
‘I have learned that what I have not drawn I have never really seen, and that when I start drawing an ordinary thing, I realise how extraordinary it is, sheer miracle.’ Frederick Franck

“Study nature. Exaggerate light; overstate — the less inhibited you are, the better.” Sergei Bongart
Here’s another old project… This goes back to when I was learning about vector graphics in Illustrator. It was inspired by this Tuts+ tutorial. Revisiting the image for today’s post, I thought it looked much too ‘clean’ and so I added a little extra texture in Photoshop.


“Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.” Scott Adams
The first image was created by following a tutorial on Tuts+ (the design is based on street artist Shepard Fairey’s Obama campaign posters). The second image was a mistake* I made when messing around with layers in Illustrator.
*Visit this post if you would like to know what I really think about mistakes.
During my break from blogging last month, I was given the opportunity to create a couple of logos. One client wanted a design based on water, the other client asked for a ‘rising sun’ graphic — and this is what I came up with:


Ruth wanted her Relax Restore Massage logo (above) to be simple and modern and to represent the soothing and healing aspects of her massage therapy business. The river lines were hand-drawn, scanned and converted into a vector graphic. They also became the background pattern for Ruth’s gift vouchers and Facebook cover.
Julian asked for his design (below) to communicate potential, strength, growth, moving through obstacles and breaking new ground to become unstuck. He says that the services he offers can be quite challenging for people and not always ‘relaxing’ in the traditional sense. He also wanted a dramatic panorama for his website banner. The banner landscape is an acrylic painting which I scanned and adjusted slightly (for dramatic effect) in Photoshop. I was so happy with the end result that I used it on the business cards and gift vouchers too.



The inspiration for this painting was an arty version of a photograph I edited many moons ago in Corel Photo-Paint. It’s not for sale yet because it’s not varnished. It was too blimmin’ cold to do any varnishing last week… so I hope to varnish it — AND another one I’ve just finished that I can’t wait to show you — in the next couple of days.
My thanks to everyone who participated in last week’s ‘what would you like me to draw again’ poll. The results are in and I’m happy to announce that ‘Snowflakes’ will be my next ink and watercolour project. I’ll let you know how I get on.

“Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it, we go nowhere.” Carl Sagan