Artist, graphic designer, & tech consultant in Nelson County, VA
Author:lemsy
John LeMasney (lemsy) is an artist, graphic designer, and technology creative. He is located in beautiful Nelson County, VA, but works remotely with ease. Contact him at: lemasney@gmail.com to discuss your next creative project.
A note between lovers by John LeMasney via 365sketches.org #love #note #thanks
I’m so happy I found you – LeMasney Consulting
This sketch couldn’t have been simpler, and really says all that I care to say.
In Inkscape, I used the image you see there which I got from MorgueFile, and simply placed it in my SVG file. I chose it because of its immense vastness, and the unlikelihood in life with scenes like this in nature that we ever find anything so glorious as love. On top of that I laid my text, and for each line, I chose a color from the photo’s palette, using the eyedropper tool.
A monstrous squid with a hundred eyes by John LeMasney via 365sketches.org #cc #design #illustration #inkscape
A monstrous squid with a hundred eyes by John LeMasney via 365sketches.org #cc #design #illustration #inkscape
So today’s sketch is of a squid, which, not being a marine biologist, I think of as simply a sea creäture with 8 tentacles. And black, black eyes. Lots of eyes. So that’s what I drew here for you. A gracefully swimming black-eyed squid.
In Inkscape, I started with an ellipse, which I shaped into a thin US Mailbox type shape, then I used the pencil tool set to Spiro and shape: triangle in to create the tentacles. As a final touch I created a single black eye with a small highlight and then used 0.48’s brand new spraypaint tool which allowed me to quickly fill the space of the head with many clones of the original eye. Hope you enjoyed it!
Janice Painter suggested that I follow up yesterday’s Prince of Darkness with a devil we can call our own — the Jersey Devil. This creature who lives in the Pine Barrens is supposedly the 13th offspring of a woman by the last name of Leeds in the 1900’s, and so this creature is sometimes also called the Leeds Devil. She apparently said that the “devil could have” the child, according to legend, and so the child she bore was this monstrosity. Or so they say. There is a well known image from a newspaper article from the 1900’s along with many accounts of what thecreature is supposed to look like: The face of a horse, the head of a collie, the hooves of a beast of burden, wings, and short front paws on an upright frame.
In Inkscape, I imported MorgueFile images of the various parts of the animals, and then bitmap traced them. After cleaning up the nodes and resizing, I placed the various parts in proximity of one another. This one was more difficult than most, and I think that I’d like to try it again some time. We’ll see. Thanks to Janice for the great suggestion!
Okay, so before you unsubscribe from my RSS feed citing blasphemy, know that I’m no devil worshiper. I promise you, I’m not here to offend anyone. As a design focus, you have to admit, this literary figure has an interesting illustrated past. I originally envisioned this sketch as a simple icon, a road sign that read devil crossing, with a simple silhouette of a human top and a goat bottom, but as I gathered the pieces for the figure, I realized that the detailed lines would come together very nicely as a more realistic illustration. To that end, I got some great free images from MorgueFile and Flickr’s The Commons, so that I’d not need to worry even about attribution. I got a picture of a goat’s head for the horns, a public domain portrait of a bare chested fighter, and a picture of a deer for its hind quarters, and brought them all into Inkscape and bitmap traced them. I had to do some flipping, node removal and resizing to get all of the elements right in relationship to each other, and after that I connected the disparate lines with the calligraphy tool. I had to rebuild the hooves on the deer, connect the hind quarters to the man’s chest, and place the horns, hat-like, upon his head. Finally, using the pencil tool set to 50% smoothing, Spiro, and shape: triangle in, I made 5 tails, and capped each tail with a point. All said and done, I wouldn’t want to meet up with this guy.
Amy recently gave me a brief lesson in Hebrew. I was never really been exposed to very much Hebrew culture until later in life through friends, and I’m always fascinated with the detailed traditions and elements of that culture. I’m fairly certain even in the little bit of the Hebrew alphabetI have in this sketch, I’ve misused what I learned, because there’s this thing about dots that I just don’t get, and I’m not really clear on the differences in some of the characters. The characters you see there represent, from right to left, the Hebrew characters of Samekh, Bet, Bet, He, but I think it’s supposed to be Het.
At any rate, the characters together render the word and idea of sababa, which according to Amy and other sources is more than just a word, but rather a way of life. It’s also been described as cool, chill, going well, on the right path and other positive states. It’s a deep concept, and I like it a lot. In my mind, I thought of it as a very zen state, which led me to the thought of a buddha (not necessarily the Buddha) potentially being (in a state of) sababa. So, referencing Amy’s notes on sababa, I found and placed the Hebrew characters in Inkscape. I was pleasantly surprised to find that it happened without any changes to the configuration. I found a great buddha image in morguefile which I cropped, brought into Inkscape, bitmap traced a few times, and underpainted with the watercolor effect using the calligraphy tool.
Thanks to Amy for the inspiration, and the lesson! Above all, I recognize that I’m doing a religious cultural mashup here, and in that, it might be taken as offensive. There is absolutely no intent to do that, but rather to possibly have some cross understanding of a common state of being in many religious viewpoints.
Hey, all. This one was fun. Sarah, who is a long time worker for me, but also a supportive friend and confidant, was nice enough to share a picture for the 365 sketches project. I had a short conversation about what she was looking for, and she mentioned that she liked my self portrait with a scowl, because it had a Japanese emoticon styled face, which I really only subtly realized when I made it. She often uses reversed or japanese styled icons in her emails, and the way she writes and types really is one of the tiny but many fun and interesting aspects of her persona.
A portrait of Sarah Badawy – LeMasney Consulting
With this in mind, in Inkscape, I imported her donated image, bitmap traced it, and removed some background elements, all of her facial features, and a cup of bubble tea that she’s drinking in the original photo. I simplified the nodes, which numbered over 8,000, resulting in just over 1,000 nodes. Using the calligraphy brush set very thin, I added a line to create a shirt, and another to create a chin, neither of which emerged from the bitmap trace. With a thicker brush size and less opacity, I added color for her hair, shirt, jacket, foreground and background. I added a star using the shape tool. Finally, I created her facial features with the text tool. Thanks for the image Sarah, I hope you like what I did with it!
Mick Jagger’s top 12 Hebrew phrases
