Steve Mack’s Spot Illustration

What really fascinates me about Steve Mack’s Spot Illustration is his natural-looking technique, surprisingly a complete digital (Adobe Illustrator based, 100%) process. He really doesn’t want to explain how he creates these great-looking illustrations:

“...Truth is I am keeping kind of tight lipped about this. I devised a little program modification in Adobe Illustrator that lets me texture on the go, dynamically. That means I don’t have cross software versions of the same illustrations.”

But you might find some clues in his website, together with fine examples of his artwork.

Remoteness

I have contributed several illustrations to Illustration Friday, but it’s been several months since I last posted one of my works. Now here’s a little something on the theme of Remote (if you click the image you will see a bigger version.)

Watercolor secrets

The latest book by the noted watercolor artist Charles Reid, Watercolor secrets, arrived on the mail today. A beautiful volume that gathers a good number of delightful sketches from Reid’s own sketchbooks. Most pictures are either from travels around Europe, Central America and the Caribbean, or from the watercolor courses and workshops he’s been teaching through the years.

The loose style characteristic of Reid is of course well represented in these free, spontaneous settings. A really enjoyable book full of good advice about the technique.

One curiosity in this book is one of the pupils of Charles Reid: the famous actor Gene Wilder. You will find a portrait in the book (while in turn, he was painting a model, too) and there is a foreword by Wilder himself.

Want to know more? Get this book or another of Reid’s. And there is a previous post in this blog about Charles Reid.

Mozilla extensions

The range of available Firefox, Thunderbird and Mozilla Suite extensions is getting more and more impressive. Make sure you visit the Mozilla Update website regularly to see what’s new, or subscribe its RSS feed.

There are a few extensions that every user should have (more about these essentials soon), and then a myriad of more special addons for almost any imaginable need.

There’s even a recent Grocery List Generator, complete with categories of foodstuffs, which makes it a breeze to prepare your daily buy lists. With it you can store your recipe-ingredients and other groceries you need regularly. It creates a well-organized grocery list to help make your grocery shopping as easy as possible. Directly print your list, or export it to disk/pda.

Planet typography: a new version

I am pleased to see there’s a new version of an old favourite, Planet Typography, with a redesign, a new logotype (which design is explained in detail), a better organisation of the contents and new sections. A recommended visit and a site you should definitely bookmark.

4ojos

Antonia Santolaya and Enrique Flores have put together an impressive online exhibition featuring their fascinating sketchbooks. They have travelled around the world with their pencils and watercolours and now they share them in a nice website you shouldn’t miss out.