Generic pink flourescent marker, coffee and napkin for base color. Rotring Artist color inks, Molotow One4all ink Copic Multi-liner.
Posts Tagged ‘process’
Evening Reader
Thursday, April 8th, 2010One Four ALL X One4All
Saturday, February 13th, 2010I recently was given the opportunity to get some support from Molotow, since Its winter and I was also expecting a new Edition to the house i figured id be spending the next little while more inside then outside. I asked, Im sure to the bewilderment of all involved for some One4All Molotow ink instead of paint. What writer would rather have some markers and ink over paint? I can answer that by posing you another question who has two thumbs loves to drawn and runs this site? Thats right This Guy, Hev.
No Im not accustomed to being offered products, so like a true rookie, i kinda picked a random set of colors that when i got them i realized they didn’t all make for a banging color scheme together; good good colors just not all in the same family or value. I was more taken by each color instead of thinking how they would work together. Well experience be dammed, i got what i got and am now scheming on getting the full line of the larger refills.
The first things I did with the ink was to play around with how it took to various surfaces, paper, plastic, metal, paint, cardboard; CHECK. Next up. They are Refills, dump ink out and use a brush; the smaller refills come with a little spouty deal so you can refill markers and or draw with various degrees of controlled drips. So with out much for thought minus a quick pencil sketch i then ignored i just started to draw with brush and black One4All ink on some record boxes i have. I always really dug the photos ive seen of old Jamaican mobile record shop trucks all hand painted and looking fresh, so i kinda moved in that direction with the boxes. The ink handled the brush real well, having a real good viscosity. The next best part of the brush experience was the ease at which with some soap and water, really just water, the brush was cleaned and ready for another color.
Pure 45 RPM Stereophonic KING UPTOWN SOUND
decorated 45 rpm box, painted with sumi brush and Molotow One4All Ink
Molotow golden yellow, zebster orange, Signal red paint, Black One4All ink Brushed on. Covered nice and solid, as did the white, although its not pictured here.
Using these Markers is almost like using gouache put into a marker for ease of use, the ink itself is super milky, and drips nice and opaque and matte. Covered All my under-drawing lines, which in some cases was Black Pen. Im stoked you can get empty markers, refills of standardized colors and replacement nibs; I’m pretty sure Im converted and my Oil based paint pens are not going to get much out of their box time anytime soon.
For some reason i decided i need to draw Johnny Chimpo, but didn’t have the right colors but was bale to mix some of the brown oranges and whites to vary the chimpo tones. Because i was jsut farting around i ddint mix enough of the browns so i had to water them down a bit to cover the area i had, instead of mixing more. Laziness combined with fear of finishing things i might need more of later can be debilitating; trying to get over it and use.
The best part about the matte and acrylic base of this ink is unlike oil based paint markers, it doesnt have its pigment loosen and get goopy in the heat. I have a tone of old black books whos pages are fused together after the sun loosed the oils based paint only to render it a solid mass once cooled; Some pages ive had to resort to putting wax paper in between the pages and even then the ink oil based marker paint transfers itself to the wax.
So Ive concluded i need at there very least All the Primaries Molotov makes in the One4All line and then as many variants in between. Once the weather changes ill be getting paint so im starting an Ink fund now, as there will certainly be some use of ink in future walls.
You can check out the full line of Molotow markers and inks here, of course they made this after i ordered my markers, but looks like there are better options than i first knew about. One of the coolest features is the nib system which looks like you can slap a Fine nib even on the medium sized markers.
colorize it
Friday, January 15th, 2010
Been trying to use photoshop to color in some Moleskine pages. I haven’t quite got a good method to working it yet, but its pretty fun
StarBucked and photoChoppin.
Tuesday, January 12th, 2010
Illustrator: Scan to vector – Part #2
Saturday, October 24th, 2009Part #1 here.
PART #2:
With ALL THE BASE Shapes created its time to start combining them to form more complex shapes Using mainly the Pathfinder Palette.
starting point:
Ending point:
Step 1:
Isolate the letters and plan the over laps; this can be tricky, as done in the wrong order you can end up combing or trimming unintended shapes. Luckily with ‘undo’ you can go back and or fix later with some more pathfider work or using the scissor tool to dissect some shapes again.
Isolated the main the body of the R and the two extensions that connect to the R body.
