In between working on my own art projects and content for Graphics Girl, I couldn’t help but share these little (or in some cases, colossal) gems  with you guys.

Although sculpture isn’t directly graphics-related, it’s still a brilliant platform for expression, and one which a surprising amount of graphic designers draw inspiration from, particularly if they’re looking to do work in the 3D design field.

I think it’s becoming more and more widely accepted that to be a successful artist in this day and age, be it digital or traditional, experience and qualifications are not the deciding factor by any means, and a good case in point would be my first selection:

Damien Hirst

“It’s amazing what you can achieve with an E in A level art and a chainsaw.”

Love it or loathe it, Hirst’s work has been subject to debate for a long time, and whilst some people, understandably, don’t agree  that cutting a tiger shark in half and sticking it in a tank filled with formaldehyde necessarily ‘counts’ as art (which you can see a clearer shot of here), a fair amount of people seem to disagree with him, since he’s now Britain’s richest living artist, and some of his work has fetched up to $123 million at auction. Makes me wonder whether it’s worth investing in a chainsaw of my own.

But from here on in it only gets stranger, so here’s another 4 insanely brilliant 3D artists worth taking a look at…

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Ok, so the first part of the Inkscape tutorial is finally finished and uploaded (although 3 days late, for which I apologise). This is just a starting point to cover the really basic stuff. You don’t have to just stick with exactly what I’ve done, the star and colour choices are just for examples sake, so use your artistic licence if you want! Now you can start having some fun with Inkscape and laugh at my accent:

One of the reasons it’s taken me so long to do this is because I now have a shiny new iMac, and I’ve been transferring files and downloading software all over again! But hopefully, this will make it easier for me to make some more tutorials and time lapses in the future, because, to put it into context: my old PC was a dinosaur, and this mac is a futuristic …space man. That was a really poor analogy, but you get the idea.

For those of you who are wondering about the pen tool, it works in much the same way as all the tools covered in the video, just remember to click, drag, and release!

I’ll be covering the pen tool in much more detail when I finish the next Inkscape tutorial on how to create a vector portrait from a photograph sometime in September, so remember to check back!

I’ve just finished the 2nd video! Inkeeping with the simplistic, cell-shaded theme I talked about, this is a time lapse of the piece I’ll be doing the tutorial on later this week. Nothing too special, but in creating this, I used pretty much every basic function and tool in Inkscape that I could think of (which of course, will be fully explained in said tutorial):

The sketch took me roughly 5 or 10 minutes and the actual vectoring, around half an hour to 40 minutes. I apologise for the rushed nature of both the sketch and piece in general, I’ve been ridiculously busy as of late. But, at least it’s not anything particularly complicated, and it’s material that’s good enough to make a fairly comprehensive tutorial from. I’ll also be explaining my colour choices, as well. So, watch this space! The tutorial should be done and posted by Saturday the 23rd of August, provided I can stop being quite quite so busy!

For those who are interested, you can also view the initial sketch (complete with irrelevant, anatomy-defying dinosaur) here and the completed image here. It’s a little too flat for my taste, but I was working with speed as a main priority.

And finally, in terms of personal updates, I got my A level results today: I got an A grade at art, and feel as though this is an achievement the whole internet should know about. Huzzah!

I’m currently working on the first Inkscape tutorial, but in the mean time, I thought I’d share a few more tips.

Contrary to what a surprising amount of people believe, no-one is born knowing how to draw. No-one is perfect, and we all have to work at it. Exceptionally hard. For those of you who I haven’t convinced just yet, I thought I’d provide a few examples of my first drawings as evidence. And by first, I do actually mean first. I’m clearly not the greatest living artist, but I like to think I’ve improved a little since 1994:

 Click if you actually want to see my ‘art’ from when I was 4 years old.

I have no idea. I’m assuming their dinosaurs. I went through a brief (read: extended) phase of wating to be a Stegosaurus when I was younger. I’m particularly liking how the one on the left seems refreshingly optimistic about his impending extinction. I also have a scan of my first ever portrait (I use the term loosely), and a scan of a card I made my Mom, featuring one three-legged giraffe, and another five-legged one. If anything else, at least I can congratulate myself on the fact that they balance each other out quite nicely.

So! If you’re looking to improve (which, naturally, I think most artists constantly are to some degree, unless they’re egotistical), here’s 5 straight forward ideas that should point you in the right direction.

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This week’s blog won’t be quite so informative, I’ve been kept very busy again (my time has been divided between band, family and friends, and being on hideously disgusting antibiotics), so I’ve had very little time to devote to Graphics Girl – however – I have gotten around to doing quite a few odd bits and bobs: you can now find any updates relevant to the site on both Twitter and YouTube! The channel is fairly new, but be sure to subscribe for all upcoming tutorials and time lapses.

