These are design or consulting jobs that rose out of a request from the audience. I am always looking for prompts for new content, so if you have a need, please reach out.
Girls don't walk anywhere if they don't want to - Sarah
Girls don’t walk anywhere if they don’t want to – Sarah
One of my favorite people in the world, and someone who has participated in 365Sketches before (join in at http://www.facebook.com/365sketches) recently gave me some insight into gender differences and diversity awareness. Upon indicating that I was going to a certain location, and that if she wanted to go it was quite walkable, Sarah Badawy, without blinking said, “Well, I’m a girl, and that’s not the sort of thing we do. Just saying”. She was being facetious, of course, but I immediately thanked her for contributing to the project, to which she laughed a bit.
This sketch is really just a simple case of text manipulation, but it’s one of the most fun things to do in Inkscape. Thanks to Sarah for letting me know about girls. Just sayin.
Phoenix Tattoo for autism awareness - lemasney.com
Phoenix Tattoo for autism awareness – lemasney.com
I often call suggestions from the Facebook group for this site “requests” because I like to think I’m providing a service, (join us at https://www.facebook.com/365sketches to help with the project) but in reality, most of my suggestions from friends are not so much requests as beneficial inspirations, little hits of creativity that had nothing to do with me. It’s one of the most amazing parts of this project for me, the way that people have helped me to grow with their suggestions, because they are often surprising concepts, sometimes quite difficult from a research and organization perspective, and always a learning experience. But this one here was an actual request, and likely one of my most challenging and interesting pieces.
Fred Housel, who has been a good friend of mine for about 10 years, asked me to do this sketch by submitting the following post to the 365 Sketches FB page.
I would like to see a sketch of a Phoenix contour to the shape of my back black n white with a colored ribbon of Autism in it’s mouth . Strong and powerful ,passionate ,wise , heroic,gentle compationate , & loving … This ink should show a three dementional layer of my muscle on my back on to the shape of the Phoenix …, wide at the top and tappered down at the bass of my back … Symetry is key … Thanks my friend …
And so, I did some research, finding a few great phoenix tattoos, looking at a few images of the musculature of the back, and studying how the often three quarter views of the fiery birds could be made into a symmetrical image. After a while, I had a good idea of what I wanted, but the design definitely evolved as I went. The Autism symbol is a puzzle piece, and as many ways as I tried, I had difficulty getting the ribbon to look right. I left it as a sort of halo for the phoenix. The pure symmetry that Fred is looking for wasn’t something that I stayed absolutely true to, but I think that enough symmetry exists there to satisfy him. We’ll find out!
Thanks for the inspiration Fred, you’re a great friend, and I only hope I can talk you out of the hundreds of dollars this work would likely cost. 😉 I do have the image in a far larger size than this, and just black on transparent, if you’re interested. 😉
With just a few minutes to spare to get in today’s sketch (Easter) I’m thrilled to share this portrait of Oliver Giller. Oliver is the person to first introduced me to the concept of Open Source. He is easily the largest philosophical influence on my life, and helped to form what I list amongst the most important beliefs that I have. I lost touch with him after he graduated from Rider University about 9 years ago, but always remembered the things that he introduced me to, including the GNU Image Manipulation Program, Linux, and the GNU General Public License.
Withing the last 2 years or so, though, we’ve reconnected, and I’m happy to say that we are even doing a project together, which I’m doing this sketch for. I’m less happy to report that Oliver had to undergo brain surgery recently which left him with a scar, and in Oliver’s work to recover he donated a picture of his new stitches and asked that I do something creative with it for our project, essentially a journal of his recent health issues.
In Inkscape, I did a bitmap trace of Oliver’s face, in which you could clearly see the scar and stitches, but without explanation, it looked only as though he had a bad haircut on one side. I decided in the interest of clarity and also of not offending anyone with the graphic nature of the subject to take a highly stylized approach to the scar and stitches. It was fun to stitch a pattern using the Bezier tool, and I think I may use this technique again.
