these were scratched out on paper first, cleaned up a bit with a silver sharpie and a black sharpie poster paint maker which covers th esilver oil paint like a charm!

early Berst Sketch on Ipad: in sketchbook pro, and i brought it into inkpad, an ipad vector drawing app, and then exported the file as a svg into illustrator...

Ive been on this kick to find some new letter shapes, and while perusing flickr i was reminded of Raekwons first album cover “only built for cuban links”. Keep in mind my mind a mash of loose ends and wildly obvious missed connections. At the time i had never really paid any attention to type, in fact I didn’t really pay much attention to any type after that for a long time. but at the time i was fairly floored by the combination of upper and lowercase letter fragments. the formation of legible letters from letter pieces was awesome to me. And it went no further, I’m sure i found some shinny bit of paper and forgot all about the awesomeness of type and thus never got the chance to let my mind wonder past the initial admiration into the pasture of how can i use and or otherwise apply this to things i do. I missed the distillation of what was happening, by committing it to a ‘oh i like this’, and promptly moving on. A short 15 or so years later i found myself reminiscing about it, remembering the essence over the execution, and digging it up confirmed that. But the essences was there in my mind, i just never it gave a change to gain any context. When given the right clues the mind and fight through abstraction and wrestle it into recognition.

• Say as much as you can in as few words as possible.
• Over indulge by way of restrictive and economic consumption.
• generalize enough to form specifics.
• circle, square, triangle.

digital previs; rath

earlier sketch, trying to work out omissions.

Sometimes the harder you consciously try the less you get accomplished. I am all for failure as a teaching tool; however if the quality of the failure is no more then common contrivances then there is little to learn save, stop trying so hard and let it flow more naturally; less consciously that is.

I want new shapes. In regards to style writing, its all about the shapes, abstracting the commonly accepted and universally recognized letter form into a new, or re-refined shape echoing the established while seeking to be its own thing. Just as a child is a recognized human they grow up with the hopes of becoming their own individual, complimenting the hole while expanding on its definition.

As part of trying to find new shapes i found myself looking at the photos of a good friend Saul Metnick of Blandscape.org. I haven’t spoken to him about his work for a while, other then to know hes in the mix and trying ti keep himself moving. From the outset i will say, i dont get photography, i can spot a ragingly good photo, but i miss a lot of the nuance that may make one photo stand out from others. My sense of framing can be hap-hazard at best and accidentally genius once in a blue moon. Saul has always brought a sense of whit and irony to his photos; which i always appreciated but was never convinced was the sole basis for him taking good photos. In looking at many the other day i started to look beyond the subject and just see the shapes, created by the interplay of forms and shadows (which have always been there but took me time to come too, im an idiot with a decent vocabulary). SO in an attempt to distill the shapes and things i found interesting I took some screen shots and did some illustrator mock ups. Surely nothing groundbreaking but a good place to start.

sometimes 20 minutes in illustrator can work it out of my system, while providing a record of the phrase incase, against all odds it can be put to proper use in the future…

“Here to stay”, marks a permanence, suggestive of commitments in the long term. Here, on the spot, to stay. “here to stray”, i came here to to go away, to leave? or to Go a way, non specifically, a way in general…

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.

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.

Many times when i get excited about something, i cant wait to do a proper set up and create a well thought out thing, i just want to jump right in and get it going. While this gets you to the part you want to do most faster then normal it also gets you there with a fairly crappy thing, and the thing about polishing a turd is its still a turn at the end of the day high gloss or matte. SO in my mind i have a illustration i want to do, but refuse to start at the proper starting point, thus its not getting done… Starting from the start is similar to the way Big Daddy Kane explains pimpin hoes, ‘it aint easy, but it sure is necessary’