Monday 29 December 2008

Pattern Shapes Tutorial for Adobe Illustrator

Layers Magazine has just published a video tutorial for Adobe Illustrator CS4, showing how to build seamless patterns and creating design elements out of them. The video covers the usage of the "Transfrom effect" and a handy shortcut trick for selecing / deselecting objects in different stacking order. Tutorial link

Realistic Skull Illustrations

Free vector resource from sexualtyranosaurus. The pack contains five anatomic skull and one spine illustrations. The file is editable with Adobe Illustrator.

To use the resource first, you need to expand the *.ZIP archive and then load the *.AI file. Download.

In case this is not kind of skull illustrations are looking for, you can have a look at another vector skulls set here.

Sunday 28 December 2008

Vector Paisley Ornaments

A digital drecoration resource for Adobe Illustrator from grunii. You can use the paisley ornaments to decorate your design composition or to design a seamless pattern...

If you wish to customize the color scheme, you can do so by ungrouping the object (Select All , Object>Ungroup) and change the fill and stroke colors. Download

Serif Christmas


Typographyc animation by Matt Jake. (via meddesign)

Saturday 27 December 2008

Satellite Dish Vector Illustration

A detailed vector illustration of a satellite dish from J-05. Free for personal and commercial use...

To use / customize the illustration open the PDF file with Adobe Illustrator. Download

THE END OF 2008


George Bellows

2008 was a rough year for the type of assets that are vulnerable to market fluctuations.

40% of the value of the US stock market ($7.3 trillion) has simply evaporated. Major companies collapsed as the global credit system melted down and a wide variety of sophisticated financial instruments became untrustworthy overnight. Unemployment soared.
The world will face some excruciating economic hardships over the next few years.

But there are other assets that don't lose their value regardless of how much markets fluctuate. The strength and insight behind that remarkable Bellows drawing stayed with him, and colored his perception of life, regardless of what was happening in the stock market that day.


In fact, some of the greatest artistic periods in human history arose during periods of great turmoil and strife. The golden age of Greece was forged in a period of bitter feuds between warring city states, when invasion by outside powers threatened to snuff out Greece altogether, and when an impoverished lower class was recovering from subjugation by the wealthy class. Here is Orson Welles' famous cuckoo clock speech from the Third Man:




Laurence Olivier said, "If you are an artist, you have to prove it."

Let's get to work.

Tuesday 23 December 2008

Vector Drips and Circles Pack for Adobe Illustrator

A collection of nine funky drip and circle symbols for Adobe Illustrator from LukeAvery.

Those symbols might be useful if you are working on a project that conveys pop-art or disco styles.

To use, load the .AI file with Illustrator and open the symbols palette (Window>Symbols). Download

Monday 22 December 2008

The famous "Bar" suite by Christian Dior

A vector illustration of Christian Dior's "Bar Suite' from MissMatzenBatzen.

This concept is part of Dior's first fashion design collection "New Look" (1947). More

Pen and Marker Brushes for Adobe Illustrator

A collection of 30 brushes for Adobe Illustrator from certero27. Ideal for applying hand-drawn / sketcky effects on your strokes. Download Note: To use, load the PDF in Adobe Illustrator and open the brushes palette (Window>Brushes).

Sunday 21 December 2008

Why Vector ?

An eye opening material from iStockPhoto, on What vector illustrations are? & How to use them? If you are a newbie in digital illustration and using royalty free illustration, then this article is exactly for you. 
"First, a little technical information. There are basically two kinds of digital still images: raster (also known as bitmap) and vector. Raster images are made up of pixels, tiny colored squares arranged in a rectangular grid, forming an image. Vector graphics, on the other hand, use mathematical calculations to plot points — and paths connecting them — to describe the image. The resulting shapes, or objects, can be easily manipulated, colored and re-sized without loss of quality. Whereas a raster image may have, say, 1895 pixels from point A to point B, a vector graphic simply plots the two points, calculates the distance between them and draws a line (for this reason, vector files are typically much smaller than bitmap images)." Continue Reading

