One step at a time

I happened to be reading Kenneth’s post while listening to this song by “Stereophonics” at youtube. Kenneth was sharing about this experience in running the 10km Standard Chartered Singapore Marathon. The music; his words. They all seem to fit nicely. Kenneth was describing what he observed and experienced in the marathon. I thought it alluded to many things in life.

They say that we just have to row our boats merrily down the stream. I think it’s more like a marathon. Or a slow walk. Whatever we choose to be.

So long we complete it.

Sketches of my left hand (1990)

Sometimes I get inspired, and I am able to sketch something like this (circa 1990):

Close-up of the sketch that was used for this genre guide:

BioTech illustration

This is an illustration I did for the NLB Science Fiction “Biotechnology” Genre Guide (2006).

The picture shows a human hand juxtaposed with a cybernetic one. There’s a DNA double helix strand on the side of the human-hand, while the series of computer zeros and ones are on the side of the machine-hand.

How it was done
We needed illustrations for the genre guides. No time to commission an illustrator, so I volunteered. My Colleague suggested that the illustration could be based on the following:

“BioTech Science Fiction – cloning, genetic engineering, Aeon-Flux stuff etc…Usu. with enmasse specimen laboratories, or really complex-looking machinery…Or eye candies with some form of marked defect.”

That gave me some rough idea to work with. I remembered I had these pieces done years ago — a sketch of my left hand and a cybernetic hand:

In brief: After cropping the separate images, I adjusted their placement on a new canvas (I used Photoshop Elements). Then added the background colour, played with the eraser tool with different opacity settings to give the background a washed look (there are 2 background layers). Then added the Zeros and Ones, and the DNA strand.

Photoshop Layers
Layer #1 — a series of Zeros and Ones. It’s done as a text (‘System’ font, size 22). Got the idea partly from “The Matrix” where the zeros and ones pixelised to become images.

Layer #2 — the sketched hand, cropped from the “1990 Sketch – Hand and Figures” (see this post). Used the lasso tool to crop over the image and then used Eraser tool (with different brush & Opacity settings) to wash out the unwanted spaces. Colour/ Lighting adjustment was done to give the pencil lines a more rusty look, like something out of Leonardo Da Vinci’s drawings — to show something really old, as opposed to the futuristic cyberhand.

Layer #3 — a cropped image of a DNA strand (from 3DScience.com). It’s a composite of two copies of the same image and merged-down (bec. one single image wasn’t long enough, or got distorted when stretched). Colour adjustments done to give it a bluer tone. Layer was set at 50% Opacity to blend into the background.

Layer #4 — cropped image from the “1990 (Sept) Cybernetic Hand“.

Layer #5 — a layer to paint the cybernetic hand. Highlights and shadows are painted onto the same layer.

Layer #6 — background layer for that chalky/ washed look for the side of the hand. It was one of the first layer I started off as a doodle. I liked how it blended nicely with the look of the sketched hand, I left it there.

Layer #7 — added as a background layer to paint the shadows and give more depth to the cybernetic hand and the zeros and ones.

Layer #8 — Plain white background. Kept it so that I can duplicate blank white-filled backgrounds as required.