The Art of Pinstriping

A “pinstripe” is defined as “a very thin stripe (in cloth)” or a “pattern of thin stripes”. Pinstriping refers to the painting such thin lines. If you’ve ever painted, you’d appreciate the skills that these folks have. I guess even if you’ve never held a paint brush, you’d be mesmerised too. Amazing.

Via diskographik.

Sous la Mer (”Under the Sea”) by M. Alberich Mathews

Amazing stuff! Discovered these works from Alberich Mathews:

~“Tanz des Capricornes”~

~“Return of the Blue Fairy”~

You really really have to check out the rest of the photos in his photo-set, titled “Sous la Mer” (which is French for “Under the Sea”).
NOTE: Photos feature nudity (tastefully done by most standards… I wouldn’t feature them here it they weren’t).

Each photo is beautifully captioned. Ethereal and alluring… it’s not “weird-weird” but “beautiful-weird” (sorry, words are failing me). The photos certainly remind me of classical/ gothic paintings. In fact, I’m thinking “mermaids” and “sirens of the seas”, where magical female creatures lure sailors to their deaths.

Mr. Mathews is one heck of a talented man.

How to do Multisession Burns with Mac OS X

[Originally posted at Rambling Librarian]

Update, 1 Sept 06: The steps below work only for CDs, but not for DVDs. See discussion in the comments section below.

Click on images to see larger-sized pictures:
1) Find and start the Disk Utility application. Look in the “Applications” -> Utilities folder

2) Create a new Image: File -> New -> Disk Image from Folder

3) Select the folder with the files to be copied, then click on the “Image” button. NOTE: Only folders can be copied, not individual files. Each time you want to copy the file, you might want to create a new folder and place the file in that folder.

4) IMPORTANT STEP: Select “read/ write” for Image Format (if not, the CD or DVD will be closed). Click on “Save”.

5) Wait while the Image (.dmg file) is being created.

6) Once the image is created, you’ll see this screen. Select the image from the Disk Utility window and click the “Burn” icon.

7) Insert the CD/ DVD. If this is a brand new disk, you will see this dialog box. IMPORTANT - select “Leave disc appendable” if you want multisession burning later on. Then click “Burn”.
Wait while the files are being copied to the CD/ DVD.

9) Follow steps 1 to 8 the next time you want to copy to the disk. When you reach step 7 and insert the previously recorded disk, you will see this dialog box. The difference is that now you see the “Append” button instead of “Burn”. IMPORTANT — Remember to select “Leave disc appendable” before clicking Append.

Technorati Tag: mac os x

Historical Romance

This illustration was done for the “Historical Romance” genre guide, one of a series of five Genre Guides for the public library.
Illustration for “Historical Romance” Genre Guide, 2006. Digital Image produced with Photoshop.

How it was done
This illustration was fully digital, i.e. sketching and colouring all via Photoshop.

I started with these general requirements from my colleague: “Historical Romance - Victorian, regency era, old-school England/ French society where ladies still wear corsettes and put fake moles on their insipid white faces… full of fluff kind.” My colleague also provided a photo-reference culled from somewhere (I have no idea where is that picture right now… might have deleted it. Anyway it showed a woman in a dress not unlike the one I painted).

First I traced the outline of the woman in the dress from the photo-reference, as a new layer in Photoshop. Once that was done, I tweaked the sketch a little (i.e. adjustments to the position of the head, the body shape, added the umbrella). Then I created another layer over the sketch for filling in the colour.

After some initial experimentation, I settled on using Wet Brushes with varying Opacity settings. Discovered that I really could achieve a watercolour effect this way. But the main shortcoming was that unlike a real watercolour brush, the Photoshop brush setting was rather rigid, i.e. you couldn’t adjust the tip or width of the brush as immediate as a real one.

Once I had the face painted with the desired wet look, I started another new layer for backgrounds. Decided to keep this illustration relatively simple, in typical watercolour style where emphasis is on the whites and negative spaces.

Much time was spent figuring out the brush and opacity settings. Like in my actual watercolour paintings, I have a tendency to overwork the paints, i.e. go over more than one stroke and spoiling the clean look. This was easily corrected though — the great thing about Digital Painting is that you can go clean up or undo the less desirable attempts and try until you get something you want. Of course you sacrifice the feel and texture of paper and layering of real paint.

Finally I cropped an image of a building from another photo-reference (royalty free, of course) and added it as a new layer (to subtly jazz up the overall picture). Painted over with darker purplish colour.

Technorati Tags: genre guide, historical romance

More watercolour pencil art, from Mrs Rambling Librarian - “Orchids”

Here’s another watercolour-pencil piece by my wife. This is her second one (first piece, here). Since she prefers not to reveal her name, let’s just call her Mrs Rambling Librarian : )

“Orchids” (Aug 2006), Watercolour pencil on watercolour paper. Lower res scan 150 x 200 pixels

I must say, this is quite good (I’m not just saying this to get into her good books, heh). She did her sketch with the watercolour pencils direct onto watercolour paper (no pencil whatsoever). Spontaneous and natural. That’s what I meant.

Then she coloured in with the watercolour pencils, then applied water. The differences, between the one done in colour-pencil and the one with water applied to it, are more apparent when you view the larger image. The former (left) is more “scratchy” in finish while obviously the latter (right) has had the lines smoothed with water:

Her finishing touch was to add an imprint of a chinese seal. It’s amazing how much more “professional” a chinese seal makes the drawing look! Hey, looks like a majong tile, don’t you think?

Technorati Tag: watercolour pencil, watercolour pencil art