Last edited by Gare; 22 September 2011 at 12:26 PM.
Fantastic collection of images Gary.
I looked at all of them for ages and I cannot pick a favourite, yet.
Brilliant.
EDIT: OK. I think I like the Chilies one best. But... then the Beverages one is great. But... then the EyePad one is fantastic.
Aaaarrrrggggghhhhhh!
Last edited by Rik; 22 September 2011 at 10:45 PM. Reason: additional comment
Featured Artist on Xara Xone . May 2011
. A Shield . My First Tutorial
. Bottle Cap . My Second Tutorial on Xara Xone
It's an odd assortment of visual topics, isn't it, Rik?
I think aside from making homages to technology (example: Everyone has drawn a computer or mobile device at least once), a lot of us like to pay homage to personal passions.
Mine is music. When I'm not creating art, I'm either sleeping, or creating music.
These finishes have never been available off the rack, but only as custom orders from Rickenbacker International Corporation. The CEO, John Hall, paid me the ultimate compliment a few years ago. He told me that aside from one or two hardware inaccuracies, he'd have mistaken my renders as photographs.
-g-
Gary they look real enough to make me wish I had one in my hands right now.
Rik have you visited Gary's site: http://theboutons.com/
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
Thanks, Bill—
I own a virtual Model 360 now, a VSTi plug-in for my digital studio that pretty closely nails the Tom Petty sound. Sad to say I had to pawn my actual one when I lived in NYC 25 years ago, but did pick up an almost mint condition Model 481 on eBay a few years ago.
I just like the sound. I've owned Fenders and a Gibson SG, and although their native sound is more contemporary, I do not have strong hands, never had. And Rickenbackers have exceptionally slim necks and the action is easily adjusted so bar chords and hammering and stuff is almost effortless.
My Best,
Gary
Sweet! I would need the effortless part, Arthur Itis has taken a toll on my hands.
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
I have to totally agree with you that the program is just a tool used to get to your objective. I read the odd thread where the person refused to use bitmaps or plugins, insisting the work is 100% vector. I consider these people the hardcore or the maniac fringer, they come with every program I guess, but because of this they just make their work harder and sometimes not as good, but maybe it is just the challange of doing it, who knows. Looking at your work it is easy to see why some people are born to create and some of us are just born to dig ditches. Back to my shovel I guess.
.............frank
Oh, I truly hope your last line was tongue-in-cheek, Frank. Yeah, I've been putting ideas down on paper since I was age 6, but it's not how I make my living. I'm a career author, and I try in each of the 25 books I've written in the past 20 years to make the point that the execution of an idea shows a lot of different things: style, technique, technical prowess, use of color, perspective, and so on.
But if there is no idea, or a poor one, behind the execution of artwork, ultimately it fails. I'm always initially intrigued by "high gloss" artwork, probably because as a race, we are all subliminally attracted to bright, shiny things. But it lacks sustaining power, like so much fast food, and ultimately it doesn't nourish a person's soul. You can't embrace "Flash artwork"; you can't learn from it when there's no concept driving it, it's just really nice wallpaper in the end.
Bear with me now: art...painting, drawing, whether it's with physical media or digital...is an avenue of self-expression. So is music, theater, dance, it's all self-expression and even Albert Einstein concluded that it's something Mankind can't live without.
Now me? I teach Art, and I've always told people that technique (skill, whatever you call it) can be taught and learned over time. Computers are simply (!) calculating machines. I use them to calculate where a highlight should go optically, or to repeat a pattern 1,000, but my computer has never created artwork. It's "concept" people need to work on, a mental muscle that takes inspiration from all around us, twists and re-interprets it, and gives birth to a new graphical idea.
I am more proud of a "student" who had become an Idea Factory, but currently lacks finesse in their execution of these ideas, than I am of someone who can reproduce a photograph using all vector paths.
Get it? One person has become a really good Xerox machine, and the other thinks for a living.
When I'm lucky enough to have the spare time to draw, I savor it, and reach into my bag where I keep ideas that need realization, and then choose my tools that I feel are the most appropriate to create the idea, and offer the least resistance. I reach for Xara a lot of times, but not all the time, and I'd ask everyone who reads this to think about that for a moment. It's really, honestly, sincerely, saying a lot about Xara. A quick check of my hard drives shows that I have 24,000 Xara drawings, and 37,000 modeling files, created using at least 7 different programs over the past 19 years.
If you're into statistics, that's pretty close, eh?
Enjoy your Friday, everyone!
My Best,
Gary
Last edited by Gare; 23 September 2011 at 01:30 PM.
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