Sunday, April 11, 2010

Fountain pen

It's a fountain pen. It's sketchy line art. It's a little late in the day for my increasingly wrongly named daily illustrations.

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Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Apple core

It's a daily illustration two-for-one day! Based on a discussion about various types of core (yarncore, hardcore and so on), the idea of corecore was brought up. So, an apple core.

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Sewing needle

It's a sewing needle. I was playing around with a logo, considering making letters out of sewing gear. The logo was a fail, but I kind of like this needle.

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Tuesday, March 23, 2010

The Unicorn Tutorial

I remember my first introduction to nodes and vector-based illustration. When I was about seven years old my father, who was a high school tech teacher at the time, sat me down in front of Corel Draw 3. Up until that day, I had seen the program as a repository of clip art, not knowing what I could actually do with it. He loaded a clip art horse. Everything changed when he showed me the node selection tool. The previously clean line drawing of a horse suddenly had a mass of dots all along its outline. He explained that these were nodes, the points defining the shape of the horse. And then the magical bit: he had me select the node at the apex of the horse's ear. When I clicked and dragged that node, the horse changed. The ear elongated, following my mouse. He instructed me to move the node a little distance and then drop it. The horse was no longer a horse. Elongating that ear had turned it into a unicorn.

Since then, I've learned more about how nodes really work and what can be done with them. But that lesson still sticks in my head. It was an incredibly powerful introduction. It started a (so far) life long love of vectors. A love of all their extensibility, elegance and possibility. So today, I've drawn a horse. It's not quite like how I usually draw. It's just an outline, no shading, nothing fancy. It's a horse with two pointy ears, one of which has a little node at the apex. I've uploaded the .svg file to the Open Clip Art Library (here). If you want, you can download it, open it up with Inkscape or whatever vector manipulation program you use, and turn it into a unicorn. I've put pictures below, so you can see my unicorn. And the next time I talk to anyone about the joys of drawing with vectors, I'm going to start with the unicorn tutorial.

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Thursday, March 11, 2010

Goldfish

I've been slacking on my daily illustrations lately. So here's a goldfish.

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Saturday, February 13, 2010

Bow tie

To go with all the previous illustrations of dresses (such as this, this, this and this), I've done something that nods towards male formal wear. Below, a bow tie.

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Thursday, February 4, 2010

Wind turbine

Below: a silhoutte of a wind turbine. This one is destined to be a stencil, which is why it forgoes detail and shading.

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Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Bison bison

It's Bison bison, the Bovidae so nice, they named it twice. Below, a greyscale, logo-style bison.

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Friday, December 18, 2009

Seaplane

Today, a somewhat clip art-y seaplane. A little late in the day, but better late than never.

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Friday, December 4, 2009

Old timey hockey player

From the grand old days when hockey players wore real sweaters, sticks were made of wood and everything was in black and white: a distressingly clip-arty hockey player.

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Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Disembodied dress 4

Another dress sans wearer.

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Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Imperfect Snowflake

It's two for the price of one in terms of fast illustrations today. Below, a snowflake which is absolutely and concertedly not perfect.

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Disembodied dress 3

Continuing the series of disembodied dresses, here's the aptly named Disembodied Dress 3.

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Monday, November 30, 2009

Disembodied dress 2

I started this one last Wednesday and then got side tracked. All told, I think it still comes in under twenty minutes.

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Monday, November 23, 2009

Disembodied dress

I think it's going to be a week of garments.

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Sunday, November 22, 2009

Habanero Pepper

For no particular reason, a habanero pepper.

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Saturday, November 21, 2009

Pistachios

I wanted some pistachios but wasn't willing to brave a Saturday afternoon grocery store. Instead, I drew one. Here are two iterations of the same pistachio.

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Thursday, November 19, 2009

Lemon

Continuing on the sliced fruit theme, a cross section of a lemon. For Alex, because he liked the tomato.

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Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Tomato

Cross section of a tomato.

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Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Potato Flowers

Now: an illustration of potato flowers. Later: a more substantial post.

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Monday, November 16, 2009

Bedbug

I know I said I was going to do plants this week. I know that a bedbug is not a plant. Plant illustrations starting tomorrow. For now, a bedbug.

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Friday, November 13, 2009

Wood duck

The last illustration of animal week: a wood duck. Next week, plants, I think.

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Thursday, November 12, 2009

Red Fox

Continuing on with the cute wildlife theme, this morning's illustration is a red fox.

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Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Lop rabbit

This morning, a lop eared rabbit in shades of brown. Looks like it's shaping up to be a week of small animals.

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Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Daily illustrations/squirrel

I've issued myself a new challenge. Every morning, I have to do an illustration in less than half an hour. From here on in, they'll all be filed under the "daily illustration" tag. Today, a squirrel.

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