The top extension the comes out of the left top arm pit of the R; Since the extension needs to connect to the R and have it s chute pass behind it, I selected both pieces and Trimmed them to remove the overlapping area of the extension. Because the resulting shapes all share a border I couldnt use the Combine function on the pathfinder so I used the scissor tool to snip both the extension end and the arm pit. Deleting the end of the extension and separating the Arm pit points, i then selected the corresponding open points and joined them.
Fill turned of you can see no overlapping outlines.
Similar process to get the Left foot of the R and its kick extension squared away. It also involved some negotiating and trimming its over lap with the Rs main body.
The completed R with only the top left extension un-trimmed. Added the negitave space of the R creating a Compound path so the shape will fill keep the negative space empty.
Close too finished base letters, with top left extension and A sliced un-Trimmed, also the bottom Left leg of the H is yet unconnected to the heart. And the negative spaces in the heat of the T and the A need to be added.
Illustrator: Scan to vector – Part #1
Friday, October 23rd, 2009How i go about translating an scanned sketch into an Illustrator Drawing.
When i first started using illustrator I went about painstakingly trying to trace pretty complex images, not concerned with Illustrators most powerful feature, which is to create complexity by building from simplicity. Just like books aimed at teaching you how to draw illustrator is great when used to block and refine. Towards this end illustrator has an awesome set of drawing tools to help build generic shapes that can be combined with another tool (the PathFinder Tool; more about this one later)
Resources:
if you’re not familiar with the pen tool check out these links: http://school.tatoland.com/illustrator/aipentool.html & http://vector.tutsplus.com/tools-tips/illustrators-pen-tool-the-comprehensive-guide/
STEP #1:
Scanned Drawing, opened in Illustrator. I set the transparency to 20% to help differentiate the vector shaped from the scanned sketch. I always set my scan on its own layer and LOCK the layer so it wont accidentally get moved. I have accidentally moved a scan before and continued drawing with old layers turned off and didn’t realize the new lines were shifted until sometime later, it was a bit of a pain to get them re-registered. All subsequent illustrator work will take place on new layers sitting above the scan layer. Its a pain but if you are going to work on a file for a while of set it down and come back to it, naming layers is super helpful to help keep track of what is where.
STEP #2:
Start to block out the basic shapes. I used the pen tool for this. I am not a fan of the pencil to when it comes to drawing these kinds of precise lines and curves . The pen tool also allows for better control of the number and positioning of anchor points. When drawing with teh pen tol i always turn the fill off and set the stroke to an arbitrary color the will not be confused with the scan I’m tracing.
If youre the kind of person who draws over-lapping letters with out thinking about what goes on behind the over-lap, now is the time to consider it. Closing your eyes only blocks your view of the world it doesnt make it go away; the same goes for the parts of letters that are behind the over-lap. This method of working in illustrator will allow me to combine all these simple looking shapes into much more sophisticated and complex shapes, that would be the wrong use of energy to simply draw out with the pen tool. Once all the shapes are blocked in you can then playing around with the bits, and where and how they sit in relation to each other; something that becomes Sisyphean if done on paper.
I have purposely left out the negative spaces of the letter, they will be added later when the shaped are combined. Also the Arrows will be created separately and then copied and added to each branch.
All the basic shapes are drawn. I set the fill back to the default white and black so i can see the solid shapes and begin any initial adjustments to where the basic shapes will sit.
Next post:
pathFinder Palette and using it to manipulate the simple shapes and turn them into shapes that more resemble the finished letters of the sketch.
sketch and the painting it inspired.
Tuesday, October 20th, 2009I ran across a folder of old sketches, and found a few outlines that had been painted. Ive never been a good copier, and thus have always been interested in A, people who can copy things well and B, the process by which things are copied by others and myself. As a by product of my poor copying skills Ive always treated sketches as ideas to be treated fairly irreverently. I also am generally more fascinated by the sketches and or stages of a piece that reveal the inner workings of the thing and give clues as to where the create was while doing it. Anything that aims to answer all the questions it poses seems more or less useless to me. You might as well hit the lecture circuit. I enjoy things that leave me thinking, confused and or upset; something that forces me to reconsider what i thought i knew; Obviously thats a bit lofty for graffit but it applies to varying degrees of deepness in all art.
