Lettering on Behance by pro lettering gurus has sucked up 3-days of my life again this week.
Anytime lettering and illustration are slated for broadcast on Adobe Live, I click to tune in when possible.
Watching pro artists and illustrators teach their work flow is a valuable use of time. Adobe Live Streams showcase guest artists and designers weekly, Tues.-Thurs., with replays  that live on the Web infinitum on Behance and YouTube.
Each week features an unique area of design, art, animation, videography, lettering, typography, editorial design, illustration, UX design, or website architecture and layout.
Lettering Pros Share Tips and Workflow
Day #1 lettering challenge was to hand-letter “Adobe Live” using four colors
Four lettering pros shared tips and workflow this week,
Aug. 28-30.
For those in the chat, Adobe sponsored daily lettering contests, Day #1 and Day #2, awarding winners a free year’s subscription to Adobe Creative Cloud and 100 stickers from Sticker Mule. Continue reading Lettering on Adobe Live by Pro Designers
Edvard Munch’s masterpiece The Scream painted 100 years ago inspired my attempt at transformative art with pixels and vectors
Why I Painted a Copycat version of The Scream
Normally, I would term my digital recreation of Edvard Munch’s masterpiece The Scream a copycat, but today to recreate the art or photographs of others in a surprising or an unexpected way is termed “transformative art.” Transformative art has a fair use copyright standing in many cases.
I downloaded the Munch digital brushes from Adobe for Photoshop, and had dreams of creating a piece of digital art in the Munch style for the Adobe contest. I made my sketch, and started to paint with my Wacom pen.
However, my computer is a dinosaur, with a slow processor. Every stroke I took with the Munch brushes was like watching a swath of color slowly populating across my screen. As grand as it was to play with the Adobe Munch brushes, it was far too tedious for me, so I abandoned my sketch.
The Scream by Munch has proved itself a timeless classic due to its original expression of a universal theme, panic. Munch painted from life. He was walking with two friends on a bridge, and suddenly he heard nature screaming at him and deafening his thoughts. It was a singular experience that found its way onto his canvas.
Munch painted four different versions of The Scream. One hangs in Oslo at the Munch Museum.
Edvard Munch’s The Scream is one of the most recognizable paintings ever. One of his four renditions of The Scream hangs in the Oslo Munch Museum, which houses the largest collection of Munch works in existence. The museum has also curated seven of his priceless brushes.
In collaboration with the museum, Adobe commissioned artist and art teacher Kyle T. Webster to replicate digital versions of Edvard’s brushes for Adobe Photoshop CC and Sketch. These digital brushes and tutorials are available to you free from Adobe.
Adobe sponsored a contest for a Scream 5 in July 2017, and offered these brushes for artists to create their own digital masterpiece, one inspired by the iconic Munch masterpiece. A print of the winning art would be exhibited at the museum next to Edvard’s The Scream.
Update: Contest ended August 1, 2017. See entries for Munch 5th on Adobe’s Behance.
So, when Winsor & Newton hailed a new line of ink pen and brush markers with an art contest centered on their ProMarkers and BrushMarkers and having a grand prize of a complete set of their ProMarkers, I was in.
Contest Pay to Play
The catch was, I didn’t own any of their markers, and I had only used gel and ink markers in lettering and calligraphy – not illustration. Still I jumped in, cannon ball style, to win their prized markers. To enter, I bought the required Winsor & Newton ProMarkers and downloaded their template. They didn’t want random art, they challenged artists with a template of five flowing lines taken from their iconic, winged lion logo.
Winsor&Newton contest template
Inspired by those five flowing lines and a table full of newly purchased W&N ProMarkers and BrushMarkers, I began a month-long obsessions to create my very first masterpiece.
“Summer’s end” – Farewell to summer … hello, autumn!
In the end, I submitted Summer’s End, the first layout I had inked. I knew it was a flop, but I had worked my heart out and felt compelled to enter the contest if for no other reason than to validate my month-long obsession. Summer’s End got four Likes on Winsor & Newton’s Instagram page.
I had allocated so much time to the initial layout and idea phase that little time remained for the final work and inking. No time for a re-work and no time remaining to ink my favorite layout, Kitty Diva.
Kitty Diva lounging on a chaise lounge, surrounded by fish, line work for inking
Still a winner! I have a drawer full of newly-purchased Winsor & Newton markers and a feeling of accomplishment.
The beauty of entering art contests is that you challenge yourself to think outside the box. I mean, I never would have drawn Kitty Diva lounging on a chaise sofa and in a room decorated with fish, were it not for the contest and those five flowing lines.
So, everyone wins when you challenge yourself to be better.
You can color your own Kitty Diva and Summer’s End on the Color page of my website.
Original Contest Rules for Winsor & Newton’s 2016 Contest
Create your artwork – it can be anything you like, but you must use the lines displayed on the template below
Your artwork must be made using mainly ProMarkers and/or BrushMarkers
Upload your picture to Instagram using the hashtags: #InspiredByProMarker and #WinsorNewtonChallenge. You can enter as many artworks as you would like and the closing date is 31 October 23.59 GMT. (Check out the talented artist who entered the contest on Instagram.)
MENTAL NOTE TO SELF
When inking a masterpiece, go small. I had a pro-print of my black line-work made on glossy paper, 17-x-11 inches, for inking with color. I used a lot of ink. No time for blends.
For watercolor, I like to go big. Consider your media.
Winsor & Newton
Founded in 1832 in London by William Winsor and Henry Newton, the company continues to supply artists with paints, brushes, and art papers world wide. Headquartered in England.
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