Omgosh, free vector shapes are back from the dead! I’ve created some sunburst/ star shapes for you guys to mix ‘n match, layer, texturise, etc etc etc. Go crazy! And when you’re done, show me 
Prints available from RedBubble.
I have been quiet lately I know, but I’ve been feeling a bit off. I decided to take a bit of time away from work to draw some girls!
In the next couple of months I’ll be working on a blog redesign with my husband. Yay! I’m really not a coding person, so I’ve struggled to work with various aspects of the template I currently use. Luckily, Nick is way into coding and is looking for new projects so I have given him my mock up and told him to go nuts!
Thumbs Down and Belted Cloud.
Don’t forget, Drawing Day is 7 days away! RedBubble bloggers Paul and Natalie on RedBubble Tees will also be blogging DD08. Join us!
I joined Creative Stem last week, it’s another art community/ portfolio site. I am on quite a few portfolio sites, but I’m kind of enjoying Creative Stem a lot more than others. The other members seem to actively seek out new work and are friendly and supportive. The cool thing about this site is that you can add a “Sketchbook” section to your portfolio, where you can upload documentation, ideas, sketch battles and detailed images of your work.
Arisu, who created the above piece spiral mirror, has the most fascinating progression through the steps of post production on one of her pieces.
I have five invites to Creative Stem, if you’re interested in joining this portfolio community.
And these are some pieces I’ve uploaded this weekend. You can view my profile on Creative Stem here, and buy prints on RedBubble.
By Chris Piascik [via Meet Me at Mikes].
I am in the middle of trying to get back in to drawing. My arm has been incredibly painful in recent months so I’ve tried to lay off the intensive drawing sessions. I need to organise a proper drawing space with a tilted surface but I just haven’t gotten around to it yet.
This is part of the new series… “fancy hair” is my work in progress title. I need to buy some more 0.1 black pens because mine ran out!
I got myself a tumblr account so I can post strictly images I like and bits of my work. Follow me if you want to!
Don’t forget, Drawing Day 08 is coming up on June 7. I’m hoping to get a whole heap of RedBubblers involved and I’ll post my favourite DD08 drawings here. If you’re joining in on DD08, or if you just want to participate by blogging it, let me know because I’ll add links to other DD08 posts in my entries!
I have friends who are photographers and web designers, and most of them use Photoshop primarily for their work. This just totally confounds me, because there are many instances where they could supplement their work with bits and pieces created in Illustrator.
“But Illustrator confuses me!” they cry.
So, it appears I’m one of the crazy guys who can switch “modes” when using these programs. To be completely honest, there is a brain flip you need to do when you start to use Illustrator after using Photoshop for years.
Keep the following in mind when you’re cracking open your never-been-used copy of Illustrator:
Layers
Photoshop is a lot like painting on different panes of glass. To paint on one layer, you need to grab it and ready your tools before applying your medium to the surface. We do this by selecting the layer, our surface, and then applying our media to that surface.
Illustrator is rather like 2 dimensional sculpture. Imagine that you are creating objects out of wire. To manipulate one object, you must pick it up first, and then put it down before manipulating another object. The layers in the Illustrator layers palette help you group the objects you are working with. Expand your layer group before clicking willy nilly – this will help you see which object is being selected and manipulated.
“I can tell by the pixels and having seen quite a few shops in my time”
The pixels work differently in both programs as well. For instance, I always approach Photoshop as if I were painting with acrylics. I push the pixels, or the medium, around with my brush, or the mouse/ pointing device. In Illustrator, I use my pointing device to manipulate the points of my “wire” object”. I can manipulate my object by scaling it up or down with no effect on the quality of my object. If I try to do this in Photoshop (via the Transform tool) I do notice a significant effect on the quality. That’s because the pixels are being squished and stretched. On the other hand the vector points in Illustrator have a mathematical relationship to each other.
The canvas or the artboard?
Photoshop refers to the area in which we can do our thang as the “Canvas”, whereas Illustrator calls it the “Artboard”. The canvas in Photoshop is totally restricted to the area that you set, whereas in Illustrator we can play beyond the confines of the Artboard’s dimensions. I use the area outside the Artboard to play in, to test things out and to drop in colour palettes that I might like to use. When I’m resolving my work, I move my artwork within the confines of the Artboard and start to tidy up the area I call my “sand pit”. If you export your artwork in Illustrator to pdf or png, you might find that it saves everything – your Artboard as well as the objects that float around outside it, so it’s best to make sure you’ve tidied it all up before that stage.
These are just a few of the issues that have come up in discussions with friends about the shift from Photoshop to Illustrator. I’m totally happy to help you if you’ve got other unanswered Illustrator mysteries too!
1. Birthday flowers, 2. ranunculas, 3. Bouquet collection – Mixed flowers (2), 4. rows of hyacinth bouquets, 5. Ranuncula Garden, 6. flowers for you, 7. orchid arrangement, 8. Bouquet, 9. Cala Lilies, 10. Flower Arrangement, 11. Pansies, 12. blue and white, 13. Hydrangea , 14. bouquet in snow, 15. The Opening of Lotus, 16. Mom’s Birthday Orchid Centerpiece, 17. cheers to the month of may, 18. Hydrangea , 19. Hortensia, 20. Red Ranunculas in Flower Fields of Carlsbad, 21. PANSY BOUQUET, 22. 100-0012_IMG, 23. My new African Violet, 24. Bouquets, 25. orange ranunculas
Recently I haven’t felt very cheery – too much introspection coupled with an RSI flare up make for an unhappy Natalie. I do love flowers though, and I really wish I lived in a place with a garden full of my favourite flowers (or next to a flower market) so I could have fresh flowers every day.
I found these flowers on flickr and they’ve provided me not only with a bit of cheer, but also with some inspiration too. I hope they can do the same for you!
The best thing about these flowers is they never die! Perfect for a black thumb like me… I am cursed when it comes to tending flora. Read Full Post
Tee just sent me a link to this beautiful paper sculpture by Elsa Mora! Check out her blog and her etsy store for soooo many more beautiful things.
This is from 2004, but it was too amazing not to post. I was googling “paper cutting” and came across this dress in the image search! It was part of the Chinese Paper-cutting Art Exposition in Wenzhou City, in east China’s Zhejiang Province.
Content and layout by Natalie Perkins, powered by WordPress
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.
on facebook
on twitter
on youtube
on tumblr
on flickr
