Drawsigner

"Drawsigner" Logo Mark.

I've been calling myself an Illustrative Designer for about six years now. It fits the type of work I do on a daily basis the best. A good mix of design oriented projects needing to be leveraged with an illustrative flair.

But over the last year I've condensed the term "Illustrative Designer" down to an even more simpler term of "Drawsigner." Once again it defines what I do on a daily basis. (Yes, I've secured the domain name)

I first revealed this new definition when I spoke at the AdFed group in Acadiana. My topic was named "Drawsigner" and I created the above logo of myself for it.


Tight refined sketches of ornament designs.

Earlier this year I posted about the new book I'm creating for HOW Books, now officially titled "Flourish.Banner.Frame."

I've spent the last year creating over 400 pieces of artwork for this volume of ornaments, borders, frames etc. My creative process for the creation of this content is all about being a drawsigner.


Frame motif design.

I draw out all my ornament designs, scan them in and build them out in vector form. I've spent a lot of late nights finessing bezier curves and wrestling with anchor point handles in order to create artwork that is precise and beautiful.


Ornament design.

Like my other two books, this new one will include artist features showcasing some of our industries best talent utilizing a piece of art from the book in their own unique way. It's been a blast seeing how incredibly creative the approaches have been from the featured artists.


Graphic ring design.

Those who follow me on Twitter are well aware of my rants regarding Adobe Illustrator at times.

I really can't complain though. On a project like this I'm essentially getting paid to create what ever I want. Of course I've been art directing myself along the way and I'm creating more content than what I need so I can isolate the very best for the book.

So enjoy the summer, and as the days roll along I'll continue to get frilly with it.

Creative Kicks!

"FloraWhirl" design.

I like Zazzle.com, out of all the online vendors they offer the best diversity of product and even though they've had growing pains the quality has improved with each passing year.

They were the first to offer cool custom shoes. The only limitation was it was women's shoes, no guys variety was available.

Well all of that has changed now.


"Funk-O-Delic" design.

Zazzle.com asked me to help launch the service by designing some custom kicks they could showcase. So I took some of my more recent patterns and had some fun.


"Thorn" design.

I hope you enjoy these creative kicks.

Vonster Brand Shoes
- FloraWhirl Shoe (View/Order)
- Funk-O-Delic Shoe (View/Order)
- Thorn Shoe (View/Order)

Sneak Peek - Border.Banner.Frame

Refined Sketches for "Border.Banner.Frame" artwork.

For the last three months I've actively been working on my next book called "Border.Banner.Frame" which will be the third book I'm developing for HOW Books.

"Border.Banner.Frame" will be a stock art book for graphic designers.


Ornament design. (Sketch shown above)

The book will catalog over 300+ custom design motifs covering "18" different categories. (DVD will contain an additional two categories of art) I have enough of the content finalized that I've decided to give everyone a sneak peek at a few pieces of the artwork now.

This book will also include features on some of our industries most talented designers and illustrators too and I'm honored they've agreed to be part of this publication.


Frame design.

I've been drawing out all my art and at the moment my office looks like a creative hurricane hit it. I have piles upon piles of paper, vellum, sketches, roughs, finals, print outs, and notes scattered everywhere. It's a bit nuts right now in my studio.

But I can't complain, it's been a lot of fun drawing out all the design devices, cartouches, banners, flames, skulls, ornaments, and floral motifs. I usually draw out a good chunk of designs over a couple of days then spend a couple days building them out and polishing the artwork.

I've repeated this process one late night after another and it's turning out nice so far.


Two border designs.

Designing borders is a lot like designing patterns, in that they have to be able to repeat seamlessly to the right and left. Some of the borders I'm designing will also have corner art too.

I'm looking forward to finishing all the artwork in the next month and a half if everything goes as scheduled. The book is due to hit February 2011. But I plan on posting more about it later this year and giving away some FREE downloads too so you can test drive the artwork yourself.

A Repeat Project

Original sketch for pattern.

After you create hundreds of patterns it's hard to ignore the urge when an idea crosses your mind. Last week I was sitting in my studio working and an idea for a pattern came to mind, so I grabbed my Flair pen and drew out my idea.

