Tag: Graphics

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consulting

Ewing SeniorNet presents ““My 10 Favorite Free Graphics Applications””

An important distinction
Image by lemasney via Flickr

A Special Reminder from The Computer Learning Center at Ewing

CLC Tips & Tricks Program April 6

“My 10 Favorite Free Graphics Applications”

Ewing, NJ:   Next Tuesday, April 6, John LeMasney, Manager of Technology Training at Rider University in  Lawrenceville, will present “My 10 Favorite Free Graphics Applications” at the Computer Learning Center’s latest “Computer Tips and Tricks” program. This free program will take place in the Ewing Senior and Community Center, 999 Lower Ferry Road.  It will be preceded by a question and answer session during which the audience can direct computer questions to the CLC’s all-volunteer faculty.  The CLC “Computer Tips and Tricks” programs are presented as a public service on the first Tuesday of each month.  No prior registration is required.

““You’ll never go back to paying hundreds of dollars for name brand software after you see what you can do with these 10 free applications,” says LeMasney. “While I was personally raised on Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator and Corel DRAW!, they’ve got nothing on these free and open source tools. 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.”

For further information about the April 6 program, courses or directions, call 609-882-5086, 609-883-1776, Ext. 6205 or visit the SeniorNet web site at www.ewingsnet.com.

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

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portfolio

bandage illustration – LeMasney Consulting

bandage illustration - LeMasney Consulting
bandage illustration - LeMasney Consulting
bandage illustration - LeMasney Consulting
bandage illustration – LeMasney Consulting

I imagine everyone reading this has had the weird common experience of using disposable bandages, like the pain of removing them, the sort of icky fascination with the uncovered transformation, the rules and practices of how to prepare the cut and the strange way in which the color of the bandage is not really the color of anyone’s skin, but is closer to some people’s skin color than others (excluding character band aids, clear bandages and other movements forward in this respect). At any rate, the whole thing is kind of weird, culturally speaking, and I like to focus on weird stuff here.

This is one of the more complex scenes I’ve done in Inkscape. The bandage was made using a few overlapping and tweaked rectangles. I made the circular perforated breathing layer by making one ellipse, duplicating it, then duplicating those until I had a row, then duplicating those into an offset row, and so on. I built the thumb and finger with rectangles. The drop of blood has the candy coating effect applied. The most fun weird part is the armhair, which I created with Inkscape 0.48’s new spraypaint tool. I made a thin line of multidirectional hairs, then randomly duplicated them with the spraypaint tool. One of my favorite new tools, for sure. I moved the hair that was in the path of the bandage to the adhesive parts of the bandage. Finally, I created some abstract blurry, overlapping low opacity shapes for the dried blood on the bandage.

Weird, I know, but it was a lot of fun to make for you. Thanks for checking it out!

John.

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portfolio

Blue bokeh – John LeMasney

Blue bokeh - John LeMasney
Blue bokeh - John LeMasney
Blue bokeh - John LeMasney
Blue bokeh – John LeMasney

So, in an earlier sketch (dark green bokeh), I used Inkscape’s Tiled Clones feature to create a Bokeh effect, though at the time, I myself was less than impressed with what I came up with, and knew that I’d be coming back to it to make an improvement, which i feel like I’ve achieved here. I love Bokeh images, and in a camera, they’re generally created by having distinct backlight sources that are far out of focus while having a foreground subject or space that is in focus. In this particular case, I was creating a scene that focused on just the out of focus back light sources. Here, we might be looking at a building with lots of bright reflections in the distance, or water on a large lake on a sunny day, but in general, I think Bokeh are magical, mystical, and beautifully abstract.

With the beta of Inkscape 0.48, many people have been hard at work bringing new features to Inkscape. One of the most exciting differences for me between 0.47 and 0.48 is the brand new spraypaint tool, which allows you to take a single object or group of objects and quickly recreate them as a stream of overlapping clones, as though you had a spray can filled with a shape. You can affect the size, rotation, and other aspects of the copies or clones that you create with the tool, and it does a great job of injecting random placement into your design.

This tool was made (amongst many other uses) for just this kind of sketch. In Inkscape, I created a blue background rectangle, then I placed a single white ellipse and set it to 50% opacity. Then, using the spraypaint tool, I clicked and dragged the ellipse, which created a series of randomly placed clones at different sizes as I moved the tool about the canvas. It quickly created a randomness for the bokeh that worked nicely. I also used Inkscape’s tweak tool to affect the hue, brightness, and opacity of the shapes. Finally, I selected a few of the shapes at a time and increased blur at varying levels.

A very fun, very quick way to create this effect in Inkscape. Thanks to @JonCruz, @Scislac, and the rest of the Inkscape developers for a great upcoming release.

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portfolio

Canada – LeMasney Consulting

Canada - LeMasney Consulting
Canada - LeMasney Consulting
Canada - LeMasney Consulting
Canada – LeMasney Consulting

Hey, all. This is one of the simplest sketches ever, but I think often about how much I appreciate the humor, culture, music, and exports from our northern neighbors. I really loved the way that they hosted the winter games, too. One of my favorite Canadian exports by far is one JanieH who’s been helping me a lot lately, and so it all came together as a need to say thanks to Canada for putting out some really great stuff. I hope to go someday.

In inkscape I took a morguefile image of a maple leaf, a clear Canadian symbol, imported and bitmap traced it in edge detect mode, changed the fill to red, and performed the candy coating effect on it, which is more or less just some visual trickery with the gradient tool and an inset, duplicated path. For a final touch I placed a metallized paint filter on the background rectangle to give it a bit of shine.

Hope you enjoyed it!

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curriculum vitae Illustration Inkscape open source portfolio professional activities professional experience requests

Brownstone by the beach

Brownstone by the beach - LeMasney Consulting
Brownstone by the beach - LeMasney Consulting
Brownstone by the beach - LeMasney Consulting
Brownstone by the beach – LeMasney Consulting

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.

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portfolio

Speedometer illustration – LeMasney Consulting

Speedometer illustration - LeMasney Consulting
Speedometer illustration - LeMasney Consulting

Speedometer illustration - LeMasney Consulting
Speedometer illustration – LeMasney Consulting

Well, friends, we’ve reached 100 sketches. I’m really enjoying the ride, and I wanted to take this opportunity to say thank you to all the supporters, commenters, and participants in my process. You all rock!

In Inkscape, this is a series of overlapping circles with path outsets applied. The background is a bumpy leather filter. The glossy shine is just an application of the candy technique. I added the text for the numbers on a grid, and I added a star shape for the degrees on the gauge.  Thanks again!