Friday 21 June 2013

Adobe Illustrator: digital plus analog

Seahorsey pattern with hand drawn texture © Karen Thiessen, 2013
A few weeks ago I shared my student experiences of hand drawing all the acetates for exposing my silk screens and yearning to be able to use Photoshop and Illustrator to generate the repeats. I am such a hypocrite! I took the seahorse-like motif that I created as a Sheridan student and generated Seahorsey and Seahorsey II patterns in Illustrator. Then, just for fun, I decided to print the Seahorsey pattern in outline and fill in the negative spaces with hand drawn texture using a fine Pigma Micron pen. I worked on it, off and on, over several weeks and the experience was calming and meditative. To be fair, this is a section of a 8.5" by 11" paper, not a 3' by 4' acetate for screen. I doubt that I would have enjoyed drawing and accurately positioning the motifs by hand. Okay, maybe I'm not a hypocrite after all.

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