Tag: Arts

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portfolio requests

119 of 365 is a quilter’s square in #Inkscape

Quilter's square
Quilter’s square

In this sketch. I worked briefly with Mary Kay Podlecki to see how well Inkscape could work to help quilters to develop color schemes, textures, and other quilt planning. Mary Kay is working on an amazing iPhone app that allows you to choose from hundreds of square types, layouts, and color schemes, and she was looking to see if Inkscape could help her to illustrate the various square options. I worked with her one day to explain how you can use grids, apply textures, dotted paths, color schemes, and make templates that you can use over and over again to develop squares. With her expertise in quilting and my knowledge of Inkscape, I think we covered a lot of ground fairly quickly, and I hope she’s on her way to using Inkscape to help her in her quilt design. She sent me a  sample image which I was able to recreate fairly quickly in Inkscape, which is what you see here. Thanks for the opportunity to work together, Mary Kay!

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portfolio

A spring tree in bloom by lemasney

A spring tree in bloom by lemasney
A spring tree in bloom by lemasney
A spring tree in bloom by lemasney
A spring tree in bloom by lemasney

I’m very proud of this sketch. It’s one that I feel succeeds in color, in tone, and in pictorial illustration, but beyond that I just kind of like it. It reminds me of what I love in the spring.

In Inkscape, I created the branch with the pencil tool and grouped the paths, and then duplicated the group twice, and rotated and blurred the duplicates. I made a single flower shape with the calligraphy tool, then duplicated, rotated and resized the original to create the rest. I then gave a blurry blush to each of them with the calligraphy tool.

Today is beautiful in central New Jersey. I hope it’s beautiful where you are too.

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design principles Illustration Inkscape portfolio

A highly reflective sphere

Highly reflective sphere
Highly reflective sphere
Highly reflective sphere - LeMasney Consulting
Highly reflective sphere

Here’s a simple sphere that moves a bit away from my regular reflective treatment.

In Inkscape, I made a black sphere on a gradient background. I duplicated and intersected the sphere and made the intersection white to imitate reflectance of the ‘floor’ part of the background gradient. I made a white rectangle and converted to path, then bent the top and bottom paths to make the reflection of an overhead lampappear to bend upon the top surface of the sphere. I created center gradients for both the black and white parts of the sphere. I added a grey, blurred, flat gradient for a shadow beneath the sphere. Finally, I duplicated and lowered the opacity of the black sphere and moved it down to create a reflection of the sphere itself in the ground.

Hope you all enjoyed it!

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portfolio

82 of 365 is a forward slash, not a backslash in #inkscape

Forwardslash, not backslash
Forwardslash, not backslash

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.  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)
  • Sir Tim Berners-Lee: Sorry About the Slashes (sitepoint.com)
  • Sir Tim BernersLee admits forward slashes on World Wide Web ‘were a mistake’ (telegraph.co.uk)
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portfolio requests

76 of 365 is a return of the monday blues in #inkscape @suzieprof

Monday blues
Monday blues

So in a followup to yesterday’s post, here is @suzieprof again, showing her true feelings for Mondays. Her face was bitmap traced. The clouds are simply unioned ellipses. The rainfall is made up of paths with dotted lines set to long-short-long-short. There are ellipses below to indicate splashes.

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portfolio

67 of 365 is an observatory on a hill in #Inkscape

Observatory on a Hill
Observatory on a Hill

Observatory on a Hill
Observatory on a Hill

So this was inspired again by my five year old son Jack, who loves looking at the sky and learning about space. Right now he’s been very interested in the Mars Rovers, amongst some other things, like volcanoes, deep sea caves, and the Iron Giant. At any rate, he’s an explorer, and recently, as we were drawing together, he showed me that he was drawing an observatory. Of late, as he has been drawing, he has reminded me of a great truth, at least in my life: kids know how to draw. There’s no pretension, no theory. just a rendering of imagination. Jack draws beautifully. This drawing was made in Inkscape, starting with a node tool tweaked rectangle for the hill, the same for the body of the observatory, its windows, door, and the sky. The dome was created with the ellipse tool, and the lens with opening used the pencil tool set to shape: triangle in, the rectangle tool, the ellipse tool, and the gradient tool. The moon is an ellipse with gradient, along with another ellipse that was clipped with path/intersection with a different gradient. The stars were made with the shape tool, along with the pencil tool and the ctrl-click method to produce dots. Finally, I thought that if I was walking up a hill to an observatory, there would likely be a path, so I made a winding path, and set the line to dotted.

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