I've done enough now that I know right away if it'll work or not and this one felt good.


Thorny Pattern. (Color Option 1)

When I create patterns I prefer more organic motifs rather than geometric ones. I also like to create patterns that can be simplified too. For example this pattern could work just as well using the thorns alone without any background color or secondary thorns.


Thorny Pattern. (Color Option 2)

I used a color palette that fit with a current project I just finished last week on this pattern.

Patterns are the type of repeat project I enjoy, literally.

Beautiful Corruption

Scrambled Clown.

I rarely have any computer problems, mainly because I use a rock solid MAC work station and it's proven to be an iron horse year in and year out.


Digitized Doodle.

Every so often though I deceive myself into thinking I know something I don't regarding my computer. It usually happens late at night or on the weekends.


Imprisoned pixels.

A few weeks back I decided to use the "Sync" feature in my Transmit app. I'd never tried it before but decided to play around with it. I set up a folder on my FTP server with like two images on this thinking for some moronic reason that it would sync everything in a folder on my desktop with the folder on my FTP server. This would prove to be a big mistake on my part.


Illo with a bit problem.

You see the app did exactly what it was suppose to do. It synced the folder on my FTP with my desktop and since I only had two images in my FTP folder I saw folders on my desktop just start to vanish one by one. I immediately got that stomach dropping sensation and before I forced quit the app about 30 folders had literally just disappeared as if erased.


Pixelated Tattoo.

To compound the problem unknown to me my current backup system had broken four days prior. All my current projects had literally gone bye bye and I began to panic.


Binary pattern problem.

Thank God for IT friends like my buddy Tony Knight who came over that night and ran a recovery application that took about four hours to recover what I had managed to do in a matter of seconds. About 98% of all my files were recovered in the end.


001011010011 gone wild.

I then spent about a week re-organizing all my work files and re-compiling project folders because the recovery app just renames all files with a number and recovers them into format type folders like "tif" or "jpg" or "pdf" or "psd" so nothing had the correct name and I had wade through thousands of files one by one and sort them all out. (Well most of them at least) It was a major pain in the @$$!

I now have safe guards in place to prevent this from happening again. I have installed a drobo so my files are more secure and I have time machine running for my backup. I won't be playing with unfamiliar functions anytime soon.


Truncated Wormwood.

As I went through all my jpeg images I noticed a handful didn't survive the recovery very well. They were corrupted. If I tried to open them in Photoshop it would give me an error message stating the files were corrupted. In other words the base binary code that makes up the image was scrambled. I could view the images using "Quick View" though and proceeded to capture the scrambled beauty corruption produced.

The may be screwed up but the end result visually is still pretty cool looking.


Beautiful Corruption.

I've take the scrambled beautifully broken code and compiled it into a larger image you can use. Didn't intend on any of this to happen but it all worked out OK in the end and produced a pretty cool effect to boot.

I guess you can say this is a creative side-effect of my recent computer problems?

Download "Beautiful Corruption Here."

A Pattern for Success!

"Drip.Dot.Swirl. 94 incredible patterns for design and illustration."

I'm happy to announce that after a year of hard creative work my illustrative pattern book has finally hit the shelves!


A diverse assortment of themes and styles.

Even though the cover says "94" the DVD that comes with the book actually contains "106" patterns total. Each of the pattern designs comes in three color options. So basically you get a stink load of cool art.


Precision, tileable, and easy to use vector patterns.

For more information, preview sample spreads, and to download another free pattern other than the one in this post just head on over to VonsterBooks.com


FREE Bonus Set of "12" Patterns for those who order the book.

If you do order my book be sure to email me a copy of your receipt and you'll get a FREE set of "12" bonus patterns not included with the book! That brings the total pattern count to "118." (Not including the FREEBIES in this post or on VonsterBooks.com)


Free pattern "Memory Lock" tiled out.

This FREE pattern download is exactly like all the patterns in the book. They are vector based artwork, easy to tile, easy to customize and adapt for your own projects.

