but visitor never, you always a member here
even if you end up returning as the prodigal son [which i am sure you won't :)]
Thanks HD - a member I shall be. You never know! Windows 11 does look good. :-)
Here’s a WIP that's on the drawing board at the moment. It's a Robert Hooke 'flea' inspired drawing and texture experiment of a deepwater amphipod (another personal project that may or may not go further!). I traced over a photo of the amphipod recently found nearly 7000m down in the Mariana trench - and it had plastic in its stomach!
Basically I'm playing about as much as possible to try and build up familiarity to the same level I had with Xara and Windows. A surprise and perhaps saving grace of my Mac experience so far, has been VectorStyler. It's a real box of tricks and its drawing capability is much more in tune with how I like to do things.
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I recognize at least a couple of them well, done Jono.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jonopen
Thanks Larry.
Hi folks, here's another batch of random sketches, scribbles and ideas waiting to see the light of day.
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Traditional and digital ink & watercolour sketches of:
a) ladybird (ladybug) larvae
b) pots and pans in kitchen
c) spooky graveyard
d) adult ladybird
e) edited photo (new background, crop etc) of plaster casts at the Galleria dell'Accademia, Florence, Italy
f) more work done on the amphipod!
g) Oct Scribble challenge 1
h) Oct Scribble challenge 2
All good creative work, Jono. Always enjoy seeing what you are up to.
Hi All,
I'm not exactly sure why, but since (mostly) switching away from Xara* and from Windows to a Mac, I think my output and productivity has really gone downhill. Maybe I've just been busier/distracted in other areas of my life. I have got a few of creative projects simmering on the back burner so hopefully if I can get in the right frame of mind, I'll be back up to speed.
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A) March scribble - It's all in the nose!
B) copy of an Oscar Reutersvärd 'impossible object'. I've put this one through Prisma (iPad bitmap filter app) to give it a painterly look.
C) odium!
D) again, just fiddling about
E) even more experimenting. Jeez, what am I actually doing with my life?
F) documenting the drawing of a fish eye! This is all vital stuff you know! ;-)
G) tree image from the past that I plan to redevelop further. It was originally made for an A3 sized screen print.
*I've actually bought a copy of Xara Photo & Graphic Design to test how Windows scaling looked. (it looks great, as does Windows!).
just be creative in every thing you do jono [well unless you are explaining yourself to Mr Plod :)]
way to go...
They look good Jono I may not like all of t but all in all in all good work.
When I was a kid, after a bit of a night out, I was walking home carrying a big gnarly old log, and you guessed it, Mr Plod apprehended me! I can't remember the exact details (obviously), but think I got away with it by saying I was an art student!:DQuote:
Originally Posted by handrawn
Hello all, it's been a while but here's my latest roundup of bits and pieces (aka 'stuff').
Except for these doodles and experiments, things have been fairly quiet digitally. I have however recently discovered a local print studio that can do A2 giclée prints, which has really got my cogs going again.
As usual a few of the images originated from the Scribble challenge or were inspired from topics on the TG forum. For example the magazine, where I tried out Affinity Designer's new warp tool to layout the text (image below).
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Nice. Keep on being creative.
Hello all, It's funny how things come together. I've been wanting to produce a set of 12 or so stamps for a (top secret at the moment) project that's been on the back burner for years. A third party content producer (Artifex Forge) has just released a collection of graphics, styles and brushes (for Affinity Designer/Illustrator) for creating vintage postage stamps. So anyway, I thought I kick start the project and give them a go.
Although the graphics pack contains a load of ready made stamp templates, to understand how it all works, I recreated a stamp from scratch after deconstructing one of the template files. In actual fact I don't think there's anything in the pack that can't be done with Xara, it would just take a different approach.
Anyhow, after lots of head scratching here's my first shot. For fun I've also included July's 2023's scribble line in the 'J' of Jono!
Hopefully I'll get another 'graphics roundup' together to post here soon.
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I always found stamps fascinating when I was a kid. The designs and styles always caught my eye. Sounds like an interesting project to design your own.
Thanks gray. I'm also fascinated with stamps. Some of them are like miniature artworks. With my project I’m aiming to roughly complete one drawing a month including any research and accompanying text. So see you next year! (only joking, I'm sure I'll be around here before too long).Quote:
Originally Posted by gray
Here’s the latest round-up of imagery that's been loitering on my SSD for the last few months. As usual they've mostly originated from the TG monthly scribble challenge, so they're an eclectic mix of doodles, experiments and ideas.
