My sister is opening a used book store in Marysville, Washington. I wanted to create her a wall hanging to put up in the store. I suck at photoshop, and I'm not great at using real life mediums, so I decided to go with vector art. The problem with vector art, however, is that it looks like vector art: it has crisp edges, perfectly symmetrical shapes, and even strokes. I wanted this to look like a painting, not something digital. I stayed up until 3am sunday night working on it, and the result was "There's a duck in my coffee."
Here's some closeups of the duck's head, along with a highlight of the paths I used to create this with the pen tool. I used adobe fireworks.
I ordered a print of it from a service that does digital to canvas printing. Hopefully it looks nice on paper. The inspiration for this came from one of my favorite artists, Michael Sowa.
If ducks are your thing, check out this drawing I did with prismacolor colored pencils in high school art class.
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She's doing the full grand opening with press releases in a few weeks, after all the kinks are worked out.
well done!
try this italian vector artist - she applies the traditional painting techniques to vector drawings, and she's been doing it for years, so she's quite good at it.
http://www.b-9.it
it's probably similar to what you were trying to do.
best.
fr
http://lifeinvector.com/?cat=3
I See a Duck!
I love it! Hope you don't mind me "borrowing" it to pretty up my desktop. :)
A
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Also I love Michael Sowa. For truly.
the duck seems to be falling backwards in this fireworks creation, by the angle of it's neck. also, the curve of the base of the cup enhances the feeling of everything moving left. the green background is nice, but a bit too bright against the white of the duck.
that said, I love the absurdity and your shading. I hope my criticism hasn't been too crass, I hope to encourage you since you obviously are quite talented and clever.
-Jeremiah-
Dumb question but if you hate PhotoShop what tool do you use to create your great graphics. I am a beginner PhotoShop person (like it so far) and if there was another option I might look at it.
And no we don't drink green beer here before you ask but if you...
Can't believe you used fireworks for this..I've long been a fireworks diehard (my colleagues poke mirth at me for this)...is this what you always use Matthew?
Just wondering how well it printed? One issue that I have with fireworks is its lack of compatibility for pdf/cmyk - you can't even maintain paths when you shift it to another adobe app - thats due to the weird png vector thang.
Cheers - love ur work
Blake
I've had endless laughs at your insight and randomness at theoatmeal, and I've passed it onto all my friends via fb. Once my funds come up (I get paid for web work), I'll be getting your book. Do you have any others?
It's too bad you're up in Seattle, so far from San Diego. I guess I'll have to settle for buying a cup of coffee from afar.
I think I've browsed around all of TheOatmeal and 0at.org today. Fun stuff, lots of it was blocked at work (like all those quizzes, I could answer the questions but my result would be firewalled) but I still enjoyed it. I think the crazy emails was the best, someone is going to get some "fun" emails tonight! ha!