Tag: Arts

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portfolio

58 of 365 is a jungle of vines and leaves in #Inkscape

Jungle of vines and leaves by John LeMasney via lemasney.com
Jungle of vines and leaves by John LeMasney via lemasney.com

 

Jungle of vines and leaves by John LeMasney via lemasney.com
Jungle of vines and leaves by John LeMasney via lemasney.com

So here, I wanted to play some more with text and the pencil tool. I started by typing in the word Jungle, converting it to path, and sizing it up to be readable at 500px.  Then I took the pencil tool, set as usual to shape: triangle in with spiro splines and 50% smoothing, and added vine-like shapes to the ends of each of the butts of the letterforms, to extend them. I performed a union on all of the letterforms and vine shapes, so that they all became one path, and cleaned up the joints between the letter ends and the vine beginnings. After I was satisfied with the shape, I set the color, duplicated it, and outset it twice, sending the outset path back and giving it a brighter green. I did this once again, making that outset path light yellow, with a slight blur for a glow effect.

Satisfied with the forms, I decided to create a leaf motif in the corner, which is simply an ellipse converted to path and shaped gently into a leaf form with the node tool. I added a vein to the leaf with the pencil tool using the same settings as above. I grouped those two paths into a single leaf and stem, then duplicated the leaf several more times. I created another full opacity leaf for the foreground, and many others in the background, altering the size and rotation to create a pile of leaves. I set the opacity of the background leaves to 40% or so, to let them fade into the background.

 

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portfolio requests

57 of 365 is a pretty kitty in #inkscape

Pretteh Kitteh
Pretteh Kitteh
Pretteh Kitteh
Pretteh Kitteh

This is the latest entry into the 365 Requests sub project, where my friends, family and colleagues (hey, that’s you!) send me their ideas, photos, and suggestions about what to do next at https://lemasney.com/consulting/ . My good friend Amy sent me a picture of her kitty, and so I decided to use my newly discovered technique (thanks to Angel Bee) of doing a bitmap to vector conversion with the bitmap trace tool, then by grabbing the calligraphy tool with a wide setting and a low opacity to build up the color as if using washes or watercolors. Fun technique, and great, simple results. That’s Inkscape.

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portfolio

56 of 365 is changing from a pencil to a quill in #inkscape

From a pencil to a quill - LeMasney Consulting
From a pencil to a quill - LeMasney Consulting
From a pencil to a quill - LeMasney Consulting
From a pencil to a quill – LeMasney Consulting

 

From a pencil to a quill - LeMasney Consulting
From a pencil to a quill – LeMasney Consulting

I was inspired to make something that reminded me of President’s day. When I think of Washington, I think quills, and when I think of Lincoln, I think of pencils, though they both had both. I can’t explain why, this is just what came to me. So this one is all about the interpolation extension (extensions/generate from path/interpolate) which takes two paths and creates intermediate shapes that show how one shape turned into another shape. It’s great for creating animations, but also for illustration. For instance, you can take two related objects (like a pencil and a quill) and have them connected by a series of shadowy shapes. So, in order to do this, I created a pencil by hand with the Bezier tool, and then created a gradient that described what we’d expect to see on a pencil (yellow paint, woody tip, lead, eraser). I also found a nondescript image of a feather, brought it in and took a duplicate of the pencil and shaped that into the quill. For that gradient, I created a feather like set of transitions. I then applied the Interpolate extension to create the tweening. Really just an experiment for me here, but I can see using this in other situations, for sure.

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portfolio

45 of 365 is a self portrait with a scowl #inkscape

Self portrait with scowl - LeMasney Consulting
Self portrait with scowl - LeMasney Consulting
Self portrait with scowl - LeMasney Consulting
Self portrait with scowl – LeMasney Consulting

 

I opened up PhotoBooth on my MBP, and took a quick close up shot of my face in a scowl. I brought it into Inkscape, converted the bitmap into a vector with both the edge detect and the threshold methods, then applied different colors to each and overlapped them. I added a background for the highlight, and finally added some plain black lines to emphasize my mouth and eyes, as they were getting a bit lost.

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portfolio

42 of 365 is a cat sleeping on a tabletop #inkscape

Cat sleeping on table - LeMasney Consulting
Cat sleeping on table - LeMasney Consulting
Cat sleeping on table - LeMasney Consulting
Cat sleeping on table – LeMasney Consulting

So this is my cat Jimmy, sleeping not on a table, actually, but a media switch. I just used the calligraphy tool to sketch his outline kind of quickly, then duplicated it and blurred the dupe just a little. Then I duplicated it again, flipped it so as to create a mirror image, and used the gradient tool to have it fade out for a mirrored effect. Under it all is a rectangle with a gradient applied to create a planar difference between the background and the table surface.