Jack Skellington Face Illustration

A collection of 13 different face illlustrations of Jack Skellington from Nightmare Before Christmas. The pack is in EPS file format, editable with most vector editors. Download. Thanks to sebgonz


Crappy Christmas

Old Street area, London


Saturday 20 December 2008

Sponge Vector Textures

A free Adobe Illustrator texture resource from peacefreak99. The textures in the pack can be used for creating grungy backgrounds, applying a grunge effect to vector elements in your composition or vector masking.

You can try exploring possibilities with different Pathfinders and Shape Modes in Adobe Illustrator (Window>Pathfinder).

Note: To use, open the PDF file with Adobe Illustrator (File>Open>Choose File; Do not use click and drag). Download

Of birds and the onlookers responsibility:a few words on a video by Koerner Union

I don't remember how I found the video below. It popped up, and I watched, curious, then mesmerized, then disturbed, then - disgusted.
I decided not to post it on New Art. So as not to encourage something I find incorrect, or rather - wrong.
After a while I came back to see it, and watched the whole thing again. And I thought: who am I to judge this? After all, didn't I watch it with curiosity, and watch the whole thing, twice? Why can't I show what's disturbing me, bringing it forward to this public forum, so everyone can make her own mind?
But first, let me warn you: in my opinion, animals were being hurt in the making of this work. If you want to be absolutely sure you don't participate in any way in the popularity of this work, do not see the film below.



I would not resist if I were you. Maybe I would do it for the sake of something (it's a scary skill, thinking up good reasons). But I would be there, peeking in. Maybe not until the end. But then, it doesn't matter, does it? Does it?
The question of the onlooker, his power and his role in the process of creation, might often be used in contemporary art - but very seldom is it addressed in-depth. What is our responsibility? Can shutting our eyes be a good way of "appreciating" and yet disliking the work? Can I refuse something without knowing what it is? What do we know about the work we see above? About the conditions of its creation? Should I even be posting this without that knowledge?
See this strange video, also directed by Körner (Koerner) Union. (Be patient.)

Now, the astonishing part with the hen makes me question my own assumptions. Was my judgement too simplistic, also in the other case? Maybe this is just a short moment, or maybe it's all a trick, maybe the birds are not bumping against the mirror, shocking against it violently, thinking there is space where a solid mirror remains? Maybe it was all digitally manipulated or they were trained, or something? Or maybe I'm being hypersensitive?

Relax, now.

Here are a few untortured animals, in a wonderful picture by Isabella Rozendaal.
No, this is no antidote to these moral dilemmas. But it's an appeasement: the gentle distance. Rozendaal is someone who appreciates " the remarkable and humorous things she encounters in real life". And a way of approaching reality which plays with the idea of "amateur" photography, so we feel like this is almost too easy, and yet, remarkably appealing.


Yet, after all this, let's make a circle, and go back to Korner Union, with a video that somehow makes one think of the pictures above, with simple stories that are just slightly off (and a great song by Don Cavalli)...

But my favorite thing by Korner Union is quite minimalistic I suppose and maybe it's just this mood, tonight, with all the snow melted away, thawed and relaxed and, well, it's a page I found on their soon-to-be-active site. It also takes part in the game of hide-and-seek between the onlookers and the people-who-show-as-things-we-like. And it's simple.

Wednesday 17 December 2008

WILLIAM APATOFF

He was born and raised in the slums of Boston, the son of Russian immigrants. When he was still a boy, his father died, leaving Apatoff the sole support for his family. He rode a battered bicycle around town after school seeking odd jobs, and he worked nights as a janitor. His childhood was grim and filled with challenges, but through it all he dreamed of becoming an artist.

He put himself through the Massachusetts College of Art & Design, working nights. Here is his portrait of a cleaning woman he admired.