I’m of the firm belief that Oliver has all the best chances to make a full recovery, including a beautiful wife and family, parents who have supported him forever, and a strong network of friends. Thanks, Oliver, for all you’ve given me in life, now go kick this thing’s ass, so you can get back to the important stuff.
Okay, it’s April 1st, so I figured I’d play with a little visual foolery. With some inspiration from Shannon O’ Connor, who contributed a photo of a tower with a tree growing out of it (what kind of neglect does it take for a full sized tree to grow on top of a building, I ask you?) so I figured I’d mash up some architecture and nature. So here I have an urban apartment building/townhouse which I’m clearly mislabeling as a brownstone, painted on a brown stone. I haven’t decided yet whether it’s just a painted facade or whether you can actually enter it. I like to think that someone walks up to it, tries to enter, and grabs an image of a doorknob. April Fools!
So, in Inkscape, I imported two images from MorgueFile, one of the apartment building, and one of a massive rock in the middle of a desert. The boulder had a man standing in front of it for scale, and he was about one eighth of its height. I bitmap traced both images, placed them on top of one another, then painted them with the calligraphy tool, the eyedropper, and the palette. I added a gradient based background, built a happy faced sun out of stacked, blurred ellipses and text, and added some surf crashing with the calligraphy tool. So there you have it, a ‘brown stone’ by the beach. Thanks to Shannon for the inspiration, and to you for taking the time to look.
Janice Painter suggested that I follow up yesterday’s Prince of Darkness with a devil we can call our own — the Jersey Devil. This creature who lives in the Pine Barrens is supposedly the 13th offspring of a woman by the last name of Leeds in the 1900’s, and so this creature is sometimes also called the Leeds Devil. She apparently said that the “devil could have” the child, according to legend, and so the child she bore was this monstrosity. Or so they say. There is a well known image from a newspaper article from the 1900’s along with many accounts of what thecreature is supposed to look like: The face of a horse, the head of a collie, the hooves of a beast of burden, wings, and short front paws on an upright frame.
In Inkscape, I imported MorgueFile images of the various parts of the animals, and then bitmap traced them. After cleaning up the nodes and resizing, I placed the various parts in proximity of one another. This one was more difficult than most, and I think that I’d like to try it again some time. We’ll see. Thanks to Janice for the great suggestion!
Amy recently gave me a brief lesson in Hebrew. I was never really been exposed to very much Hebrew culture until later in life through friends, and I’m always fascinated with the detailed traditions and elements of that culture. I’m fairly certain even in the little bit of the Hebrew alphabetI have in this sketch, I’ve misused what I learned, because there’s this thing about dots that I just don’t get, and I’m not really clear on the differences in some of the characters. The characters you see there represent, from right to left, the Hebrew characters of Samekh, Bet, Bet, He, but I think it’s supposed to be Het.
At any rate, the characters together render the word and idea of sababa, which according to Amy and other sources is more than just a word, but rather a way of life. It’s also been described as cool, chill, going well, on the right path and other positive states. It’s a deep concept, and I like it a lot. In my mind, I thought of it as a very zen state, which led me to the thought of a buddha (not necessarily the Buddha) potentially being (in a state of) sababa. So, referencing Amy’s notes on sababa, I found and placed the Hebrew characters in Inkscape. I was pleasantly surprised to find that it happened without any changes to the configuration. I found a great buddha image in morguefile which I cropped, brought into Inkscape, bitmap traced a few times, and underpainted with the watercolor effect using the calligraphy tool.
Thanks to Amy for the inspiration, and the lesson! Above all, I recognize that I’m doing a religious cultural mashup here, and in that, it might be taken as offensive. There is absolutely no intent to do that, but rather to possibly have some cross understanding of a common state of being in many religious viewpoints.
Mick Jagger’s top 12 Hebrew phrases
