Self-teaching Illustrator: Blend tool and typography

Back with another instalment of my illustrator explorations! This time I wanted to ease myself into something vaguely logo-y/wordmark-y. I’ve been using the blend tool in quite a lot of my work, and so when this tutorial came up in my Youtube recommendations, I wanted to give it a shot!

I have some strange lumpiness and bumpiness on my paths, and I can’t seem to get the smooth gradient option to work on illustrator’s blend options, so instead I’ve been substituting a step count of 1000. In hindsight, I think I should have used a thicker stroke overall, but there didn’t seem to be a quick fix way to go back and change every single blend component without resizing the entire path itself. I will keep this in mind for future attempts!

Here’s a template I made for my experiment, which I honestly like a lot in and of itself:

The font I used as a base is called Beauty One, and can be found here. It was the first uniform thickness cursive font I could in my font library.

Following the instructions, I began to draw and reshape paths and blends. I had discovered and used the replace spine feature in my ‘Unloved Creatures’ millipede illustration, so the technique wasn’t completely foreign to me. I tried to push myself to use more keyboard shortcuts and found myself picking up speed as I worked through.

Overall i’m pretty pleased with the result! The curves aren’t very smooth but the process was educational and I’m interested to try with different colours and lettering styles, or perhaps some illustrations.

We’ll see where it goes next!

Self-teaching Illustrator: Easing in

I’ve always been a Photoshop kinda gal. It might not be as good for layouting as InDesign, animate as well as Animate, or handle vectors as well as Illustrator, but Photoshop’s Jack-of-all-trades nature resonates with me and it has always been my software of choice.

That being said, my appetite for new skills has recently had me exploring Illustrator once again. I have used it for making some game assets previously and, whilst not nearly as intuitive in UI as Photoshop, it does certainly have its advantages.

Having recently used illustrator for some commission work here, I decided to start turning the focus of the program to things that I enjoyed drawing and were more relevant to my interests. I started a series called ‘Unloved Creatures’, illustrating some of nature’s less-loved but still fascinating animals.

I have also been following along with several online tutorials and playing around with recreating photos. So far I’ve really been enjoying the process and I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how easy it is to pick up!

Next stop, super-cool logo design.

Photo by my dear friend George Brown

Illustrator rendering, with some creative liberties taken

‘Olm’ from Unloved Creatures

‘Cameroon Black Millipede’ from Unloved Creatures

Lasius Niger nuptials and Society

We've had some warm, humid weather over the last few weeks here in London. As it's coming up to the end of July, I've been keeping my eyes glued to the pavement looking for winged ants - or even better, big, wingless ants (As they will be winged ants that have mated and thus shed their wings).

These big winged ants, called elates, are new female queens produced by mature ant colonies each summer. One of the most common species in the UK is Lasius Niger (appropriately known as the 'Common Black Ant'). This species of ant is one of the hardiest and easiest to keep, and as an intrepid first-time ant-keeper such as myself, they were the perfect species.

I've always been fascinated by animals and insects, especially those that display eusocial behavior. My mother and I developed a zealous interest in bees and bee societal structures after reading 'A Sting in the Tale' and 'A Buzz in the Meadow' by British Biologist Dave Goulson last summer, and so I was already familiar with some tricks of the bug-society trade. I exchanged several emails with Professor Goulson on the topic, and eventually chose 'Neonics and the Dying Bees' as my Ethics and Sustainability topic for my second year.

Since then, I've been doing some research into the field of Myrmecology (the study of ants). After studying up a lot on formicarium and ant-keeping here in the UK, I was confident I could 3D print my own ant nest. Thus, I have collected many queens and, once their first workers emerge, plan on producing a series of CAD-CAM formicariums.  I want to explore the best ways to incorporate the moisture retention, humidity, darkness, and chamber system that ants require to be kept in captivity. For this, I believe a modular system is best, as further assets can be added, such as outworlds and formicarium expansions, which are especially beneficial for species that set up satellite nests, such as L. Niger.

I hope to be able to watch these colonies develop, so that I can gain a better understanding on how ant society works in practice, not just in theory. I am also fascinated by the apparent 'hive mind' of members of Apocrita, such as ants, bees, and wasps. They were considered by many early philosophers to have perfect societal systems, and believed to hold the answers to the common problems that human societies face. 

Queen ants are also some of the most long-lived insects - my L. Niger queens can be expected to live up to 30 years with the correct care and conditions. This has caused queen ants to be the centre of many biological research projects investigating senescence, metabolic slowing and metabolic regulation as a potential solution to aging and longevity concerns of our own species. 

Here are my queens, in their founding test-tube setups. These are made with a well of water, stoppered by a thoroughly soaked cotton ball. The queen ants can suck the water out of these cotton balls and keep themselves hydrated for the months they will spend in the tube. Another cotton ball acts as a stopper to allow ventilation. This commonly-used ant keepers setup for queens allows the ants to feel as though they've burrowed into founding chambers underground, as the size, shape and moisture gradient mimics natural conditions, while still allowing the ant keeper to see them.

L. Niger is a fully claustral species, meaning that I won't have to feed these queens at all - they will sustain themselves by breaking down their now-useless wing muscles. That being said, I think I will attempt to give a few of them a tiny dot of honey in a week or two, to help them keep their energy levels up as they care for their first load of eggs.

Exciting times! I will post updates on their progress.

Here's a queen with her group of eggs. L. Niger's eggs have small, hook-like hairs on the outside, so they clump together easily and can be easily carried around in a group by the queen or workers.

Experimenting with Pixel Art Style

Today I decided to experiment with different styles of generating pixel art, in hopes of combating the usual slow-format creation technique with something more readily available. I typically produce pixel art in the meticulous, pixel-by-pixel manner, and so doing a group-scale render like this was an interesting experiment. I still did some solo pixel detailing into this piece, but I managed to work a lot faster than I usually would. 

I took reference from a photo of the Chicago skyline from a blog post here I tried to emulate the style of pixel artists such as @SOFTWARING, who use a lot of tonal shades in their work.

Overall, this method works well to create a strong 'mood' to the image, but I think it would translate better for skylines and landscapes such as this as opposed to characters, which I do in my usual work. I especially like the effect created with the reflection of the buildings in the water. I will revisit this method and see if I can create similar effects on a more natural scene - perhaps mountains or fields.

Terrace Bar Installation at Aqua Nueva with Craftwork Studio

Earlier this week I was asked to come and help with the installation process of the new Formentera-style terrace bar at Aqua Nueva in London, sponsored by Ciroc vodka. We had a day and a half to get all the boxes in place and planted, the bar and planters set up, the window boxes placed, and get the entire theme looking cohesive.

Mehrnoosh Khadivi, the designer behind Craftwork studio and the project manager for the instillation, met me bright and early at 8am on Monday morning. from then until almost eight in the evening, we were potting and replanting, sanding and filing, gluing, measuring and cutting, hammering and nail-gunning the whole project together. There was a short lunch pause for a spot of macrame-making (a skill I'd picked up on another project with Mehrnoosh) and then we were back at it again, undeterred by the unfortunate weather.

The main events management company we worked with was Wileywood, who had constructed the majority of the bar-surface assets, planter sides and box pieces offsite, leaving construction as an on-site task. I learned invaluable skills about problem-solving on my feet, making things work, and using the materials at hand to get a high-quality aesthetic and finish worthy of the luxury dining experience. Wiley's team, lead by Steve Wylie (Dylan, Ed, and Milly) and worked well with us and our group dynamic and coordination got everything finished on time, looking clean and polished.

Smoothing out the bar top's joints with a belt sander to prep for filling and whitewashing