After graduation, he went to Chicago where he set up an easel in his apartment and taught painting at the Art Institute of Chicago. He married an Iowa farm girl and had children, who he adored. This is his portrait of me when I was three:


Before long, Apatoff found himself with six children to support and a lot of bills to pay. He put aside his fine art aspirations and became an art director in an advertising agency. Politically radical, he ruefully recounted that now his job was to sell "candy to rot teeth, tobacco to rot lungs, televisions to rot minds, and liquor to rot livers."







Every once in a while his fine art yearnings managed to find an outlet in his commercial work, as in this sketch of a bicentennial bottle for the Miller Brewing Company.



When I was young, I loved to accompany him on Sunday trips to the art museum. He would stride into a huge room filled with grand baroque paintings, size up the room in ten seconds and growl, "they should bring a garbage truck around back and throw out every painting in this room except this one and that one." Then he would stride briskly on to the next room as I raced on my little legs to keep up. But driving home, he might stop the car for 10 minutes to revel in the color of paint on an industrial water tower illuminated in the afternoon sun. I never met a man with more anarchistic taste.



Now my father is gone forever. Today would have been his birthday and I miss him terribly. He sacrificed his own potential as an artist so that his kids could have a better life than he did.
He never expected anyone to see these paintings. I post them here to honor what he gave up for me, and to honor all those caught in the tug of war between art and life.

Tuesday 16 December 2008

Vector Raglan T-Shirt Template

A free vector T-Shirt template from emailartist26. It could be used for all sorts of T-Shirt design projects or branding presentations...

The template contains two detailed front and back illustrations. You can easily customize their color and the shades by opening the PDF file with Adobe Illustrator and experiment with different fill colors and gradients. Download


THE NAKEDNESS OF GOYA

The world has gossiped for 200 years about Goya's twin paintings of the Maja-- one with clothes and one without.





When the secret nude painting was discovered, Spanish society was scandalized: did Goya really have an affair with María del Pilar Teresa Cayetana de Silva Alvarez de Toledo, the 13th Duchess of Alba (and wife of the wealthiest man in Spain)?? And gee, is that what she really looks like under all those fancy clothes????

Today the two paintings hang side by side in the Prado where visitors continue to ponder those same eternal questions.


From the flickr account of lapernas 2.0

The Maja certainly bared her secrets in this painting but Goya had a few secrets of his own, and he stripped himself bare in artwork that was far more revealing than his painting of the Maja.

For 40 years, Goya was a royal court painter who painted flattering portraits of aristocrats and nobles. But underneath he was the opposite; he detested the idle and corrupt aristocracy and painted passionate images sympathetic to the oppressed peasants.



Goya also championed the philosophy of the Enlightenment. He treasured its ideals of rationality and logic. But underneath, he was a superstitious man, obsessed with dreams and mysticism. He made eerie paintings of devils and witches and bats.



As another example, the public Goya created art glorifying generals and military victories while the private Goya was creating devastating etchings condemning The Disasters of War.







Goya was considered a bon vivant who lived for a while on a lavish estate while he consorted with royalty. Yet, underneath it all, he was a deaf, embittered hermit who distanced himself from others and painted his private musings in dark paintings about a world gone mad.



One of his private black paintings, a "half-submerged dog," is a bleak and ghostly image that makes no sense at all (and for that reason, is all the more frightening):



Goya stripped off civilization, stripped off pretense and affect, even stripped off linear thought, to paint himself in a profoundly naked way.

Most people would rather focus on the bared Maja than on Goya's bared soul. Art experts and pedants have lots of fun obsessing over whether the nude Maja shows the first pubic hair in the history of western art. Even the Spanish Inquisition preferred to focus on the nude Maja; they never investigated Goya for his subversive political views, but they demanded that he appear before them to account for his nude painting (perhaps foreshadowing special prosecutor Kenneth Starr).

