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...

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...

NannerDizzy

I started sketching a series of straight lines with minor variations earlier today. Twenty minutes after I started I had a pretty cool design in front of me. These lines don't seem to convey topography the way the sketch does. However, I think it was kind of cool to sit down and think about how to convert the sketch into a vector.

A really cool thing starts to happen when you learn more about your craft - you don't have to think quite as hard to accomplish things you once thought were impossible. I assembled each piece of this sticker in my head before I even picked up my stylus. I could think less and do more.

It's just lines. It's not all that complicated (it would have gave me an ulcer when I was still a beginner though). I'm already picking apart things I don't like about it. But it really felt like a break-through after two of those lines hit the page.

NannerClaw

It's a lobster claw. Not sure where that thought came from. I guess it's sort of scary...so...Halloween? There are a few notable things about this piece. First, I made this with only two ideas in mind: lobster claw and large. Second, this didn't take a long time to put together.

Looking at something complicated like this and thinking about how difficult it was just to draw (and it wasn't the most detailed or accurate drawing), this was hard to start. I'm glad I was able to start and finish. Still lots to do.