This first sketch, is one in a series of sketches that were mentally game changing. I had been struggling to get around the Graffiti formula of element hierarchy. Something thats always bothered me about graffiti was the somewhat arbitrary elements that are part and parcel of the movement. They had a reason in the beginning. You paint a train that been mashed by tags, obviously a cloud or bubble background is gonna give the eye some breathing room to differentiate your piece from the scrawl of tags, and appreciate the work you did. That being the case a cloud is a requirement if you’re in complete control of the space youre painting, so why is the cloud still the norm?
What I was able to figure out, was that that formula was arbitrary now. Its one of those things ive always struggled with, which is funny considering the art of graffiti is all about breaking the rules, yet here i was locked into a set of rules. It was a low level zen moment, i feel like most people would just get, i they thought about it, but it took me the better part of 20 years, whats more is i had figured out the same thing as applied to a plethora of other shit. So in this sketch my plan was to confuse the structure by pushing some pieces of the letters backwards into the cloud area.
A lot of the time when painting i’ll have a few recent sketches in mind but none on hand, you can see from this one that i had it at the wall and it got covered in over spray. below is the finished piece.
ABOVE: Toronto, painted with the HSA squad, Bacon, Kane, ArtChild, Scam and Slon (hemps), along side Kem5, Ges, Enue, Wane.
BELOW:
This was the site of one of the best practical jokes I have ever pulled off. I was painting with kem5, Ges, and Soem. At one point Ges stepped away from his area and while he was gone i took the can he was outlining with and painted the donut of a random can the same has his outline color, and replace the faked can with his outline can ( if you dont know many types of spray paint come with a slim piece of plastic [the donut] under the nozzle that is painted the same color as the paint in the can). Trap set, the wait began. After a little while Ges returned and got ready to continue out lining his piece, he picked up his out line can, which as you may remember much like the Sanka commercials had been secretly replaced. He put the can to the wall and did a little line that stopped fairly quickly. His face transformed from work mode to one of pure confusion. He checked the donut, yup thats the outline color. He trys it again. Dam it what the fuck it going on here? At this point im pratically on the floor pissing my pants. Watching the whole process from confusion to discovery was priceless. I am now wating for Ges to get me back, its been almost 3 years and im still waiting, vigilantly, sleep is the cousin of death kid. Im ready.
Diamond Cuttin it.
Monday, October 12th, 2009Smooth and on point
fuck the tricks of the government.
This is what there was as far as a sketch for the rath piece,
the characters were based on a few off of this page below. Large Moleskine. Micron pen, gouache, water color;
f ipod we boom box rockin
Sunday, October 11th, 2009
The urge for order…
Tuesday, October 6th, 2009I maintain and amateur interest in everything.
The urge for order satisfies itself, it seems, regardless of the quality of the evidence.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/06/health/06mind.html?_r=1
How Nonsense Sharpens the Intellect
I read a bit of an article in the Nytimes today that tenuously linked the idea on nonsense helping to stimulate the brain in pattern recognition. That is a bit of an over simplification but its what i took away. Its interesting that what i did with the article is almost exactly what it suggested one does when encountering a confounding situation; try to make sense of it by fitting it to known scenarios to find what seems to be the most reasonable answer or solution.
Reading this article reminded me that ive been trying to write a post linking style-writing in particular but general visual arts as well to the music rhythm and pattern. The goal was to begin to build a set of guidelines by which to critique various forms of style writing.
So far i have about 8 pages of ramble, each paragraph leaving me further away from my points then when i started.
basic ideas:
- style-writing is similar to a music.
- as with patterns the ones the keep our interest are the ones the have enough info to allow you detect the presence of pattern but leaves enough room to make you search for it and in good cases it takes a few tries to figure it out; thus allowing room to intellectually participate in the experience.
- the process is furthered by the layering of patterns or motifs which interplay with each other setting of dissident pattern reactions throwing you off the trail you initially started.
- SO good style writing follows the idea of layered patterns that create a visual rhythm.
- the rhythm is followed and broken so that at each break you must re-think what you thought you new as the pattern.
- reassessment leads to deep engagement by the viewer.
is that confusing enough? I feel like there’s something in there i just haven’t gotten to it yet. Its not groundbreaking in any event, but does seem so common-sensicle that its over looked by most and stumbled upon by many. It also assumes a certain artistic motivation, which for many simply isnt really the concern.
Still, the new research supports what many experimental artists, habitual travelers and other novel seekers have always insisted: at least some of the time, disorientation begets creative thinking.
NYTimes article here: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/06/health/06mind.html?_r=1