A barrel of...a nanner of...um...monkeys

I get this distinct feeling of joy when I get to assemble the final composition of a sticker. Regardless of how I feel about the end product - it's interesting to go from avoiding the work, to doing the work, to finishing the work.

I hated this piece in the beginning. I traced around an actual image of a plastic monkey from that classic children's game using the Bezier tool - a task that I can do reasonably quickly and without much trouble. I made an admittedly sloppy vector shape and duplicated it four times. It wasn't until I moved, flipped, and rotated, each shape that I realized this wasn't so bad.

I think my favorite bit is there at the top where, rather than clip-masking the monkey's arm like usual, I "hooked it" onto the border.

Down, not out

Life happens. That's something I see and hear all the time amongst the creative community. The problems of our day-to-day lives interfere with our ability to produce work - and the block sets in.

I feel worthless sometimes. I feel like everything I do is awful. I feel like picking up the pen/brush/stylus would just be a waste of time. None of these things is entirely true, of course. Still, that's a difficult feeling to shake off.

I don't want to stop making things. I know that art will always be there for me. I have to keep moving. I have to keep looking forward.

The first sticker was pretty difficult to make. Luckily, I just learned about converting a stroke to a path. This allowed me to create a hidden shape to create the illusion of overlapping lines. That last statement made sense to me, at least.

The second sticker is a quote from Paul Ritchey over at ContinueShow. There are a lot of things I'm starting to notice and dislike about this one in terms of kerning, spacing, and leading. On the other hand, this is the first time I ever used Inkscape to produce Roman-style type. I'm really happy with my 'S' and 'G'. Creating those letters (using step-by-step instructions from the Logo Font and Lettering Bible) forced me to learn an alternative method for adding nodes to existing paths. Just hold 'ctrl' and 'alt' with node tool selected and click to add a new node. Yeah!

NannerTrain

Art Deco isn't really trendy right now. Still, it's one of my favorite genres. I haven't tried to create an Art Deco-inspired piece in a long time, so this was a lot of fun for me. The emphasis on strong, angular shapes makes this style really well-suited for vector illustration. If I were able to use gradients, I could have created a closer approximation of the style.

I know it's been a while. I know how far behind I have fallen. I had doubts that I would ever come back to this. My eyes have turned to the next big thing - though maybe a bit prematurely. I want to continue to study vector illustration. My plan is to subscribe to Adobe Creative Cloud, get acquainted with Illustrator (re-acquainted I suppose), and work on bigger and better portfolio-worthy pieces (in larger formats with more colors). Also, a portfolio.

That's a bit down the line. I won't be abandoning the stickers. It was just really easy to get distracted when I got lost in this project.

NannerQuilt

Quilting patterns are really awesome. Their complexity is really inspiring, especially when you consider that this beautiful geometry is made up of simple little shapes.

I would usually complain about Inkscape's "helpful" anti-aliased edges - but here, seeing all of the little quilted squares drives my point home. Still, this feature sucks. It's one of the little quirks that makes Adobe Illustrator seem that much more inviting.

EndlessNanner

I was thinking about light projected from the inside of a house onto the street. There's a narrative aspect to that image. There are questions to be answered, but no one to ask. A door left wide open on a cold evening is...unusual. What about a whole neighborhood with doors wide open? What about flat homes with no interior emitting light in one direction?

I should have maybe added one more row.

NannerStitch

It's a Yeti. This is as close as I think I'll ever get to actually stitching something. I admire the work, but I have no real knowledge of it. On the other hand, I really admire sasquatch without really knowing anything about him/her/it...traditional bigfoot sticker forthcoming.

This design was inspired by the awesome shirts over at shirt.woot. Seriously, go check out their great selection of unique tees.

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...