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.

Categories
professional activities professional experience research interests teaching experience

NEFLIN presents: Practically Designed

Date: Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010

Venue: NEFLIN, Orange Park, FL

“Class Description:

During this workshop on the basics of visual design best practices, we’ll examine examples and counter-examples of great design, the basics of layout, simplified color theory, rules for fonts and legibility, images and photographs, designing stamps vs. pages vs. slideshows vs. billboards, copyright and creative commons, and free and open source design tools (photo manipulation, illustration, layout, catalogs, and quick editors).

By the end of the program, you will:

* Find and evaluate web-based resources for great design
* Choose the best colors, layouts, fonts, and graphics for other design projects
* Respect copyrighted work by finding imagery and other materials that are freely and legally available
* Become inspired about your design projects
* Move beyond Word and Publisher to more sophisticated design tools”

Presentation: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/121kHFLhNGrP85vKdR5ti1tRFVzMbwRmboBRuzRLFg7A/edit?usp=sharing

Categories
portfolio requests

70 of 365 is an homage to the Winter Olympics in #Inkscape @angelbrady

Go World
Go World

This is another answer to @angelbrady and her request for a creation of my 4 favorite Winter Olympic sports. I appreciate her suggestion, like all of the friends who have given them. Ski jumping is an amazing sport of focus, determination, and like the rest, courage. I decided to express my feelings for it here. I also wanted to congratulate the world on their participation in the games, and thank Canada for such a gracious hosting job. Go world! This was an image of a jumper that I manipulated in the GIMP thoroughly, then bitmap traced in Inkscape a few different ways, and overlapped the traces. A simple effort, but I like it a lot. Thanks again to Angel for her suggestion! Keep them coming, friends.

Related articles by Zemanta
Categories
portfolio

69 of 365 is stars and stripes forever in #Inkscape (2/28)

Stars and Stripes Forever
Stars and Stripes Forever

Hey, all. Continued apologies — I’ve been traveling, and today was the first day that I’ve been in a real wireless hotspot. 2/28’s post was inspired again by my boy Jack. He loves drawing the American flag, and he always makes very interesting interpretations of it — one of his most recent is taped to the front of my laptop. I used the rectangle tool to make the blue field, and the red field, as well as the white stripes. I then converted them to paths and tweaked their shapes. I added some gradients to each to allow the colors to blend. I shaped the stripes to converge towards the top, but each converging independently, rather than all converging to a single point. Finally I added a star and duplicated and sized the star in several positions on the blue field.

Related articles by Zemanta
  • Johns’ ‘Flag’ owned by Michael Crichton to be sold (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
Categories
portfolio

68 of 365 is a pair of ghosts conversing in #inkscape (3/27)

2 ghosts conversing
2 ghosts conversing

I’ve been traveling, and away from wifi, which doesn’t affect Inkscape, but it affects my ability to post to WordPress. Forgive the flood. So this was simply a playful attempt at remembering Pac-Man, a game that I always wished I was better at as a kid. The face on the right ghost is a public domain image from the early 1900s, bitmap traced. The ghosts both were created as simple unions of ellipses, but the rough edge is a an applied extension of modify path/fractalize. The story in my mind was that the ghost on the right just became vulnerable because some Pac-Man somewhere just ate a power pellet. Why the one on the left didn’t turn blue and white? No idea. Maybe you have to believe that you’re vulnerable to actually become vulnerable.

Related articles by Zemanta
Categories
portfolio

67 of 365 is an observatory on a hill in #Inkscape

Observatory on a Hill
Observatory on a Hill
Observatory on a Hill
Observatory on a Hill

So this was inspired again by my five year old son Jack, who loves looking at the sky and learning about space. Right now he’s been very interested in the Mars Rovers, amongst some other things, like volcanoes, deep sea caves, and the Iron Giant. At any rate, he’s an explorer, and recently, as we were drawing together, he showed me that he was drawing an observatory. Of late, as he has been drawing, he has reminded me of a great truth, at least in my life: kids know how to draw. There’s no pretension, no theory. just a rendering of imagination. Jack draws beautifully. This drawing was made in Inkscape, starting with a node tool tweaked rectangle for the hill, the same for the body of the observatory, its windows, door, and the sky. The dome was created with the ellipse tool, and the lens with opening used the pencil tool set to shape: triangle in, the rectangle tool, the ellipse tool, and the gradient tool. The moon is an ellipse with gradient, along with another ellipse that was clipped with path/intersection with a different gradient. The stars were made with the shape tool, along with the pencil tool and the ctrl-click method to produce dots. Finally, I thought that if I was walking up a hill to an observatory, there would likely be a path, so I made a winding path, and set the line to dotted.

Related articles by Zemanta
Categories
portfolio

66 of 365 is a heart in dark chocolate in #inkscape

heart in dark chocolate
heart in dark chocolate

Today’s sketch in Inkscape is a very shiny heart in dark chocolate, that might have been more appropriate earlier this month (on the 14th), but I like chocolate anytime. Especially dark chocolate, like 80% cacao. Yum! At any rate, this is a fairly simple construction, rectangles for the face and back side of the chocolate, a rectangle for the inset shape on the chocolate, a thick stroked heart shape made with ellipses and Bezier tool, then unioned. I used the high gloss technique here for the heart, but I feel now it’s a bit shinier than reality would render it. I still like the effect, however. I made some chocolate crumbs with the pencil tool set to shape: triangle out, and also with ctrl-clicks to make dots. Finally, I put it on a red velvet gradient. Hope you enjoy it!

Related articles by Zemanta