Wednesday 30 April 2008

Pantone Color

Color is a an important topic in digital illustration, so I decided to add a new color category in the blog. I'll begin with a simple guide to pantone colors from colourlovers.com's blog, you can check the original article by clicking on the link below. The next posting in this category will be dedicated to the color libraries and swatches in Adobe Illustrator."Pantone was founded in 1962 as a small business that manufactured color cards for cosmetics companies. Since their humble beginning, Pantone has become a mainstay for color in the design world. The Pantone Matching System allows colors to be “matched” when they reach the production stages. They also assert that their lists of color numbers and pigment values are the intellectual property of Pantone and free use of the list is not allowed, which is controversial and could be said to cause problems, especially for open source uses. Controversy aside, the world leader in color hasn’t stopped with just their matching system and has started to move into taking over the ‘universe’ of color as well with the launch of Pantone Universe." Full text

Rotate Tool

Monday 28 April 2008

A GIFT FOR DELUSION

Once upon a time, an artist was born in a shabby apartment in a bleak part of NY City. He grew up playing in vacant lots littered with junk. He watched neighbors beating their wives in the street. Once a drunk died in front of him on the sidewalk. The boy learned at a young age to call Jews "kikes" and Italians "wops." Sometimes he watched from the roof of his apartment as street gangs battled below. For amusement, he would spit on pedestrians walking by. Quitting school (he was always a poor student) he leased a spare room in a whore house.

That artist was Norman Rockwell.



Was Rockwell's sweet vision of small town America nothing but a cynical charade?

I don't think so.

We each perceive the world through our own personal filter. Sometimes artists employ a more active filter than others; perhaps it's a natural defense to their chronic poverty and lack of success with the opposite sex. Below, some artists have fun with the disparity between reality and their artistic vision:


Leyendecker


Picasso


Saul Steinberg

Personally, I don't think think Rockwell was trying to con his audience. His art had less to do with the illusion of reality than the reality of illusion.

Fresh Vector Brushes

A fresh looking brush set for Adobe Illustrator from www.dtpvids.com . Ckech it out, I found other interesting resources and tutorials. To download the brushes use this link

Friday 25 April 2008

Take A Seat Vector Collection

8 eps vectors of seating furniture from fudgegraphics. Download the pack from here.

Sticking to it until you get stuck

I suppose the following is a fair comment to this and to that:


More about The Leave Me Alone Box here.

Tuesday 22 April 2008

Vector Trees Illustrator Tutorial for Adobe Illustrator

"Green is in vogue and clients everywhere want natural imagery in their promotional material. Ben the Illustrator shows you how to create a fresh-looking tree.

As a child, no doubt a tree was one of the first things you drew, with a brown rectangular block for the trunk and a big green scribble for the leaves...

But with companies increasingly keen to shout about their ecological credentials, now’s a good time to learn how to create a tree with a computer instead of crayons.
Full tutorial Computer Arts Magazine

PAUL COKER, JR.



You've seen Paul Coker Jr.'s drawings all over the place-- on countless greeting cards, ads, magazines and comic books-- but when was the last time you actually paused to look at them? His drawings may appear simple, but they reflect considerable sophistication and talent.

For example, Coker understands anatomy and body language. Notice the shoulders and lowered head of this boy looking over his father's work:



or the twist of the body and the bouncing step of the happy runner in the background:



This is how a good artist uses anatomy: not as a distraction, but with confidence and understatement, in the service of the total image. Coker's drawings never brag about his knowledge, but they would not "ring true" without it.

Or look how at how Coker takes fundamentally symmetrical subjects-- a ball, or a standing boy-- and transforms them into highly asymmetrical, interesting shapes by means of the personality in his drawing:





And Coker's mastery of facial expressions ranges from the reserved (above) to the zany (below).



Any artist who has been asked to draw children knows how incredibly difficult it is to simplify them without losing character and believability. In my view, only a handful of cartoonists, such as Charles Schulz, Percy Crosby, Hank Ketcham and Paul Coker managed to pull it off well.





Coker's drawings will never attract the kind of fanatical fans who collect pictures of muscular barbarians or huge-breasted space nymphs.  Coker specializes in a different kind of subject matter.



Nevertheless, he is a highly observant and subtle artist who draws with a beautiful line. I wanted to post a few examples here for those of you who may have thought that the pictures on Hallmark cards weren't worth your attention.



Monday 21 April 2008

British Heroes



Stavanger, Norway

An installation from NuArt in Norway last summer that i forgot i hadn't posted. My next 'big' show (it will actually be rather cosy) will be my first solo show in August. Woo!

60 Random Vectors in EPS

Free vector pack from Samuel Sinaga. This set contains over 30 random vector illustrations that could be used for logo design brainstorming or for a starting point of a design concept...

The artwork is saved in AI and EPS file formats, you can use any vector compatible editor to modify or customize it.

To use, first you have to expand the ZIP archive. Free for personal and commercial use. Download

Friday 18 April 2008

Pretty in PUNK

Vector Illustration by Big Lew.



Convert Brushes from Photoshop to Illustrator

In December I briefly described a quick method for vectorizing pixels with the Live Trace feature in Adobe Illustrator.
In this tutorial you'll take almost the same steps in order to convert a Photoshop Brush object to an Illustrator brush file.
1) You'll need a brush set file and load it in adobe photoshop. In this case I'll use an Urban Scrawl Brush set for Photoshop available here.



