Tag: Scalable Vector Graphics

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A monstrous squid with a hundred eyes by John LeMasney via 365sketches.org #cc #design #illustration #inkscape

A monstrous squid with a hundred eyes by John LeMasney via 365sketches.org #cc #design #illustration #inkscape
A monstrous squid with a hundred eyes by John LeMasney via 365sketches.org #cc #design #illustration #inkscape
A monstrous squid with a hundred eyes by John LeMasney via 365sketches.org #cc #design #illustration #inkscape
A monstrous squid with a hundred eyes by John LeMasney via 365sketches.org #cc #design #illustration #inkscape

So today’s sketch is of a squid, which, not being a marine biologist, I think of as simply a sea creäture with 8 tentacles. And black, black eyes. Lots of eyes. So that’s what I drew here for you. A gracefully swimming black-eyed squid.

In Inkscape, I started with an ellipse, which I shaped into a thin US Mailbox type shape, then I used the pencil tool set to Spiro and shape: triangle in to create the tentacles. As a final touch I created a single black eye with a small highlight and then used 0.48’s brand new spraypaint tool which allowed me to quickly fill the space of the head with many clones of the original eye. Hope you enjoyed it!

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portfolio requests

A portrait of Sarah Badawy – LeMasney Consulting

A portrait of Sarah Badawy - LeMasney Consulting
A portrait of Sarah Badawy - LeMasney Consulting
A portrait of Sarah Badawy - LeMasney Consulting
A portrait of Sarah Badawy – LeMasney Consulting

Hey, all. This one was fun. Sarah, who is a long time worker for me, but also a supportive friend and confidant, was nice enough to share a picture for the 365 sketches project. I had a short conversation about what she was looking for, and she mentioned that she liked my self portrait with a scowl, because it had a Japanese emoticon styled face, which I really only subtly realized when I made it. She often uses reversed or japanese styled icons in her emails, and the way she writes and types really is one of the tiny but many fun and interesting aspects of her persona.

A portrait of Sarah Badawy - LeMasney Consulting
A portrait of Sarah Badawy – LeMasney Consulting

With this in mind, in Inkscape, I imported her donated image, bitmap traced it, and removed some background elements, all of her facial features, and a cup of bubble tea that she’s drinking in the original photo. I simplified the nodes, which numbered over 8,000, resulting in just over 1,000 nodes. Using the calligraphy brush set very thin, I added a line to create a shirt, and another to create a chin, neither of which emerged from the bitmap trace.  With a thicker brush size and less opacity, I added color for her hair, shirt, jacket, foreground and background. I added a star using the shape tool. Finally, I created her facial features with the text tool. Thanks for the image Sarah, I hope you like what I did with it!

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portfolio

63 of 365 is a vast, quiet moonrise in #inkscape

Moonrise
Moonrise

I really enjoy Inkscape’s ability to take a single path and use it as a brush with the pencil tool. I do this all the time. I was walking along a path, looking at some very tall, old trees, and was thinking about how I might use a single thin tree in order to build up and flash out a larger tree. I tried it and it didn’t work very well. However, in the same experiment, I came up with this, where I used 2 or 3 different tree bitmaps, converted them to vector using the trace bitmap tool, then copied one to the clipboard, which allows it to be drawn out as a brushusing the pencil tool set to shape: clipboard. The moon is a white ellipse, the text has the candy coating technique, and the trees have a blurred white duplicate for a glow effect. Hope you enjoy it!

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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

On teaching – LeMasney Consulting

On teaching - LeMasney Consulting
On teaching - LeMasney Consulting

On teaching - LeMasney Consulting
On teaching – LeMasney Consulting

This image is of a very good friend of mine, and is part of the 365 requests subproject. As a matter of fact, it was this request (from another good and mutual friend) that inspired me to open up the offer to participate to all of my friends and acquaintances by asking them to send in ideas and photos for the purposes of inspiring sketches. In this particular case, this sketch was meant to be a birthday gift for the person in the image. She knows who she is. As far as you’re concerned, you just need to know that she’s wholly dedicated to inspiring young teachers to go out and make great changes in the world. I’m very proud to know her. The technique: I took a rather small resolution image and bitmap traced it, then I resized it up. I added some color fields to denote a shirt and face. I placed gradients to indicate hair and jacket. I duplicated the bitmap trace, sent it backwards, and blurred it for a glow effect. I added the word teach, and added a glow effect for that as well. Finally, as a background, I created a solid block, added a extension: render: polar grid and blurred it to create a sunburst effect. Happy accidents in this one.

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