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 :D

Download CS3 .ai file - Vector Starbursts

Download .svg file - Vector Starbursts

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!

Like a lot of my work I post here, you can buy a print of this on RedBubble.

spiral mirror by arisu

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.

You guys... that's Joy Nash wearing my illustration on her chest.

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.

The Photoshop/ Illustrator mind meld trick

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.

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.

I just adore textiles. There are so many new textile designers emerging in Australia and it's incredibly exciting for me because it's something I have always wanted to get into. I read the blogs of Kristin Doran, Lara Cameron, Danielle Smeets and Bianca van Meeuwen and besides the longing I have to own some of their fabric, I would love to be able to do similar things.




Kristin Doran's Dandelion Garden; Bianca van Meeuwen's Icy Blue Floating; Lara Cameron's Gingo in Robin's Egg; Danielle Smeets' Flower Garden in mustard yellow.



The whole process has been a mystery to me, but I know it involves screen printing - something I have done a bit of at university, but nothing as complicated as patterns printed on bolts of fabric! I have always been way too intimidated by the entire process to enquire, but lucky for me (and you?) Craft linked to an amazing blog post about how Marimekko fabrics are made and it has somewhat demystified things.... but those big machines sure look scary and expensive!

I may just be insane enough to simply get a silkscreen created and start doing it myself now! Does anyone have a long table and a garage I can borrow?

This strangely moves me... and by the way, how amazing is it that you can now post videos on Flickr?

I found it on TwitBuzz, after rediscovering my own neglected Twitter account. Join me! It's (reportedly) the cool thing to do. Maybe one day I'll Twitter about something incredibly embarrassing and instantly regret ever signing up for an account. And then I'll Twitter about that regret.

I have heard rumours that Twitter is addictive, but I'm still not convinced. Maybe because I don't have my sms messages enabled. Maybe because I'm not following enough people. I'm not sure what the magic formula for Twitter addiction is. Perhaps if I give it a chance, and let it invade my life, I will have no choice but to succumb?

In a Billy Connelly way of doing things, this brings me back to the above video. There's absolutely no way that there can ever be a "no news day" in this era, not when people can bug you with their micro-blog posts on your mobile phone!

Go to tedcreated.com.au, click on the GALLERY page and scroll on down until you see my piece of fabulosity. Click on it and drag the slider to "I'm diggin it!" You can vote every day, so keep going back every day to vote on mine!

I wish I could direct link, but it's flash :(

I went over to hang out with the fabulous Kate O'Brien today, to help her out on a shoot and to get me some wedding photos!

The conditions were incredibly trying on the day, it was almost about to storm and the winds were pretty much gale force, so by the end of the photos many of us were a bit grumpy!

If you're interested in this kind of wedding shenanigan, click through to have a look at a few more photos.

When I posted my entry about the beautiful Amelie's Petite Maison, I mentioned the Eumundi Markets and the story that I had to tell about our visit on that particular trip. On our visits to the Sunshine Coast, we seem to have fallen in to the habit of checking out the markets and luckily for us, we were staying mid-week so we could scope out the Wednesday morning market action. The markets are awesome, with lots of local makers, bakers, growers and sellers, and they totally beat any market I've seen happening in Brisbane for sheer scale and quality of the items available.

On this particular Wednesday morning, my husband (that's still weird!) and I had strolled through almost the whole markets without spending very much, as we'd totally blasted our credit card and available cash money in the lead up to the wedding. And then I clapped my eyes on an amazing colour plate from an early Snugglepot and Cuddlepie printing, and it was all over.


Aleta Jansen with a stunningly framed Tenniel illustration of the White Rabbit.

I spent the first five minutes gasping at everything I lay my eyes on... there were illustrations from so many children's books that I grew up with (vintage books that belonged to my mother and my aunties and uncles). I was literally biting my knuckle as the proprietor, Aleta, came up to greet me. We struck up an amazing conversation with both of us talking about beautiful books and artists and illustrations. She kept tempting me with illustrations, like the beautiful Beardsley pieces; however when she found out about my love for Alice in Wonderland, my Achilles heel had been struck.

On the back wall were Arthur Rackham illustrations from the 1907 printing of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. I am pretty tough, but tears sprung to my eyes! Rackham's illustrations have entranced me for the longest time. Unfortunately, we just didn't have the cash to buy one of these beautiful pieces that were framed so lovingly however, there were a few smaller (and again, wonderfully framed) Alice pieces by John Tenniel from 1910, and while I don't have the same emotional connection with Tenniel, they illustrate key points of the Wonderland story that have played in my mind since childhood.


These two illustrations from CHAPTER VIII: The Queen’s Croquet-Ground were the pieces we ended up buying. Ever since I was a kid, I was entranced by the thought of a woman who could intimidate people so much that they'd literally paint white roses red just to make her happy; and of course, the croquet match itself, with the flamingos and hedgehogs - we played mock croquet for our wedding photos, so I had to choose this one as well!

Aleta and her husband were in the process of putting up a website in order to sell her wonderful collection of ephemera, so I had wanted to hold out until aletajansenartworks.com was online before posting this entry. I checked again tonight, and they have put up a front page so hopefully this means a fully functional site is not too far away. Please bookmark it and check back in the future, because she has a formidable wealth of knowledge about books and illustration, and is very skilled at tracking specific things down for her clients.

Let it also be a lesson to those of us who have had very old books in our possession with delicious illustrations from the ye olde times, but let them fall into disrepair or thrown them out. You could've been sitting on a goldmine! Indeed the early printings of Snugglepot and Cuddlepie are worth a mint!