If you’ve ever been to one of my workshops on open source graphics apps, you likely saw me use this technique there as a way to demonstrate the power of the GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP). In the GIMP, this is a technique that involves layer masks, blurring, brushwork, image scaling, and guidelines as a way of believably merging one recognizable face onto another becognizable head. The GIMP based composite image is here. I decided that I’d try to do the same technique in Inkscape, and found this attempt to be fairly quick and fairly successful.
Hey, friends! So, today’s sketch is a flashback for me to just after I got my BFA from University of the Arts in 1998. I was lucky enough to land two jobs: Rider University’sĀ Instructional Technology Specialist position, and also Bucks County Community College’sĀ Sculpture Lab Assistant. I loved both jobs dearly, and learned a lot from both positions. They were both very service oriented positions, and they both came with new friends. In the Sculpture gig, I worked with another guy doing the same thing and he convinced me that my artistic contribution was going to be interpretations of the ubiquitous Approving Pizza Chef Guy, the one who graces what must be 50% of all pizza boxes. I started drawing him on warning signs around the shop, and he even got etched into a large metal sand pit using an Arc Welder. I’m sure he’s still there, forever scribed in molten metal, but he’s otherwise stopped showing up directly in my work until now. At any rate, with that experience I learned to keep a certain sense of fun and irony in my work, and so in that way the Approving Pizza Chef Guy (and the other Lab Tech) have been a part of my work ever since.
Approving Pizza Chef Guy
So I started with the Pizza guy image and I did lot of little tweaks to make him mine. I flipped him, and then bitmap traced him. I duplicated and reversed his hand so that he’d be giving a “2 thumbs up”. Using the calligraphy tool, I gave him bangs and a beard, extended (and made him stroke) his thin Daliesque mustache, and puffed up his hat. I made him stop winking. I then used the watercolor technique of a wide stroke of color with the calligraphy tool under the lines to color the piece. I created the pizza and placed it, moonlike, behind him. Finally, I added the text. I missed him, and I’m glad I had this opportunity to revive him.
This is the kind of thing that makes me scream at the television. When someone is describing a URL verbally, I have found that more often than not they will call the slash used in URLs a backslash, when it is in fact a forward slash, or just a slash. I’m not sure why it makes me so crazy, but more than anything I think it’s the number of times I’ve seen it done incorrectly lately. So, to try to do what I can in my communities to campaign against it, you’re getting this sketch today.Ā Thanks for the platform!
The image uses a lot of my regular go-to effects. I use blurred dupes for shadows and glows, pencil based triangles for attention, and in this particular piece, I used the bend Live Path Effect to create the curvature on the word forwardslash. The background rectangle has a center gradient to create the shadowy corners effect.
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WWW creator: Sorry about the // (seattlepi.com)
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Sir Tim BernersLee admits forward slashes on World Wide Web ‘were a mistake’ (telegraph.co.uk)
I'm sorry, I won't design your logo for free form by John LeMasney via lemasney.com
I’m sorry, I won’t design your logo for free form by John LeMasney via lemasney.com
So, sadly, as a designer, I’ve encountered many of the pitfalls I indicate in this form. In the interest of the love of design and the pursuit of acceptance, I’ve made each of the mistakes I list on the top part of the form. There’s the time that I did hours of work on a logo for a new business, and got yelled at by a printer who wanted different dimensions, and in the transaction found out that the printer was being paid full price.
There are the various jobs I’ve done for family where it turned into a way to have them push buttons about self-worth, power, and the relative value of the arts. There are the clients who decided that it wasn’t worth paying for because all I did was push some buttons. There are also more positive situations, such as turning back the work because I wanted to encourage a self-doubting designer to take the work into their own hands.
If I’ve ever done free design work for you, consider yourself a good friend, or someone who I respect deeply. If you’re ever compensated me for design work, I want to say thank you for your consideration and promotion of the art form.
How do you set up a stage, some pedestals, and 100 seats in a room? Well, one way is with Inkscape — you get the dimensions of the room, the dimensions of all the seats, tables, and pedestals, and you start putting them all in your drawing. I had a recent need to do this for our upcoming event, and so I thought I’d share yet one more way that Inkscape does a great job of illustrating concepts.
Every shape started out with the rectangle tool, and the tables and stage were simply elongated. The stage also was converted to a path so I could apply a curve to the front. The dimensions are all wrong for my actual application, but the idea is quite the same. š
The illustration “Open Source and Free” by John LeMasney is a conceptual piece made with the vector graphic editor Inkscape, showcasing a comparison between the terms “open source” and “free” within the context of software and intellectual property. The image is structured around two prominent heart-shaped icons placed side by side against a split background with two shades of teal.
On the left is a heart outlined in a beige tone, segmented into two halves, with the left side appearing as a flat color and the right side shaded to give a sense of depth. Within this heart, an iconic open padlock is integrated, its top half fitting perfectly into the heart’s cleft, suggesting that open source is about openness and unlocking content for examination, modification, and sharing.
On the right side, a vivid red heart contains a keyhole, signifying something that is locked or requires a key to unlockārepresenting the notion of “free” as in “free access” rather than “freedom to modify.” The red color here is traditionally associated with passion or cost, which might imply the fervor of the free software movement or the hidden costs associated with “free” as in “gratis” rather than “libre.”
Below the two hearts is the text “open source and free do not mean the same thing at all” in a simple sans-serif font. The text is white, creating a stark contrast against the darker background, ensuring its readability and emphasizing the message.
This juxtaposition visually articulates the conceptual difference between “open source” and “free” in software. “Open source” refers to making the source code available for anyone to inspect, modify, and distribute. “Free,” in this context, could refer to free of charge or to “free software,” which emphasizes the user’s freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change, and improve the software.
The design is minimalist yet meaningful, using visual metaphors to distinguish between two philosophies often conflated in software distribution model discussions. Using hearts conveys a sense of passion and value that the creator attributes to these concepts.
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