NannerCurl

More work involving hair. This time, the thought of curls. Not much more to say about the idea of this (I think yesterday's post pretty much covers it). This piece was a challenge to get into vector form because of the overlapping shapes and contours. I'm not happy with the solution I chose (creating shapes to fake the overlapping strokes) - I think it looks sloppy. More things to think about...

NannerFuzz

I wrote down a few words in my sketchbook the other day - among these: fluffy, fuzzy, curly. I can never be certain where my head is at any given moment. In that instant I was thinking of long, curly yellow hair. I also thought about dandelions and fluffy white cats.

I created the sketch that became this sticker based on the previous thoughts. Hair is such an interesting, sometimes complicated, often beautiful subject for artwork. The only thing I can be sure of is that I'm not done thinking about hair.

Weird.

Wells and Wheelhouses

Today's work was inspired by The Accidental Creative (the website, the book, and the podcast). Three words: prolific, brilliant, and healthy. They form the essence of creativity. With some practices and discipline, it's possible to find all three and tap into our potential.

I say today's work was inspired by The Accidental Creative - but really, a lot of the work that went into this project since day one was made possible by those ideas. If it weren't for the Accidental Creative, I wouldn't have read Pressfield's "The War of Art" (which forced me to confront my procrastination head-on) or Scalin's "365: A Daily Creative Journal" (which inspired the daily project I'm blogging about). Thanks, Todd!

I used Inkscape's calligraphy brush and my WACOM tablet's pressure-sensitive stylus (and a lot of ctrl+z) to create the lettering. The style and the working method were almost completely foreign to me. I didn't go into this with any idea of what I was going to do (which I wouldn't normally do with the Bezier tool, but it worked out perfectly with the calligraphy brush).

NannerCraft

I've been carrying this one round for a while now. I love having access to a scalable isometric grid (sure beats printing it out and trying to make those nice, exact, shapes from a scan). It was hard to make this shape into a three color thing - I'm still not sure if I even did it correctly.

NannerShyGuy

NannerSpikes

My first time using the isometric grid in Inkscape. I love playing around with perspective systems in drawing. With a little know-how, you can create views and objects directly from your imagination. It makes doodling that much more off-the-wall. This was so much fun to do; I may have to revisit the idea...

NannerHammer

You have no idea how fun it was to type out that title. It's been a while. I put a lot on my plate, and I'm not sure if I was able to handle it all. Eventually, I just had to sit down with a pencil and some paper and just start coming up with ideas.

This hammer was inspired by Paper Mario: Sticker Star for the 3DS. That game is awesome - it has stickers, cool puzzles, funny dialogue, turn-based battles, and Mario! In my short time with the game, there have been so many moments of genuine joy - the kind where I suddenly become conscious of my face muscles contracting and...oh, that's smiling. Rad.

NannerPipes

Not much to say about this one. I set out to see if I could make this design using only lines (no enclosed shapes). Success. If you put a heavy stroke on a line, you can give it the illusion of being a shape with a stroked outline. All you have to do is duplicate it, change it's color, adjust the stroke width up a bit, and send it behind the original.

NannerFan

NannerSlogan

Some weird things happened with this one. I'm not happy with all of the shapes. Some of the letters had some extraneous nodes that created some weird curves. Deleting these weird points lead to some unusual, sharp edges. The curls in the center look great - I kind of hate the others. On top of everything else, I couldn't figure out how to properly convert these shapes into paths. This meant I couldn't use path effects, and thus couldn't finish this the way I wanted.

It was really bugging me to have this sketch ready for so long without a sticker. I really want to do this one again. I also want to go back to actually producing a sticker a day. Yeah.

New Banner

I've had the idea of a new banner for the blog for a while. Creating letter forms still scares me to death. There's no place for sloppy curves and ill-fitting shapes when it comes to words. They have a different flow to them. I want to create something new, but it has to be familiar enough to be recognizable. It's scary, but necessary.

NannerCircleStarPattern

Not a deep cut from my subconscious or anything. This is a pattern stitched onto a pillow on my couch. I always notice this when I can't seem to come up with an idea for a sticker. My brain says "hey, just do this - it's easy". At some point I either had to do it and get it out of my head or not do it and go insane. I suppose if I wanted to make this a challenge, I would create a usable pattern from it. However, I don't feel like struggling with Inkscape's aliasing problems for such a small payoff.

I have a few big projects queued up at the moment. They don't have concrete deadlines, which might be a problem for me. I should write those down. I should also get something to eat...