Vectorama

I remember mentioning that I entered a logo competition earlier this year, so I thought I'd post about it now. I didn't win (as should be expected at this point), and as such I can freely publish my entry here. It was meant for a certain union of university students, and was to promote such values as co-operation, learning and responsibility (among a few others). Without further ado, the picture itself:

I tried to emphasize all said virtues primarily with my colour choices: blue for responsibility, cooperation and openness - yellow for the rest. The hands should portray cooperation and openness, with the abstract book in the background signifying learning. It took about four hours to finish.

I'll just leave this picture here as a bonus! It's a result of my fiddling about with vector art, inspired by logo-art and socialist propaganda. It's a logo for a fictional space mining company. It took an hour or two to finish. Both this picture and the competition entry were drawn as vectors, with no freehand drawing involved.

An Illustrated Guide to Life

I'd have hoped to have posted this yesterday on May 1st, but I wasn't able to reach the necessary art files. Long story short - It's been a busy time in my life. Rather than explaining the stuff that's been keeping me busy, I'd rather try showing it instead. It is my intention to draw five subjects over five weeks, but let's see how that goes. I tried out the open-source vector illustrator Inkscape during the weekend. What a positive surprise! I was expecting an uphill battle but it was a rather smooth ride instead. I've tried my hand at Adobe Illustrator by way of drawing logos and GUI elements, so I wasn't a complete stranger to the purpose of Inkscape. Perhaps I can post some of the output here once this sketch-stretch is over.

Sketch-Stretch 1

Burst of Inspiration

Following up yesterdays creative work, here's a pop-artish, rather psychedelic piece. It conveys a distinct sense of disapproval, as portrayed by quite a stern-looking creature. This piece took, again, way more time than it should have. I originally intended to do something quick and fun, but I ended up fiddling with all the neat features of Photoshop Elements 6, mainly how to simulate color-range selection. Sadly I failed in my mission on how to figure out how to delete white-to-gray shades around the edges of the creature. I ended up simply blurring the creature a bit, then adjusting its colors to a more darker shade. Since Elements doesn't have nearly as much features as the "regular" version of PS, this was an experiment in ad-hoc, much as the very idea of this blog. Fun fact: the creature was originally doodled on notepad in roughly five seconds. Such was its charm that I had to scan and immortalize it to a digital medium.

Abstract 1