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.

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portfolio requests

A wild jumping sailfish by John LeMasney via 365sketches.org #inkscape #cc #drawing #design

A wild jumping sailfish by John LeMasney via 365sketches.org #inkscape #cc #drawing #design
A wild jumping sailfish by John LeMasney via 365sketches.org #inkscape #cc #drawing #design
A wild jumping sailfish by John LeMasney via 365sketches.org #inkscape #cc #drawing #design
A wild jumping sailfish by John LeMasney via 365sketches.org #inkscape #cc #drawing #design

So, the origin of this was another 365 Request from my very good (and highly missed) friend Rob. He suggested:

“Sailfish jumping out of the water with the sun setting would be neat to see. Esp…ecially how you masterfully craft amazing images. Two to help get started, pictures: live: probably my favorite http://tinyurl.com/sailfishJump “

And so, I looked at the images, did some research of my own on Sailfish, and found some very interesting clinical creative commons licensed images. The one I settled on was at in which the sailfish is depicted in a removed, scientific style — the actual image (attributed to fishbase.com) is at and was a good place to start for the manipulation I had in mind.

So, I took the image and did a bitmap trace, which worked beautifully, and then I applied a “bend” live path effect to simulate the arc in the body that I saw in Rob’s picture and others. In order to give the fish body and depth, I used the watercolor technique of wide strokes of washy, transparent color with the calligraphy tool underneath the bitmap trace. I used a gradient to create the sea and sky, and then created some wild splashing with the same watercolor technique described above.

Thanks, Rob for the inspiration, and thanks to you for stopping by.

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portfolio

58 of 365 is a jungle of vines and leaves in #Inkscape

Jungle of vines and leaves by John LeMasney via lemasney.com
Jungle of vines and leaves by John LeMasney via lemasney.com

 

Jungle of vines and leaves by John LeMasney via lemasney.com
Jungle of vines and leaves by John LeMasney via lemasney.com

So here, I wanted to play some more with text and the pencil tool. I started by typing in the word Jungle, converting it to path, and sizing it up to be readable at 500px.  Then I took the pencil tool, set as usual to shape: triangle in with spiro splines and 50% smoothing, and added vine-like shapes to the ends of each of the butts of the letterforms, to extend them. I performed a union on all of the letterforms and vine shapes, so that they all became one path, and cleaned up the joints between the letter ends and the vine beginnings. After I was satisfied with the shape, I set the color, duplicated it, and outset it twice, sending the outset path back and giving it a brighter green. I did this once again, making that outset path light yellow, with a slight blur for a glow effect.

Satisfied with the forms, I decided to create a leaf motif in the corner, which is simply an ellipse converted to path and shaped gently into a leaf form with the node tool. I added a vein to the leaf with the pencil tool using the same settings as above. I grouped those two paths into a single leaf and stem, then duplicated the leaf several more times. I created another full opacity leaf for the foreground, and many others in the background, altering the size and rotation to create a pile of leaves. I set the opacity of the background leaves to 40% or so, to let them fade into the background.

 

Categories
portfolio requests

57 of 365 is a pretty kitty in #inkscape

Pretteh Kitteh
Pretteh Kitteh
Pretteh Kitteh
Pretteh Kitteh

This is the latest entry into the 365 Requests sub project, where my friends, family and colleagues (hey, that’s you!) send me their ideas, photos, and suggestions about what to do next at https://lemasney.com/consulting/ . My good friend Amy sent me a picture of her kitty, and so I decided to use my newly discovered technique (thanks to Angel Bee) of doing a bitmap to vector conversion with the bitmap trace tool, then by grabbing the calligraphy tool with a wide setting and a low opacity to build up the color as if using washes or watercolors. Fun technique, and great, simple results. That’s Inkscape.

