Tag: Graphics

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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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portfolio requests

A huge iPad – lemasney.com

A huge iPad - lemasney.com
A huge iPad - lemasney.com
A huge iPad - lemasney.com
A huge iPad – lemasney.com

The iBod is a new kind of computing device, one that takes you off the couch and allows you to truly interact. All of your iPad apps will still work with the iBod, but you will notice that they are just a little fuzzy because they’re just magnified, but apps made natively for the iBod will reach new heights of usefulness and a full body computing experience. Now, with the iBod, you can have a boxing match with a full sized partner, play chess as a king, dance your way to stardom,  and have full body length videoconferencing. Preorders now available!

The iBod was inspired by Dan Wadlinger who suggested that I should focus on the next iteration of the iPad, and this is what I came up with. In Inkscape, I got a picture of a jumping person, a picture of the iPad, and bitmap traced both, in this case using the color tracing function of the bitmap trace dialog for the iPad. I added the tether and the background, and called it done.

Thanks, Dan for the inspiration!

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portfolio requests

Girls don’t walk anywhere if they don’t want to – Sarah – lemasney.com

Girls don't walk anywhere if they don't want to - Sarah
Girls don't walk anywhere if they don't want to - Sarah
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.

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professional activities research interests

55Plus presents: My 10 favorite Free Graphics Applications

open source jackpot
Image by lemasney via Flickr

Abstract: John LeMasney, Manager of Technology Training at Rider University, presents a program titled “My 10 Favorite Free Graphics Applications.”

Date: April 14th at the Princeton Jewish Center, Princeton, NJ.

“While I was personally raised on Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator and Corel DRAW!, they’ve got nothing on these free and open source tools,” says LeMasney. “I plan to demonstrate how to find great, free tools to design advertisements, posters, layouts, images, and logos, and I’ll explore tools that allow you to work in photographic, three-dimensional, vector, bitmap modes.” LeMasney will also discuss the rise in popularity of open source software and what he describes as “the free yet fantastic alternatives to commercial applications.” from 55 PLUS, NJ Retired men’s group on https://princetonol.com/groups/55plus/

Presentation: http://docs.google.com/present/edit?id=0Ad-YsRMv5bPqZGNrZm05ZndfMjE0ZmNtNW01ZHA&hl=en

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portfolio requests

Phoenix Tattoo for autism awareness – lemasney.com

Phoenix Tattoo for autism awareness - lemasney.com
Phoenix Tattoo for autism awareness - lemasney.com
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. đŸ˜‰ I do have the image in a far larger size than this, and just black on transparent, if you’re interested. đŸ˜‰