Which leads me quite nicely onto my next point; I’ve finally gotten around to creating my first time lapse video. Following An Introduction to Vector Art, I thought it best to do something simplistic and fairly straight-forward in Inkscape to kick things off with, just to demonstrate a typical process before I piece together a tutorial. So, here, Internet, have a free, pointlessy cute little vector duckie:

This took about 25-30 minutes originally, for those who are interested. I had a whole bunch of problems trying to navigate my way around Camtasia initially, so the clip does end rather abruptly, but I’m hoping it gets the point across all the same. Mainly just using (abusing, if you will) the pen tool, with gradients, scaling, and gaussian blur. I’ll be covering all this in a comprehensive video tutorial sometime next week (I’m aiming for Saturday the 23rd of August), schedule permitting! Starting from scratch and in ecruciating detail, so anyone can follow along. Then at some point I’ll progress onto how to produce vector art from a photograph, since once you’ve mastered the basics in Inkscape, this should be far easier!

 I know I said I’d be posting the first video tutorial sometime this week, but I’ve been really busy with Interabang, and seeing as how I haven’t been able to install the necessary software just yet, I’ll be cracking on with something else that a lot of people have been asking me about in the mean time: logos and logotypes!

There’s a whole bunch of metaphorical pitfalls to stumble into when designing a logo, so here’s some things that you might find useful to know before you start the whole creative process. There’s also a couple of examples of my own work in this one, too!

The Golden Rules

The main difference between logos and logotypes is that logos are image-oriented, and logotypes are more likely, examples of stylised text.

Firstly, logos (and logotypes) are used for branding, whether for a band or a business, it’s key that the logo you produce is original, relevant and easily recognisable. Too much information and your logo will be crowded, and therefore redundant; less is more.

Similarly, colour schemes are significant. It’s generally best to try and stick to a limited palette wherever possible, especially with corperate logos. The last thing you want is for your logo to resemble an unprofessional explosion in a paint factory – it may help with identification, but for all the wrong reasons. Usually, the maximum number of colours in any given logo is 4. For an idea of which colours work best together, you can always consult a colour wheel before you start (opposite colours are complimentary).

Logos are also (obviously) fairly small, which means you have much less space in which to express your ideas effectively. Consider this carefully, because a logo is meant to act as a visual representation of the subject in question, which is striking, without being overcomplicated.

Just because your finished product will be relatively small, do not fall into the trap of working with small dimensions. The larger the dimensions you work with are, the easier it will be to add any necessary details and re-work if your client is not entirely satisfied with your initial efforts.

I recommend using vectors for logo/logotype work for the same reason – vectors take up less computer space than bitmaps. The best programmes for this are ones like Inkscape or Adobe Illustrator. So, now we’ve got the basics covered, let’s move onto some specifics…

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Seeing as how this is going to be my first (hopefully) educational/helpful post for Graphics Girl, I thought it only fitting that it be about a type of art I have a bit of a soft spot for: vectors! So, let’s start with the basics.

What exactly is a vector?

Vectors differ to other forms of graphics in a number of ways; whilst Bitmap images are stored as pixels, vectors are stored as lines via co-ordinates of starting and ending points. This means that not only do vector images take up less computer space, but they are also far easier to edit and scale than any other file type, mostly because scaling a vector does not result in pixellation or a reduction in quality. Vectors can be modified and tweaked with ease after their initial creation, whereas Bitmaps cannot. (The most common file extensions for vectors are .EPS and .SVG).

What type of art are vectors usually used for?

Images within vector art consist of numerous lines, points polygons and curves, and as such, are often synonymous with the cartoon-ish style,  which is often seen in comic strips. Depending on the attention to detail and patience of the artist in question, vector images can, alternatively, be incredibly realistic. It is also typically used for logos and signs due to it’s advantages in scaling. Research has shown that the brain sees and stores images similarly to how vector data is stored (ie: a series of points) as opposed to pixels, making vector images easier to remember – perhaps the reason as to why businesses generally favour the use of vectors over bitmaps for most of their graphics. A good example of an artist who uses vectors in both a stylized and semi-realistic manner is John Kelly.

 What kind of software is best for creating vectors?

Well, there’s a few. One of the most obvious being Photoshop (primarily speaking, the pen tool).  Adobe Illustrator is equally as good, and utilised more often than not for the creation of logos and logotypes and this is all very well and good if you can either afford it, or live with the guilt of obtaining them through less than legal means, but for those who can’t, Inkscape is basically the perfect solution. Open source, free to download, and does pretty much the same job, with a couple of handy little extras. Who doesn’t love free stuff?

 Getting started…

At some point over the next week I’ll produce a video tutorial which will cover the basics of how to navigate Inkscape (including layers and gradients), and create a simplistic vector portrait from scratch. Something not unsimilar to this, which was actually one of my first attempts at using Inkscape.