This is a portfolio of my work in many forms. It should give you some insight as to the products I might help you to create.
This was simple to do, and something I’ve been thinking about for a long time. I wanted to have a stark self portrait with an explosive element up top to indicate my thoughts and feelings. I imported a photo of myself and a fountain into Inkscape, bitmap traced them, and then arranged the nodes in such a way as to connect the two images. I won’t go into the different fountains, explosions and other images I tried, but I will say at one point there was a lotus coming out of my head. 😉
This is my image and my design, but not my original idea. I’ve seen it done a few different ways in a few different places, but I was inspired to do this sketch when I saw what I suppose is the original at . I originally made the illustration with a french fry, but the restrictive overzealous copyright notice on the Etsy site made me think that this artist wouldn’t appreciate the emulation, extension or reproduction. So, I decided to modify the idea to try to create the same effect in people, essentially zany motivation, but with a different, more ridiculous concept. I didn’t even have to change the color scheme. 😉
As always, all of the work on my site is Creative Commons Attribution licensed, meaning that as long as you tell people how to find the original at 365sketches.org it’s yours to use as you wish, for any purpose. Enjoy!
I’m going to post Saturday’s sketch tonight, first because I’m excited to share it, and second because I’m going to be phone only for the most part tomorrow. So, have you ever noticed how unfortunate and weird Sherwin Williams‘ logo is in today’s environmentally aware and protective consciousness? Maybe, maybe not, but it’s bothered me for a while that a paint can being poured over the earth was anybody’s idea of good branding, knowing what we know about dumping and pollution. Mix that with what’s happening uncontrolled in the Gulf, and you have two examples of companies that need to take different operational directions. Sherwin Williams, get a new look and feel. Yours makes me sick. And BP, figure out how to gate your lines ever 50 miles or so, so that the next time this happens, you just shut the gate, and only have a mini disaster.
I don’t have an excuse. You all deserve better. I know we’ve had this conversation before, but I promise you I’ll try to get more sleep tonight and the next night and so on. Let’s start over today. Right now. This moment is new for us. Really. Zzzzzzzz.
Also, this is a response to Dan Wadlinger who recently asked me to create a grunge styled sketch, and while I have some others in the silo, this was especially inspired by him. I used a rust texture in conjunction of the letterforms to create a rough looking overlay in an urban grunge style. Thanks, Dan!
I love this sketch. I saw a photo by Soe Zeya Tun for Reuters that was of exactly this subject and topic as part of a photo piece at http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/05/lighter_than_air.html and decided that the image would be easy to emulate in Inkscape. (Apologies to Soe Zeya Tun)
In Inkscape, I created the dunes by creating 4 rectangles and converting them to paths and tweaking them into hilly shapes. I added increasing levels of blur to each receding ridge to add atmospheric depth and distance. I then created a single balloon complete with basket and connections, and when I was happy with it, I duplicated and resized two more.
The really great thing about creating this image from scratch is the ultimate control of placement and composition that Soe had to rely on the balloon pilots to provide for her.
So, as someone who grew up watching 10 year old reruns of campy Batman shows, I was imprinted with the message of typography as softcore violence. Oh, you too? So anyway, I recently saw an article on the topic of typography in the 60’s Batman series, and decided to make some of my own.
In Inkscape, I added the text in a clear font, converted to path, and applied the bend live path effect. I bent the text (as a path) and then tweaked each of the corners of each letter with the node tool. I converted the bent path to a new path without the live path effect, and rotated it to fit better in the frame.
Using the shape tool, I created a star, converted it to path, and used the node tool to tweak it. I made the stroke a bit transparent on the star to give it a few colors at the edge. I duplicated the text and made it into a shadow by choosing a flat gray color and blurring it a bit. It was a lot of fun, and it took me back to a lot of childhood afternoons.