Tuesday 30 January 2018

Valentine Tags

#tagging #metadata

Tagging for Valentines Day is a Problem. There are plenty of commonly used tags that can be searched for or blocked but how to combine them so your product design or post stands out in search engine rankings?

I hope you'll help me out testing them by  looking at  and searching this list or using it yourself.

#valentine #stvalentine #romance #cute #romantic #love #valentinesday #gifts

What to Add or Remove from lists?

Sunday 28 January 2018

Beautiful Bs

BEAUTIFUL Bs



Why these four?

Bauhaus is BOLD but well balanced with strong angles without being chunky.

Gabriola has simplicity yet elegance.

Harrington is a bit more ornamental and curly but still has a pleasing clarity and balance.

Corsiva is a lovely example of a b with a upper curl.

All of these have well balanced shapely forms neither too narrow or wide.

Some fonts favour Upper case forms over lower and really can only be used for headers or titles  but with all of these  four I chose the lower and upper case forms are equally attractive and useful.

and they work in #inkscape !


Tuesday 23 January 2018

Summers on my mind

#inkscape  #demo #summer #colors #filters
The heat is rising outside.






Saturday 20 January 2018

From Coffee Stain to JADE NIGHT

Recently I uploaded a design to my www.redbubble.com/people/scholara #redbubble called #jadenight. I used a slightly different method for that  one.

I started with a background /bottom layer that was dark blue and then I applied the #gimp #coffeestain #filter. This makes a washed out (semi)circular brown mark and turned my blues to sepia. Why did I use Coffee Stain ? I wanted to experiemtn and see what happened if I used the Color Edit Tools!

Copyright Julie Vaux 2018

Off to the Color Tools. Turn down the yellows reds blacks etc and way up for greens and blues and shift the saturation too! Yes much more interesting!

Copyright Julie Vaux 2018


Ah the blues are back along with some interesting greens but I need to make to crop and tile!

Copyright Julie Vaux 2018

This is a small version of the final image that was uploaded to Red Bubble.



I cropped the edges twice and still have a very faint line showing on a couple of products but I dont think it distracts too much ?
You can get this on scarves tote bags prints notebooks lotsa gifts ! 

Wednesday 17 January 2018

Bold A Impact

#inkscape #typography #A #impactfont #demo

Here's some ideas for using the font called IMPACT and Inkscape filters



gradients changing the stroke to dashes adding stimulated water media effects raised metallic looks whatever I hope this gives you ideas of headers or titles ? 

Saturday 13 January 2018

#maga #typography #inkscape

Here's one of  my latest #redbubble design


RED BUBBLE - MAGA

Copyright Julie Vaux 2018 

A simple but hopefully powerful combo of a bold font a simple gradient and an alteration of a popular political meme ?

do think carefully about what AGHAST means?

You can get this on stickers tees and other things !

Wednesday 10 January 2018

2018 what to expect from this blog

#2018 #typography #inkscape




What to expect from this blog in 2018

More demos of my Inkscape and GIMP experiments with typography and combining various filters and functions and plugins and fractals

Yes I'm not a brilliant typographer ( for one thing my kerning skills need more work) but one of the points of this blog is to save you time researching techniques and if you end up putting ideas to better use ...

Articles on art history themes, typography, scripts, lettering , tools, color and whatever.

PR and updates on what I'm doing as an artist / designer!

and sadly unless sales vastly improve the occasional reminder I have Paypal and a Patreon and yes RED BUBBLE !


Saturday 6 January 2018

Epiphany and the Three Wise Men / Magi

#epiphany #threekings # threewisemen #magi #gerarddavid #

Here are 3 lesser known depictions of the Magi visiting Baby Jesus.
Matthew Chapter Two simply states that there were magi who came from the East however this got changed over the centuries to three wise men or kings based on a popular tradition made even more popular by artists and theologians who delighted in the idea of showing aristocrats kneeling to a baby.

However some artists even late in the Middle Ages knew magi were not kings.


I rather like Gerard David's Version which respects the popular tradition of three visitors but depicts them in robes that could equally be those of wealthy merchants or secular scholars although the "ethiopian" is shown in a courtiers or knights robes. 


One of the earliest depictions of the Magi is this sculpture.


Finally a Byzantine version from Daphne monastery.