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.
tesselation play in Inkscape by John LeMasney via lemasney.com
tesselation play in Inkscape by John LeMasney via lemasney.com
So this one is about learning how to use new tools in Inkscape. A Live Path Effect in Inkscape called Von Koch allows you to use a path as a basis for manipulating duplicates in relation to the original. This is a single shape (the central bird) which was shaped essentially to allow for an interlocking effect with its duplicates. A hard tool to explain, but a fun tool to explore. After I was happy, I filled the shapes with color, added a simple face and hair, and then placed a background.
So, for the new year, I decided to break a resolution. I had intended to follow a strict theme of faces on this joint, but as you can see here, I feel that Inkscape offers a lot of things that are expressed better as other things besides faces. I think this might make a nice t-shirt or something, for example. So for technique, I converted the word funky! to a path and played with it to make it, well, funky. Then, I added 3 dynamic offsets and colored them with warm colors. Then, I took the word monkey, converted it to a path, applied a bend live path effect, applied a sketch live path effect, and then duplicated it, converted the duplicate to a path, filled in the centers of each letter with color, then added a dynamic offset to that. I added the black background and clean text at the top. Happy New year you funky monkeys!
An illustration of a girl's face made with serial lines using Inkscape cc-by lemasney
A girl’s face made out of lines
This one was a revelation for me. Perhaps not the best application of this tool, but it was a lot of fun to play with. I just started reading about Inkscape‘s Stitch Sub Paths Live Path Effect in Kirsanov’s The Book of Inkscape and found that it was great for lining long planes with manipulable parallel paths.
In my painting classes, I learned that it’s important to sculpt your subject with your brush to help your viewer see the way that a plane is going through space. This is a simplified way of doing just that. Very fun too.
I hope you can excuse the primitivism of this experiment, but I plan to develop my skills with it in the new year. Speaking of which, I hope you all have a great 2010.
An illustration of Roger Ebert using text cc-by lemasney
A portrait of Roger Ebert made of text by John LeMasney via lemasney.com
When I saw Slashfilm‘s post on Roger Ebert‘s list of best 2009 films (20 of them, not one of them Avatar), I remembered watching him on his show for years, up until his cancer surgery that removed a great deal of his lower face and neck. The photo that is the basis for my drawing appears above the post at Despite this surgery, which took his ability to speak, he continued to write, and as a salute on NPR stated so nicely:
“When Roger Ebert lost his ability to speak following cancer surgery, it wasn’t clear exactly what his future would hold, but it turns out that he entered a phase of his career that’s been utterly fascinating. He does talk about politics a lot on his blog, but even if all you read is his coverage of movies and culture, it’s well worth the time.” from Getting Personal: We Salute 10 Of Our Favorite Pop-Culture Humans Of 2009 – Monkey See Blog : NPR at Tue Dec 29 2009 23:35:51 GMT-0500 (EST) on
So, in my quest for doing (hopefully) interesting, poignant, and helpful sketches over the next year, I wanted to share my text-based portrait of Roger, with apologies to the original photographer who is not credited on Slashfilm. Shame. Also, I just read a great essay by Ebert that the NPR piece led me to at
He may not be able to speak, but he has certainly not lost his voice.
A jagged toothed elf by John LeMasney via lemasney.com
I am already getting a little bit critical about earlier entries in this series. I feel like the quick entry in slot number two could have been better imagined, better executed, and definitely more refined. So here is a do-over that gives a more fully fleshed creature. I started with a simple ellipse, to shape the head, eyes, mouth, ears, and nose. I stretched and placed them after converting to paths where necessary. For the jagged teeth, I decided to use the calligraphy tool set to Wiggly. I duplicated my mark, flipped it to make a bottom set of teeth, and then clipped them both using the shape of the mouth. Then, as in most of these creations, I added some facial and head hair using my beloved pencil tool set to spiro path, triangle in. Finally, I added three rectangles with some curves, overlapping, and with fades of warm colors. I think it’s a great improvement over number 2.
A girl’s face made of text by John LeMasney via 365sketches.org #cc #design #typography
I used path as pattern path effect tool to make a stenciled face. In this case, I started with a photo of a girl’s face, did a trace bitmap operation, made text lines in three different sizes, then converted the lines of Inkscape‘s text into paths, and used them to paint the dark areas of the face, while leaving the lighter areas a pure white. Inkscape is an amazingly versatile tool, and this is just one more example.
Magna-Tiles Tessellations
Battle Royale: Tetrahedrons vs Tessellations
Get the Look: Funky Style
Long handmade funky jewellery necklace with a moon shaped pendant
