Tag Archive: “art”
October 2020 Author Sketches
I recently read a 1954 anthology titled “50 Great Short Stories” edited by Milton Crane. The book was mistitled; “50 Texts Exalting Ennui and Miserable Marriages” would have been more accurate. That said, a few of the stories were memorable! Here are sketches of the authors of half of them.
Clockwise, from top left: Katherine Mansfield, V. S. Pritchett, Ring Lardner, Irwin Shaw, and J. D. Salinger.
I’m drawing authors for Patreon this month. Sign up to claim one (perhaps accompanied by a story synopsis). I’ll probably do a few more from this book, then I look forward to reading something fresh!
Posted on Thursday, October 8th, 2020.
Ink Brush
I tried something new: drawing with India ink and a brush instead of a pen or pencil. I like being able to lay down shadows so fast and loose.
I posted a few others on Instagram, too.
Posted on Tuesday, September 8th, 2015.
Making Extruded 3D Models of Inkscape Illustrations
So, you have some vector artwork in Inkscape and you want to make it into a stamp or some other sort of 3D-printable gewgaw. Here are two ways to give your paths some depth. One uses Onshape for an interactive approach. The other uses OpenSCAD for a more programmatic approach. Both are parametric, permitting subsequent revision without restarting from scratch.
Posted on Thursday, August 20th, 2015.
3D Printing a Stamp of a Drawing
Here’s an original marker doodle and the digitized version I made with Adobe Shape CC:
I opened the SVG file in Inkscape and converted the paths to extruded polygons with paths2openscad by Dan Newman. I added a solid base and printed the model as a simple stamp.
It doesn’t work great, but it does work! I’m brushing India ink directly onto the stamp. The printed PLA plastic is not an optimal surface for holding or transferring ink, as it tends to either blot or bead and run off. Here is the best print I was able to make in about a dozen tries:
Posted on Saturday, August 15th, 2015.
The hobo’s guide to exporting vector graphics from Adobe Shape Creative Cloud
Adobe Shape CC is a free mobile app for vectorizing high contrast images. It’s good for generating crisp graphics from sketches. (See my prior post on a similar process using old school tools.) You can export the results as an image directly from the app or retrieve images as free assets from Adobe Creative Cloud. However, to access editable vector versions of your designs, you need a paid Creative Cloud subscription and/or Adobe’s desktop software.
Sort of.
Using a modern desktop browser, right click an asset thumbnail and select Inspect Element to poke around the associated code in the browser’s developer view. Locate and copy the associated background-image URL:
This URL requests a PNG image based on the underlying shape. However, you can edit the URL to retrieve the raw SVG of your artwork. Initially, the URL will look something like this:
https://cc-api-storage.adobe.io/assets/adobe-libraries/[ASSET_ID]/:rendition;size=200;version=0?accept=image/png&api_key=CreativeCloudWeb1&user_token=[USER_ID]
Delete the underlined portions to locate the vector version. You may need to use your browser’s Save As feature if the SVG is displayed instead of downloaded. Be careful to retain the long ID strings and the question mark delimiter (?). Now you can revise the vector artwork you created on the go using a free program like Inkscape.
Here’s a hint to roll your own browser bookmarklet to do this with one click:
Posted on Tuesday, August 11th, 2015.
Portrait Sketches
Some random portrait sketches from this summer:
A fun development this fall was discovering Fear of Art, a group founded by some high school acquaintances. They organize monthly “Drink and Draw” events that are a great way to get a little experience life drawing. I’ve attended two so far. Here are some of the pictures I drew at the September and November meetups, respectively:
Posted on Wednesday, December 10th, 2014.
Making Faces Videos
I’ve been recording some time lapse videos of sketch sessions. Recorded at 5 seconds per frame; played at 5 frames per second. (25×?)
That last one is not of portrait drawing, of course, but of painting a 3D-printed landscape model.
I’m using the lamp clip I designed and fabricated with my Printrbot to hold my phone for these recordings. I’m using Frameographer by the folks at Studio Neat to record the videos (and, sometimes, iMovie for iOS to combine and/or spruce up clips before uploading).
Posted on Monday, February 10th, 2014.