First XaraX

[Penny O'Rorke]

Here's my first total XaraX - I love all the new features and have used most of them here, except the bevel tool. Can't wait for finished product.

[Ross Macintosh]

Wow! I especially like the depth and "atmosphere". In my illustrations I often have to draw vegetation so I particularly enjoy seeing how others do it. I find it interesting that you didn't use the bevel tool. When I first heard that Xara X would have the bevel tool and the ability to change a stroked line to a shape - I was excited by the potential in more easily drawing leaf shapes. You might want to try converting a stroked line to a shape, and then apply the inside bevel. I think the example attached gets the idea across. - The bevel tool isn't just for buttons and text effects.

Thanks, Ross

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[Penny O'Rorke]

.....wish I'd thought of that! Thanks Ross, it really works - Penny

[Luciano]

An example simply made to test alternative use of bevels, lines and shadows.
A bevel retains the direction of light even after rotation, so it was really a matter of minutes to draw this "sun".
The face of the sun is a bevel itself.

Ciao,
Luciano

[Ross Macintosh]

That's great Luciano! I imagine that it is always sunny like that in San Marino. I'd almost forgot what the sun looks like - here in Nova Scotia it has been raining for a week (an unusually long stretch of bad weather for us).

Regards, Ross

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[Egg Bramhill]

Love this work. The brush tool can also quicken making tree and grass textures. Here I've used one blade of "grass" as the first brush, adjusted the spacing and hue & saturation as well as the sizing to get different sizes and colours of the same shape. I then "converted line to shape" and ungrouped to pull all the blades into a compact group. This group I then made into a further brush and with just 3 lines got the tree type shape on the right. I cloned flipped & scaled this to get the left shape. Finally I cloned both shapes, "added shapes" gave 2 different fills and applied a transparency.

[Egg Bramhill]

and another example

[Ross Macintosh]

Your examples are very inspiring. They reinforce what a powerful tool Xara X is. Seeing grass-like follage created so effectively makes me wonder if you are up to one of the ultimate tests: realistic fur or hair? I hope so!

Regards, Ross

PS: Do I understand it correctly, there are no bitmaps in your grass technique? If so, does it make sense to have used named colours/shades of named colours to allow easy modification of the colouring of the completed grasses?

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[Egg Bramhill]

I've just realised this is the Gallery forum & really I don't suppose we really ought to be doing this here so I've posted my method in the Xara X forum under "Grass technique"

[Eric]

great drawing penny, your brother mickey must be very proud of you

cheers
eric [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_rolleyes.gif[/img] [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif[/img]