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27 of 365 says long live evolution #Inkscape

20100117
Viva la Evolucion

I made this cutie in Inkscape by creating an ellipse, adding 3 smaller tan ellipses within it, creating ellipse based ears and eyes, and then creating a mouth out of a round capped path, which I duplicated, resized and flipped to make half a nose, then the rest of the nose. With a duplicated three node polygon, I made the shards of fur on the sides of her face, which I mirrored for the other side. I added a jungle background square, and called it done. Then, I thought better of it, added some text, and really called it done.

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22 of 365 is a self portrait in text

20100112
John LeMasney

Here’s another text based portrait, and in this case a self portrait. For this technique, I start by placing a photo in Inkscape, and doing a bitmap trace. Then, I place a string of text, convert it to a path, copy it, and use the pencil tool with shape set to “from clipboard“. Then, I draw until the dark shapes from the bitmap trace are filled, at which point I remove the trace, leaving just the text. Underneath is simply a rectangle of contrasting color.

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21 of 365 is a ink wash styled face

20100111
Ink wash face

I think this piece is more interesting than beautiful, but more than anything, I was playing with layered translucent washes, in order to build a well defined face. It reminds me somehow of 70’s style retro looking adverts.

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brand consulting design principles Illustration Inkscape portfolio technology

A tribute to Steve Jobs, a portrait in lines.

A portriat of Steve Jobs in line by John LeMasney via lemasney.com
A portriat of Steve Jobs in line by John LeMasney via lemasney.com
A tribute to Steve Jobs, a portrait in lines.
A tribute to Steve Jobs, a portrait in lines.

Playing again with the stitch sub paths live path effect in Inkscape. I took an image of Steve Jobs and did a two part stitch to render his face and hair, then added facial details and turtleneck to finish it out and make it recognizable. Fun stuff.

‘Steven Paul Jobs (/dĘ’É’bz/; February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011) was an American business magnate, industrial designer, investor, and media proprietor. He was the chairman, chief executive officer (CEO), and co-founder of Apple Inc., the chairman and majority shareholder of Pixar, a member of The Walt Disney Company’s board of directors following its acquisition of Pixar, and the founder, chairman, and CEO of NeXT. Jobs is widely recognized as a pioneer of the personal computer revolution of the 1970s and 1980s, along with Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak. Jobs was born in San Francisco, California, and put up for adoption. He was raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. He attended Reed College in 1972 before dropping out that same year, and traveled through India in 1974 seeking enlightenment and studying Zen Buddhism. His declassified FBI report states that he used marijuana and LSD while he was in college, and once told a reporter that taking LSD was “one of the two or three most important things” he had done in his life.’

from “Steve Jobs – Wikipedia” at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jobs curated by lemasney creative. Feel free to share.
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15 of 365 is a lion, king of the beasts by John LeMasney via lemasney.com

15 of 365 is a lion, king of the beasts by John LeMasney via lemasney.com
15 of 365 is a lion, king of the beasts by John LeMasney via lemasney.com

15 of 365 is a lion, king of the beasts by John LeMasney via lemasney.com
15 of 365 is a lion, king of the beasts by John LeMasney via lemasney.com

This is another experiment with Inkscape‘s Von Koch Live Path Effect. I made a simple shape, which ended up being the jaw and face of the lion, then applied the Van Koch LPE, which does that very specific kind of repetition. After tweaking and playing with the Van Koch copies, I had the ‘pyramid’ of shapes that make the bottom of the lion’s face. I duplicated it, converted it to a path, then duplicated the path twice more to form the mouth and cheeks by rotating them into place. The LPE effect can get in the way of finished shape placement and dupes, so I suggest that you keep a copy to the side with the LPE applied, and work with dupes converted to paths. When I started out, I had no idea that it would be a lion, and in fact I made it first into a huge wig, then a beard, which led to the lion. After adding shapes for the eyes and nose, I made the crown out of a square converted into a path, then cut the holes out of the crown using the boolean difference operation. I created the spikes for the crown using the Bezier tool with the triangle out shape applied. I conjured up some ears and teeth, and tweaked the color until I was happy. Then I created the background and starburst to make it pop a bit.

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An illustration of Roger Ebert using text cc-by lemasney

An illustration of Roger Ebert using text cc-by lemasney
An illustration of Roger Ebert using text cc-by lemasney

A portrait of Roger Ebert made out of text by John LeMasney via lemasney.com
A portrait of Roger Ebert made of text by John LeMasney via lemasney.com

When I saw Slashfilm‘s post on Roger Ebert‘s list of best 2009 films (20 of them, not one of them Avatar), I remembered watching him on his show for years, up until his cancer surgery that removed a great deal of his lower face and neck. The photo that is the basis for my drawing appears above the post at Despite this surgery, which took his ability to speak, he continued to write, and as a salute on NPR stated so nicely:

“When Roger Ebert lost his ability to speak following cancer surgery, it wasn’t clear exactly what his future would hold, but it turns out that he entered a phase of his career that’s been utterly fascinating. He does talk about politics a lot on his blog, but even if all you read is his coverage of movies and culture, it’s well worth the time.” from Getting Personal: We Salute 10 Of Our Favorite Pop-Culture Humans Of 2009 – Monkey See Blog : NPR at Tue Dec 29 2009 23:35:51 GMT-0500 (EST) on

So, in my quest for doing (hopefully) interesting, poignant, and helpful sketches over the next year, I wanted to share my text-based portrait of Roger, with apologies to the original photographer who is not credited on Slashfilm. Shame. Also, I just read a great essay by Ebert that the NPR piece led me to at

He may not be able to speak, but he has certainly not lost his voice.