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.

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.

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.

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.

Goldfish

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

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.

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.

Bison bison

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

Seaplane

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

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.

Disembodied dress 4

Another dress sans wearer.

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.

Disembodied dress 3

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

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.

Disembodied dress

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

Habanero Pepper

For no particular reason, a habanero pepper.

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.

Lemon

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

Tomato

Cross section of a tomato.

Potato Flowers

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

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.

Wood duck

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

Red Fox

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

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.

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.