These are posts featuring illustrations designed by John LeMasney. In general, unless otherwise noted, they are licensed CC-Attribution, cc-by lemasney, and should contain a citation and linkback.
Don’t just sit there with your teeth in your mouth
This is another in the series of predetermined captions. Nancy McMillin was kind enough to suggest the phrase “Don’t just sit there with your teeth in your mouth” and this is almost exactly what I pictured when I read the line.
In the GIMP, I brought in a picture of myself, and a picture of some gnarly teeth. I selected my jaw from the photo, then cut and pasted it as a new layer. I placed the teeth behind the hole where my jaw had been, by placing that layer behind my photo. I rotated the jaw layer and moved it below the teeth in the image, as the top most layer. I worked to recreated the goatee in a the image by cloning.
If I did it again, I’m sure I could make it more believable, but one sketch a day makes time a luxury. I’m sure I’ll use the technique in future sketches. Thanks, Nancy, and everybody please keep the captions coming!
Today’s sketch is a tribute to Martin Luther King, Jr., one of the greatest thinkers, writers and orators of our recent history, on his nationally recognized day of service. Using a famous AP photo, I used GIMP’s threshold tool to essentially break the photo into two colors: a highlight in white, and a shadow in black. Then, using the select by color tool I selected the black shadow and began to paint into a new transparent layer with a variety of brushes in a blue palette. I put a new transparent layer behind the blue painted layer, removed the selection, and painted from a gold palette, which showed through the remaining open spaces in the blue layer.
An excerpt from his brave and poignant “Letter from a Birmingham Jail. “
“Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial “outside agitator” idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds. Â You deplore the demonstrations taking place in Birmingham. But your statement, I am sorry to say, fails to express a similar concern for the conditions that brought about the demonstrations. I am sure that none of you would want to rest content with the superficial kind of social analysis that deals merely with effects and does not grapple with underlying causes. It is unfortunate that demonstrations are taking place in Birmingham, but it is even more unfortunate that the city’s white power structure left the Negro community with no alternative.” – Letter from a Birmingham Jail [King, Jr.] from
tags: mlk, martin luther king jr., service, reminder, of service, sharing, lemasney, GIMP, GNU, GPL, open source, 365, postaday2011, peace
To err is human, to repent divine, to persist, devilish. - Benjamin Franklin.
To err is human, to repent divine, to persist, devilish. – Benjamin Franklin.
Sometimes we do what we want instead of what we should. Sometimes we even deeply enjoy it. I do it, you do it, and the best we can do is to remember and improve from it. We can possibly even savor the experience as a memory and a learning experience, recall it from time to time, and maybe even smile a bit in recalling it. That’s humanity for you. I’d probably say I’m more devilish than divine in this respect, but maybe I’ll learn someday.
To err is human, to repent divine, to persist, devilish.
So, today I decided to make a new header for the project to show the difference in the new series. I started off by importing the older blue header with the open location import tool to get just the right size. After making a text layer with my project name and choosing a font and applying kerning, I added a few transparent layers underneath it. On each of those layers I used the paintbrush or eraser and various brushes to make the marks you see here. Using the palette color selector and a built-in fiery palette was especially helpful to create a cohesive color scheme.
I decided to use the GIMP to make a disjointed self-portrait. By starting with the base image on the far left, I duplicated the layer twice, then I resized the canvas to three times its original width. I moved the images into three equal positions on the canvas, then on the second and third portions, I began making rectangular selections with the marquee tool of the eyes and other features and copying and pasting as new layers, then rotating, lowering opacity, and otherwise playing with those layers.