I’m mainly now using Affinity Designer but dabble with VectorStyler and occasionally with Inkscape. Even after several years, I still have a love/hate relationship with the Mac OS. Probably due to my deeply ingrained past life using Windows.
Cheers, Jono
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Great compilation Jono.
Just for fun I thought I'd give it a try in Xara. I used the example construction on this page: Page image below.Quote:
In actual fact I don't think there's anything in the pack that can't be done with Xara
Here's the result.
The face was created in MidJourney AI using
and converted to vector using TraceJourney AI and cleaned up in Xara.Quote:
Imagine : Copperplate illustration of 19th century mans full face, bearded --s 750 --v 5.1 --style raw
The remainder was all Xara creation and the whole drawing is vector. Used Spray.exe to create the noise effect.
Fun to do :D
:wow That's brilliant Egg. Nice use of Spray.exe. I'd forgotten about those little utility programs.
I must check out MidJourney AI and TraceJourney AI. Looks like they could be useful and save a bit of time for my 'stamp project'.
Thanks & cheers Jono, it was a fun project. Couple of things I forgot is that using a fractal or cloud fill creates a bitmap as does creating anything other than a floor shadow. I could get around creating a vector glow shadow but the textured fill in Xara isn't possible as far as I can see.
Of course creating vectors, as in the case of the face, makes for very large file sizes so unless it's really required very large isn't worth the effort. Further to this, using a bitmap allows you to use dark/light contones which is great if you want to use named colours across the stamp.
Hi all, here's a round-up/montage of my [eclectic] scribble challenge entries from the last few months.
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Thank you Rik and Lynn for keeping the L&L Scribble challenge going.
Extremely nautical in the main Jono and all excellently enjoyable.
I agree, very enjoyable Jonopen.
Love it Jon.
Thanks all. They were all enjoyable to make too. I never quite know what's going to come to mind each month so they are actually a surprise to me, which is great fun.
Meanwhile...
Seasons Greetings to one and all.
Here's an idea I've been playing around with off and on for a few days. It was actually inspired by a small wooden sculpture I saw in a museum in Krakow (Poland) earlier in the year.
It's called, "Keep holding on - with novelty reindeer antlers".
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hi jono, just catching up with the thread - now you really don't need me to tell you how good you are, do you ?
seasons greetings - I will put the novelty reindeer antlers with the joy division oven gloves.... :D
And a Happy Christmas to you Jono.
This variation is called "Still holding on".
haha, I've not looked but I bet such things exist! :D (and now I want some!)Quote:
Originally Posted by handrawn
That's fantastic Egg and very apt. Only yesterday I was left hanging in a looped message for 15 mins with no position countdown.Quote:
Originally Posted by Egg Bramhill
not sure about that, but burk'n'ead band half man half biscuit wrote a song about them; it's a satirical take on merchandising; if you lookaround google you may get some interpretations on the lyrics that strive to be insightful, meaningful even, but if you listen to it, its a pi**take :)Quote:
Originally Posted by Jonopen
Ahhh, I knew I recognised 'Joy Division Oven Gloves'. :DQuote:
Originally Posted by handrawn
Although I'm reasonably familiar with HMHB (via the days of John Peel) I don't think I've made it through one of their albums in one sitting yet. They've recorded some great tunes to whistle along to, but I find you have to be careful as they can become persistent earworms. I'm thinking 'Deep House Victims Minibus Appeal' - "Said the public sector leader, At the pre-launch breakfast briefing, Get your cheque books out..." (I'm humming it just writing this!) :(
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(pretty tasteless when all things considered - Joy Division + oven gloves)
.. I can find my way home from sierra leone, but I'm lost without.. an.. inside.. pocket !
Yes, inside pockets! :D
It's been pretty quiet for me since Christmas. I had the flu which was horrible and wiped me out for a while. Anyway as usual I've got plenty of ideas and projects waiting on the drawing board.
Something I keep returning back to every few years is tessellating patterns, particularly in the style of the dutch graphic artists, M.C. Escher. Recently I came across this website (link below) which is brilliant and definitely worth exploring. Anyone who has tried to manually draw and perfectly align these type of interlocking shapes will appreciate how it works.
https://tiled.art/en/home
The attached graphics contain a bit more information.
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