Content: In this session, Suzanne Carbonaro and John LeMasney talk about presenting your personal brand using ePortfolios. While Suzanne described how to use TaskStream and other tools to get your work, ideas, and artifacts up online, John demonstrated how to use audio, video, still imagery, and Office style documents in order to create the artifacts themselves.
A group of pink balloons released into a dark sky cc-by lemasney
A group of pink balloons released into a dark sky cc-by lemasney
The origins of A group of pink balloons released into a dark sky cc-by lemasney
I saw a photo on ffffound.com of a group of balloons afloat and decided that I could do the same thing in Inkscape.
In inkscape, I made a single balloon with the ellipse and Bezier tools, then I duplicated them using the new 0.48 spraypaint tool. I tweaked the group a bit by rotating the strings toward the center, and added a background. It was an enjoyable, quick illustration, and I’m loving the new tools in Inkscape.
What is a balloon?
“A balloon is a flexible bag that can be inflated with a gas, such as helium, hydrogen, nitrous oxide, oxygen, or air. Modern day balloons are made from materials such as rubber, latex, polychloroprene, or a nylon fabric, and can come in many colors. Some early balloons were made of dried animal bladders, such as the pig bladder. Some balloons are used for decorative purposes, while others are used for practical purposes such as meteorology, medical treatment, military defense, or transportation. A balloon’s properties, including its low density and low cost, have led to a wide range of applications. The rubber balloon was invented by Michael Faraday in 1824, during experiments with various gases.[1]” – Balloon – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, https://goo.gl/qmrMFb
This was a very special request from my good friend Janie Hermann who was recently advertising a program at Princeton Public Library, a part of which involved a shredder truck, which would come to shred bulk paper and sensitive materials in order to prevent them from being seen by unintended eyes, but I imagine also as a way of recycling paper. At any rate, when I read “Shredder Truck” all I could think of was a huge black rig running though the streets at midnight with heavy metal guitarists all riffing at each other in a wild cacophony, all with their Marshall Amps turned up to 11. So I replied to the post with the idea, and the next thing we knew, it was an idea for a sketch.
Because of the shape required to properly render a tractor trailer, this is the first drawing in this image to break the square format for these sketches. I won’t do it often, but I’d rather break the format on a special sketch than keep the format and break the image. Also, because of the detail in this sketch, please consider taking a look at it full size.
In Inkscape, I got the 4 shredders and the tractor itself separately from MorgueFile and bitmap traced them. I created the trailer using the rectangle tool, converted it to a path, and roughed up the shape a bit with the node tool. I worked to overlap the 4 shredders and have their color and tone fade gracefully into one another. I created the moon with the ellipse tool and blur effects. The rear wheels of the trailer are a copied and modified set of the back wheels of the tractor.
I hope you like the image. I love the nighttime feel, the dangerous color scheme, and the visual volume of the shredders. Thanks to Janie for the spark and the request!
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!
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.
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.
