NannerTribute

I didn't have a reference for a real monkey skull, rather I didn't use one. I had a symbol in my head, and I ran with it. I'm beginning to just run with ideas rather than sitting around researching everything and ultimately, talking myself out of the project.

Since this blog was inspired by the book based on the Skull-a-day project, I thought today's sticker would be a tribute to that. Thinking back on yesterday's rushed thoughts (I was about 20 minutes from deadline last night), working with symmetry is great for these little projects. Von Glitscha talks great lengths about designing vectors in this manner. He champions the idea because you basically only have to work on one half of the design to complete it.

Unfortunately, to my knowledge, Inkscape doesn't have a fleshed-out reflect tool. Adobe Illustrator has a fancy one-button-click tool that takes your half of the design and creates the rest of it. For me: I have to duplicate my half, flip horizontally, nudge everything over, select the individual points (we call 'em nodes in Inkscape land) where they need to meet, use the join nodes tool on each junction, then refine the new meeting point node to mitigate "seams". It's that easy.

Maybe I'll happen upon that tool somewhere down the line. Regardless of whether it exists or not, I actually appreciate having to get in there and bang my head against shape-building and Bezier tools. I feel like as I learn more, I am able to take more risks and create more complicated designs.