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portfolio

56 of 365 is changing from a pencil to a quill in #inkscape

From a pencil to a quill - LeMasney Consulting
From a pencil to a quill - LeMasney Consulting
From a pencil to a quill - LeMasney Consulting
From a pencil to a quill – LeMasney Consulting

 

From a pencil to a quill - LeMasney Consulting
From a pencil to a quill – LeMasney Consulting

I was inspired to make something that reminded me of President’s day. When I think of Washington, I think quills, and when I think of Lincoln, I think of pencils, though they both had both. I can’t explain why, this is just what came to me. So this one is all about the interpolation extension (extensions/generate from path/interpolate) which takes two paths and creates intermediate shapes that show how one shape turned into another shape. It’s great for creating animations, but also for illustration. For instance, you can take two related objects (like a pencil and a quill) and have them connected by a series of shadowy shapes. So, in order to do this, I created a pencil by hand with the Bezier tool, and then created a gradient that described what we’d expect to see on a pencil (yellow paint, woody tip, lead, eraser). I also found a nondescript image of a feather, brought it in and took a duplicate of the pencil and shaped that into the quill. For that gradient, I created a feather like set of transitions. I then applied the Interpolate extension to create the tweening. Really just an experiment for me here, but I can see using this in other situations, for sure.

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portfolio

55 of 365 is a hummingbird flying at night #inkscape

Night flight hummingbird - LeMasney Consulting
Night flight hummingbird - LeMasney Consulting
Night flight hummingbird - LeMasney Consulting
Night flight hummingbird – LeMasney Consulting

Happy valentine’s day to those of you who celebrate. Today’s sketch is a hummingbird caught out at night. Something about it appealed to me, something touching or romantic. I’m not sure.

Anyway, I got an image of a hummingbird in silhouette, a CC licensed image from Rick Buch on Flickr at  http://www.flickr.com/photos/rickbuch/1332747859/ . I thought it was CC licensed because I used the Behold Search Engine and forgot that unless you specifically ask for images that are free to use and modify that by default you might as well be searching Flickr itself, which is not useful if you’re looking for CC images. I should have used one of the other 12 engines for finding great free images that use the CC license engine. Apologies and Kudos to Mr. Buch for a great shot.

I bitmap traced it in Inkscape, then, I added a circle with the ellipse tool and put some blur on it to give a bokeh effect. I applied the colors I wanted, including a slight gradient on the hummingbird from a black center to a very dark blue at the edge. The result is an easily reproduced night effect for almost any simple silhouette photo.

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portfolio requests

54 of 365 is snowpocalypse pinky #inkscape

Snowpocalypse Pinky
Snowpocalypse Pinky
Snowpocalypse Pinky
Snowpocalypse Pinky

So this image is a very specific request from a good friend of mine, Angel. She’s been paying attention to the blog for a while, and she noticed when I had a call for requests. She sent a couple of tutorials, and a very specific set of instructions, which I tried to do faithfully:

Here’s my pic. My mission, if you choose to accept ;-): Make a vector illustration in a watercolor style. Leave color pallet the same as original picture. Then create bling text underneath the portrait that says “Pink”. Choose any style you like for the background. I will post two tutorials that show what I have in mind. Thanks!

Bling text: http://www.vectordiary.com/illustrator/bling-bling-text-effect-tutorial/
Vector watercolor washes: https://design.tutsplus.com/tutorials/how-to-create-a-classic-vector-painting-with-watercolor-washes-and-line-art–vector-1481

One thing I especially love is that both of these tutorials were specifically written for Adobe Illustrator, which might lead the casual observer that they can’t be performed in another tool, but the ideas and skills were easily translatable for Inkscape, cause it’s just so damn rockin’.

So, as the tutorials explain, I created a pattern out of pink triangles and on a black background, I applied it to text, then duplicated/outset, and duplicated/blurred the text for an outline and a glow. I applied a multi step gradient to the outline.

Then, i took Angel’s image into the GIMP where I pushed the contrast and brightness for the cleanest trace. I tried once or twice with my trackpad to do a trace by hand, but without my tablet handy, it wasn’t doing her justice. I decided to go halfsies with the second tutorial and just do a linear bitmap trace. I then applied the watercolor technique by using the calligraphy tool set to low opacity and various shades that matched the photo palette as Angel requested. I varied the size of the brush, though again, the tablet would have done wonders here.

Finally, I added the word snowpocalypse to commemorate the background of the original image which was a mound of snow from the snowstorm of February 2010 which laid down about 2 feet over a couple of days in these parts.

I wanted to take this opportunity to thank all of you who have submitted materials and ideas for the sketches, and especially Angel who I’ve co-generated a lot of design ideas with  over the years. She rocks the ink like an Apocalyse Pink.

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