2) Load the brush (.arb) file in, by double click or dragging it into Photoshop.
3) Create a new document (white background, resolution - 200 ppi).
4) Select the brush tool, and chose a shape from the brush set that you just loaded. Change the opacity too 100% and select black for forground color. (use the screenshot below as reference)
5)After selecting your shape click twice on the screen with the brush tool and save the document as jpeg or gif.
Now comes the second part - Bringing the image in Adobe Illustrator and Vectorizing it.
6)Load Illustrator and create a new print document. Then go to File>Place and choose the image that you created in photoshop.
7) Select the image and go to Object>Live Trace>Tracing Options...
8) In the Live Trace Dialogue Box make sure that you choose black & white mode and put a checkmark on Filles and click on Trace.9)Now you see the vectorized preview of the shape that you want to be your brush. But to use it as a regular vector object you have to expand it. Go to Object>Expand and then Object>Ungroup
10) Choose the selection tool and delete the white areas that are not part of the object. You can experiment with the stroke color or fill, it's up to you and the object.
11) The last step is to save your vector as a brush file. Open your brush palette (F5) select your vector object and drag it into the bursh pallette. A "new brush" window will popup, select "New Art Brush, click OK and then name it. In the palette you can se other brushes, that are loaded in Illustrator by default. Delete them from the palette (don't worry they are not going to be removed) by selecting them and clicking on the trash can. Leave only the brush that you've just created and go to Save Brushes... (look ath the image below) and name your file.Well that's it. I Hope I didn't shorten the process a lot.

Tuesday 15 April 2008

Groove

Quickly created in Illustrator while not paying attention in my Photoshop class. Done by overlapping serif characters and playing with pathfinders and shape modes, in this case "exclude". This actually reminds me that I've got to post more examples and tutorials about usage of type and pathfinders in Adobe Illustrator. More soon !!!

Thorn Brush for Adobe Illustrator

Thorn brush for Illustrator by orgamecha. To use the brush set download the pdf file, then open it with Illustrator and you'll have it in your brush panel.

EARTH, AIR, FIRE and WATER (and of course, ART)

In the flickering light from ancient torches, the shadows on cave walls suggested mastodons and bulls to our prehistoric ancestors. They became the world's first artists, reaching out with charcoal to complete visions that were inspired by the earth's shapes:


This cave wall suggested the head of a deer to some prehistoric artist



This large rock reminded an artist of a horse

In this way, the earth and the artist came together to create art.

30,000 years later, artists discovered stained glass. Rather than drawing with sticks in the dirt or making marks on parchment, artists were now able to combine their art with the radiance of light. Look what glorious things happened when artists added sunshine to their palette of colors:


Nativity scene from Priory Church, circa 1501


Prayer of a righteous man, St. Mary's Church, late 14th century


The Last Judgment, 15th century

Just like with the earth, the artists combined with the sun to create art.

At some unknown point in the distant past, artists discovered that by making designs and colors on cloth rather than on hard surfaces, their designs could take on the shape of the wind. Static images became flying banners that inspired armies and flags that symbolized nations.










Christo's "Gates" in NY, copyright 2005 Christo and Jeanne-Claude

Once again, the artist teamed with the elements to make art, combining wind and image.

Artists who use watercolor, if they are wise, take advantage of water's special properties rather than concealing its role. Even artists who specialize in tightly controlled images seem to gain depth and profundity when they give the freedom of water a larger role in the artistic process.


Saul Steinberg began his career with technical pen drawings with geometric shapes and cross hatching, but later turned water loose to create lovely skyscapes.


Here, Andrew Wyeth wisely did not attempt to paint snowflakes. He randomly spattered liquid tempera, using the qualities of water to contribute the effect of snow.

Just like with earth, sun and wind, the artist can interact with water to create a higher form of art.

All of these beautiful images we have seen were made more beautiful because the artist opened the artwork to the elements. Nature adds variety, change, unpredictability, ambiguity, mistakes and uncertainty to the product of human will. Water does whatever it wants, and watchful artists keep their eyes open for the happy accident. The light through stained glass windows changes depending on the time of day or month of the year or the weather outside, creating very different effects. When the wind shifts, flags do a completely different dance.

One concern I have with digital art is that it seems to reduce the important role played by the elements in the creation of art. We can now assert greater and greater control over the screen, pixel by pixel. The light from a cathode ray tube or a plasma screen remains constant, regardless of the time of day or year. The mathematical formulae used for CGI are immutable. Color can be adjusted for saturation, brightness and contrast in tiny increments. Mistakes and accidents can be effortlessly eradicated with mid-course corrections. And the pictures never, ever change with the wind.

Sunday 13 April 2008

Hibiscus Vectors

I decided to post these hibiscus vectors as a response to one of the requiests in "Hibiscus Brush Set". Below you can see a preview of the shapes. Download the illustrator file from here.

Wednesday 9 April 2008

ROBERT FAWCETT'S OPINIONATED DRAWING

When it comes to strong, opinionated drawings, I know of no 20th century illustrator better than Robert Fawcett.

He did not simply record the world around him, he aggressively sought out nature's designs and amplified them with astonishing power and clarity. For example, this vigorous drawing...



...is just the seat of some old guy's pants in one of Fawcett's illustrations.



How many other artists could find such energy and beauty in such a banal subject? Next, look at the designs Fawcett finds in the folds of Sherlock Holmes' cape...



...or in the anatomy of a hand. Now that's what I call drawing!



More bold designs in the pants legs and clothing of this couple stranded in the desert:




Even the most delicate lines reflected Fawcett's distinctive personality. Note the hair of this lovely young lady from a P.G. Wodehouse story.




Some very astute observers of illustration art, such as Mike Vosburg and Leif Peng, recently paid fresh attention to Fawcett's work on their web sites. He has been gone for 40 years, but Fawcett's art always rewards attention.