In one sense the nudity of the Maja seems frivolous and shallow compared to Goya's nakedness. But on the other hand, if you spend enough time pondering the bleakness of Goya's black paintings, you start to yearn for rescue from the onslaught of the night. And it's in such dire circumstances that you begin to appreciate that a naked thigh or a pubic curl have a profundity of their own.

Monday 15 December 2008

Art Noveau Flower Pattern

A free vector resource from sergeypoluse. Seamless pattern constructed by detailed flower illustrations. To use, open the PDF file with Adobe Illustrator (File>Open). Download

Saturday 13 December 2008

Default Brushes in Adobe Illustrator CS3

The image below is a preview of some of the default brushes in Adobe Illustrator CS3. Many Illustrator users don't about their existance, so I decied to share.

To launch the brushes, just load the Brush Library from Window>Brush Library. Window> Brush Libraries>Other Library...

Pulse Line Vectors

A collection of 23 pulse line shapes in vector format. Those are the pulse lines that you would see on the life monitor in the hospitals...

Some of the vectors are corner shapes and can be used for creating frames. The PDF file is can be customized with Adobe Illustrator. Download

Note: The pack was originally submited as a Photoshop Brush file by Pindlekill.

Friday 12 December 2008

Holiday Sprinkles Brush Set for Adobe Illustrator

A free set of Illustrator brushes from Plotholetsi. I guess around the hollidays there is a demand for this kind of resources. Download Note: To use, load the PDF file with Adobe Illustrator and open the Brush Palette (Window>Brushes)

Changing the focus

Halima Bashir meeting with George Bush.
In some cases, getting to a more aesthetic experience means moving away from the knowledge, choosing to forget the information we might have. Here we have a picture that has a very good, rational explanation: an African political activist fears for her life, so in order to remain entirely anonymous, she drapes herself entirely. The cause, peace in Darfur, is very noble, Halima Bashir's story (you have the link above) is shocking.
But this same picture can be seen differently. Here we have the president of the USA in conversation with the Unknown, the absolute Stranger. Here is a confrontation of the American/Western values, aesthetics, mode of functioning (notice the microphones!), attitude (the gesture! the gesture!) with the ghost of another world. It is a beautiful picture, and the most outstanding thing about it is - it's a readymade.

Thursday 11 December 2008

Thick Brushes for Adobe Illustrator

A free Adobe Illustrator brush set from bcre80v. Perfect for applying random thickness to your strokes. Might be useful if you want to make your stroke look more organic or imitate a marker doodle...

Note: To use, load the PDF file with Adobe Illustrator and open the Brushes Palette. Download PDF

Wednesday 10 December 2008

Groovy Scatter Brushes for Adobe Illustrator

Another stunning digital illustration resource - from NeyRicardo. A set of 32 scatter brushes for Adobe Illustrator...

Very useful if you are working on a club or sport event flyer project. You can get a variety of effects by experimenting with different stroke color, size and layer opacity.

Please click on the image below for a detailed preview. To use , extract the .rar file with WinRar or StuffIt (MacOS). Download

Tuesday 9 December 2008

Christmas Vectors

A collection of 18 Christmas symbols for Adobe Illustrator, from bcre80v. You can use them for designing a wallpaper, a greetings card or import them in Adobe Flash and decorate your animation project...

To use, load the PDF file with Adobe Illustrator (Use the "File>Open" method, not click+drag) and bring up the Symbols Palette (Window>Symbols). Download

Earth 2.0 by JrDragao

Art Noveau Feather Vector Pack

A free vector set of seven Art Noveau feather illustrations. If you are working on a project related to the same Art Movement you might use them for brainstorming or background decoration...

The color palette used in the pack has been downloaded from ColourLovers.com. To use the resource, load the PDF file in Adobe Illustrator. Free for personal and commercial use. Download

Monday 8 December 2008

Twisting and turning (with a little help from electricity)

Daito Manabe is a funny guy.

