Gary Bouton's Xara Stuff

[Gare]

Derek—

Your wind-up plastic chicken is not new, and when I first saw it in your gallery, I said, "Damn! That's good!", and I own an extensive collection of wind-up toys.

You inspired me to try my hand at a toy chicken, it's clearly a different toy, but man, I wouldn't have even tried drawing it were it not for your illustration.



Thanks!



(Another toy I'de like to illustrate someday. Not the OS, the guy behind him.)


My Best,
Gary

[masque]

Good chicken. I can't say I'm an aficionado of wind-up toys but your plastic chicken does look good.
I wait with anticipation to see your illustration of the robot.
Derek

[David Strover]

This is all great stuff everyone. It doesn't inspire me to post the stuff I've been doing [a bit more simplistic]... but I will just not on this thread so you can't compare.

I love this section of the Forum because it really does inspire me and prove to me you can do anything with Xara if you really are brave enough to experiment and not be frightened of failing.

I'm okay at traditional drawing and painting but translating that 'ability' [I use the term loosely] to creating in Xara is not as easy as you would expect.

It's all great fun and makes sure my early retirement [by choice] is anything but boring as everyone predicted it would be for me.

Cheers to one and all
David

[Gare]

Hey Ho, David—

The biggest stumbling block, and I think I speak for several talented artists, is that vector graphics is unlike physical drawing, and it's unlike physical and digital painting.

The moment I started getting something out of a vector drawing program I felt was eye-pleasing was the day that:

1.) I stopped thinking about a mouse as a pencil. It's not. It's a point and click targeting device for the screen, and I'll tell you something—I'm left-handed and when I use a computer, I do so right-handed, holding the mouse in my right palm. But when I got back to a draughting board, I'm left-handed again. I think this is proof that there's a marked diffeence in approach between drawing and using a computer to design vector artwork.

2.) I stopped thinking of Pen and Pencil tools as their real world equivalents. They're not and if you try to design onscreen using the same approach as in the physical world, you're sunk. Vector art consists of a direction for a vector, how many segments it has to determine curve flatness, it can have a fill if it's a closed path, and the outline can have a width and color...and those are the basic parameters. All the other elegant tools in Xara—some of them draw bitmap effects to the screen, updating on the fly, while other tools are entirely bitmap in coding—Xara holds a bitmap copy of your work in memory or in a temp file, and then applies a bitmap Live Effect, and will update and change it based on your original art. Damned clever, but the more you know of the simplicity of vector design, the less Intimidation Factor, and ultimately, the more productivity and pleasure in designing cool stuff.

I'm glad you're using the forum as a defense against the Boredom Doldrums!

I can't afford to retire. Ever. And my greatest fear is I'll croak in the middle of writing a tutorial, and no one will be able to get to the final Step 7.

I'm kidding.

Cheers,

Gary

[David Strover]

Hi Gary,

Thanks for the reply. I'm left-handed too - but I massively left-handed if that makes sense? I cannot do anything with my right-hand, my brain might explode if I tried.

We need chaps and chapesses like you so never stop your tutorials and advice. With my 'normal' drawing and painting I have found YouTube an unbelievable source of really, really helpful advice so believe me it is always gratefully received.

I'm pleased to say that I have got past the stage of trying to 'draw' in any vector software with the mouse - I learned that the hard way, but when I look at other people's work I still marvel at the intricacy and it does make me realise even after 'X' amount of years I still have only scratched the surface.

I added my caricatures in a new thread so you can see what stage I'm at.

On retirement I can only do it because of my lovely wife, who gets three pensions, more or less insisted that I just give up work - she had been retired for eight years prior to this [she's 11 years older than me] and the novelty of being at home on her own had worn off. I'm not complaining.

Cheers
David

[Gare]

My advice based on your comment, David, is to try to get into the head of an architect, not necessarily an artist with a surface in front of you.

An architect plans from the ground up, works from the general details to the specific final embellishments, and everything they do is with whole, discreet pieces of things: a chair, a lamp...what I'm trying to get at is that all my life I worked "analog", soft watercolors that never come out the same way twice, random strokes I really like but cannot repeat, because "analog" is a medium of blending things together, not always distinct edges, and this is where Xara and vector design programs totally break the norm.

If you were to design an olive, for example, you begin at the foundation with a large greenish oval. Then you put the pimiento shape, another oval, on top and slightly asymmetrically to the olive object. Perhaps then a toothpick. Now this woulds go both on top where it penetrates the olive, and then a second piece more or less aligned with the top piece to suggest the toothpick has skewered the olive.

That's the hard architectural part; the creation and placement of shapes. The, you "paint" the "rooms". You might want to use an elliptical gradient on the olive to make it look more round, you might add a specular highlight shape (whitish) to suggest the olive is wet or highly reflective, having a smooth surface.

Then you add a shadow behind all the shapes to suggest the olive is resting on a surface.

David, do you see how, with words, I built this "drawing"? Procedurally, with objects, no smearing stuff, no erasing things. Vector art is indefinitely re-definable, sort of like the Colorforms set I had as a child. Little pre-made geometric shapes made out of thin vinyl you could put on a dark, slightly adhesive surface. You composed and moved object around until they became artistically meaningful to you.



You can't change the world, but you can change the way you think about things.

Perception is what keeps an artist going.

I'm going to have to post another drawing. This is getting to philosophical, and everyone knows I'm a pseudo-intellectual!

My Best,

Gary

[tree hugger]

i was going to make the joke "no matter how many times i look at it, i keep seeing a duck" about all of the abstract art on page 1 until i got to page 2 and you freaked me out as well as ruined a perfectly good joke.

[Gare]

So we're on the same page now?

;)

Thanks, tree hugger!

My Best,

Gary

[Gare]

Yes, I worked from a photo. What I was trying to accomplish, and this to me is an exercise drawing, is to try to convey all the little air pockets in a slice of bread and how diffuse lighting and odd angles make unpredictable areas of light and shadow.

So I settled on drawing a bunch of abstract blobs of different colors to see if they'd resolve properly when viewed from a distance.

50/50, huh?

[Gare]

I think this piece is the one I'm happiest with in 2014. And it doesn't even have any flying saucers or anything in it.



My Best,

Gary