A Postcard from Vector

I can't contain my curiosity any longer Awa Rich! There's not much to do around here.

OK, here's a sneaky peek at the postcard.

It all began with a silly game to better Olivia's name card at the Putney School of Art and Design Illustration class. I started drawing letters based on Victorian pub signs inspired by David Smith's amazing work.

I've a long way to go but it's something to aim for and a journey of a thousand miles starts with... You know the rest.

I tried drawing scrolls in iDraw some time ago for The Bear's Curry label but I didn't have enough experience with vector manipulation. After drawing the letters to spell out my name I felt more confident having another go.

Victorian pub mirrors often contain natural elements like birds, flowers and fruit. I have another project in the pipeline that has some of these elements in the design Oh you tease Awa Rich!

We were out in the country looking after Lucky the lucky Labradog last week and the wild flowers were blooming in great profusion. They were obvious subjects for some drawing.

I sketched a few roses and other wild flowers which became this vector drawing.

I also decided the sun in the needed some crepuscular rays which took a fair bit of tinkering to get them looking the way I wanted. Then, the great thing about vector drawings - they're just a bunch of building blocks - I assembled the components into one image. There's still a bit to do but here's the story so far.

You're supposed to say "Ta Dah!" Awa Rich.

You can say it then.

I just did Awa Rich!

D'ya wanna see it or not?

Show me the picter Awa Rich!

Valentine Vector

One of my current forms of meditation is creating vector drawings using the iDraw app on my iPad. I can loose myself in the intricate and minute details of getting a line, fill or curve just right. Hours can fly by just like that. I believe it's called flow (according to a Hungarian chap with no vowels in his name - Mihály Csíkszentmihályi - i spy a vowel or two Awa Rich! It was for comic effect! Jeez, people are so literal these days!).

I'm working on a postcard at the moment, and learning a lot about how to bend this odd medium to my vision. Stay tuned for the result.

Last week I traced the Celtic Valentine. I've been meaning to do it since I drew it (I'm a poet and I didn't know it). It was quite a puzzling challenge, it took all day but I was pleased with the result.

The Putney School of Art and Design summer exhibition is on at the moment and I've entered a medley of vector drawings as I'm being encouraged to do more of these. I don't know if that's because Carolyn and Zehra think they have some merit or because I finish them.

There's a hint at the postcard in the bottom right.

A Short Animation

I've been monkeying around with Indeeo's iDraw application on the iPad and the Mac. The more I use it the more I like it.

For some reason I've never liked bitmap editing apps - like PhotoShop, Corel Painter or Autodesk Sketchbook Pro - as painting tools. I use them as image editing tools mostly. There are people out there who can work magic with them but I haven't put the hours in to become that good. I find it easier to use physical media - Pencils, brushes, paint and paper - but there's something about vector drawing that appeals to the tinkerer in me.

Some time ago I bought Boinx Software's Fotomagico. I played with it for a while but it slowly slipped into the background. I've been thinking for some time that it would be good for creating simple animations or animatics for storyboards. Then, the other night, I discovered that iDraw would export the layers in a drawing as separate files, all in one go - just click a menu item and voila! Presto Changeo!

The light went on. Fotomagico slide can have 6 layers that can be moved independently, so I can create a vector drawing in iDraw, export the layers as .png files then import them into Fotomagico to animate them.

I threw something together using some components from the Christmas Card and sat back with a delighted, ear to ear grin as I watched it play.

Picture this. Your driving down a road in the late evening, there are houses set back from the road with cosy glows in their windows, bare winter trees behind the houses. A bright crescent moon rises and a shooting star streaks across the sky.

Now watch this space...

So, That was Christmas

My Christmas card this year was another in the series of warning signs, suggested by Nissa - a member of the illustration class at Putney School of Art and Design.

I created it on an iPad using Indeeo's iDraw app. This is a powerful but simple vector illustration app that does what Adobe Illustrator does but at a fraction of the price. There's also a OS X app for your Mac which syncs with the iPad app via iCloud or DropBox.

I often rough ideas out on the iPad then tidy them up on the Mac. I created this one entirely on the iPad.

Vector graphics can be tedious and time consuming to create but they have several advantages. I mentioned scalability in a previous post. Also, each item you draw remains a discrete object that can be changed easily. You can group objects and create layers, making editing easier.

When I found a problem with various components of this drawing, doing something else while thinking about it and trying out different solutions was great fun, like solving a puzzle but with something to show at the end of it. Vector graphics seem to lend themselves to iterative improvement.

I've only dabbled with vector illustration but I'm beginning to see how I can use it more effectively. The ability to create a collection of reusable objects is useful and can help cut down the time it takes to create a drawing.

The flywheel wouldn't stop spinning and I couldn't leave it alone.  There was a beautiful clear sky on Christmas eve, and a brilliant crescent moon behind the trees - so bright you could see the unlit part - Old O'Ryan marching high across the sky.

Creating the trees was interesting - here's a clue. Self similarity (for those of you who were swept along by the chaos theory fractal thing a couple of decades ago).

What that needs is a Wowl Awa Rich!

Yes, I was thinking that myself.