But he also knows his business. This is no accidental work, as Manabe is a serious artist and very serious programmer. While looking through his work, I came across a video fragment of a stunning performance where he was in charge of programming (more specifically, of "sound/oscillation/programming"), a work called true, directed by dumb type's Takayuki Fujimoto. And, as expected from the co-creator of one of the most outstanding multimedia performance groups ever, this is... well, prepare to be amazed.




(via)

Paint Brush Illustratration

A free vector stock from Cedron. The pack contains two paint brush illustrations. You can customize their color, shape and shades with Adobe Illustrator.

Before you do so, select all with the selection tool and ungroup (Object > Ungroup)...

To use, load the PDF in Adobe Illustrator. Download

Sunday 7 December 2008

Manipulating Images in Adobe Illustrator


Illustrator: Importing Images from Mike Wiggins on Vimeo.

Painting In Adobe Illustrator CS3

Transforming your sketches into detailed, textured digital paintings takes time and patience – but the ability to magic up a scene and create it with flair is a key skill for any digital artist.

In this great tutorial, Patrick Auletto shows you how to develop a piece from a pencil sketch into a richly-coloured, stunning painting. The key to creating this type of illustration is to think of your document as a blank canvas, ready for paint. Full tutorial from Digital Arts Magazine

ONE LOVELY DRAWING, part 23

.
God, I love comics.



This cover from a 1940 comic book is not so much a drawing as a riot of the themes inside the heart of an adolescent boy.

Anyone who ever learned to draw will recognize their first few faltering steps here: how to hide the feet you don't quite know how to draw; the temptation to squeeze in every cool trick you've learned-- a skull, a punch, a broken wall, an axe-- whether it fits in the drawing or not; and of course, a girl in a slinky dress, perfected during those agonizing years when it was easier to invent your own girl than talk to a real one.

The drawing, just like an adolescent boy, is an awkward jumble of overlapping themes with no perspective or coordination.

There may come a day when these childish impulses are no longer so benign-- the boy grows up, and the sweet patriotism of that Uncle Sam may lead to narrow minded jingoism; the infatuation with a punch may lead to pointless violence; and the tied up girl may lead to who knows what. But for now, it is perfectly innocent.

This is clearly not a well executed drawing, but if you promise not to tell anyone, I think its sweetness and purity still qualify it as a lovely one.

Saturday 6 December 2008

From teaching to curating

I have been giving some video/art workshops recently, as part of the Stranger Festival process (produced in Poland by Kultura Miejska).
I am quite astonished by the quality of the work my students made. Below are three examples of work I find particularly interesting. The Stranger Festival might not be the ideal place for them, but after a little post-production, I will be sending them to galleries and festivals. It really makes me think of creating a sort of a production system with workshops and then promotion of selected works, like a curator/producer...


Thursday 4 December 2008

Vector Coffee Cups #2

Four Coffee Cup illustrations from shuallyo. You can use them for designing a logo, menu, businesss card, a pattern etc...

To use, load the PDF file in Aobe Illustrator. Download

Local Amenities For Children


Finsbury Leisure Centre, East London


Lots of you have asked about a signed edition of the book. Well, I have finally got around to issuing a kinda 'Special Edition' of the Little People book - It is a signed, numbered edition which comes with the above image as a suitably small 14x10cm print, also signed and numbered. It is available now by clicking on the 'Stuff For Sale' button above, or here. If you live outside Europe and want it before Christmas, order ASAP! And, of course the normal edition is available through Amazon and other olde, non-virtual bookshops.


I also have an OFFICIAL website now, with the easy-to-remember address of www.slinkachu.com You can check it out to see some previously unseen (on the web at least) work and also pictures from past shows that I have contributed to, including some from my solo show in the summer. Thanks to my mate Alexis for putting it together (she is also, coincidentally, a little person herself.)