FREE Download: "Memory Lock"
- Four Color Themes
- Includes CS2, CS3 and CS4 File Formats
- Royalty Free

Download "Memory Lock" Pattern here.

I hope your enjoy my new book!

Go forth and create!

Beautiful Vectors

Asian Beauty.

View larger preview of art here.

I've been wanting to illustrate a person in this specific style for a while now. I wasn't sure who I should illustrate, but then while I was watching an episode of "Star Trek Enterprise" the character Hoshi solidified it for me. I wanted to illustrate a Japanese women. (Someone pointed out to me that the actress that plays Hoshi isn't Japanese, she's Korean. So there you go.)


Illustration Detail.

Being a former diehard FreeHand user of 15 years I have to say that I simply could not have pulled this off in that application at all. Not even close. The blend modes and transparency alone within Ai is just so awesome and fun to use.


"Beautiful" tiled pattern design.

View larger preview of pattern art here.

In the past year I've designed well over a 100 illustrative patterns for my new book on vector tiled patterns called "Drip.Dot.Swirl" due out in May.

For this project I wanted the background to have a nice authentic Japanese type pattern you might find on a Kosode.

It's not a traditional Japanese pattern, but I was inspired by many of the historical designs I researched. It's a west meets east approach if you will.

In regards to the Kanji characters in this artwork it translates to "Beautiful."

This project was a lot of fun, I'm happy with the results and I look forward to doing more artwork in this style soon.

Memory Lock

"Memory Lock" tile pattern.

Over this past years I've created over "120" illustrative patterns. Most of these were for my new book coming out in 2009 called "Drip.Dot.Swirl. 94 incredible patterns for design and illustration."

Needless to say patterns have been on my mind a lot. So a couple nights ago I had a dream about a pattern. Not sure why, can't really remember what the dream was all about but the design locked into my memory so I decided to create it.


"Memory Lock" pattern tiled out.

This pattern like all the others that are part of my new book are seamless and can be tiled easily inside Illustrator. You can take "Memory Lock" on a test drive yourself using the link below.


"Drip.Dot.Swirl. 94 incredible patterns for design and illustration."

For more information about my pattern book visit VonsterBooks.com

FREE Download: "Memory Lock"
- Four Color Themes
- Includes CS2, CS3 and CS4 File Formats
- Royalty Free

Download "Memory Lock" Pattern here.

The 4th Not So Wiseman

"The 4th Not So Wiseman" paper sculpture.

In celebration of the holiday I have designed a paper sculpture called "The 4th Not So Wiseman." I've put together an easy to follow PDF template so you can create one yourself. Download the PDF template here.


You can construct him out of regular bond paper.

I asked my friend and writer Kristen Fischer to write a story about "The 4th Not So Wiseman" and she did a great job. I hope you enjoy this as much as I did creating it.


I managed to use one of my patterns in the design too.

The 4th Not So Wiseman
By Kristen Fischer

You've heard of the three wisemen, but never the fourth. See, he didn't do so well as far as a gift-giving went. Instead of gold, frankincense or myrrh, he stopped at the dollar store for coal. Let's just say that a very special baby in a manger was not so impressed.

And as the years went on, no one talked about the Fourth Not So Wiseman's laughable gift. When that baby grew up, he didn't want the world to know coal existed. When burned, coal releases two harmful greenhouse gases: carbon dioxide and methane. Jesus just wasn't down with that.

Now the Fourth Not So Wiseman is making a comeback bigger than Britney Spears. He's a reminder to be kind to the earth, live a green lifestyle...remember that you, too, deserve nothing more than a lump of coal if you don't!

PDF Template Download


A fun do-it-yourself creative exercise.

The sculpture is easy to construct, just follow the simple directions on the PDF template to create your own character. If you'd like to share this PDF with your friends and family feel free to pass along the link or post the link on your own blog.

You can also find a post about the Fourth Not So Wiseman at Ecopreneurist.com which is very cool!

Wishing all of you a very Merry Christmas!

Von

Drip.Dot.Swirl - Pre-Order!

"Drip.Dot.Swirl. 94 incredible patterns for design and illustration."

My pattern book is now available for pre-order on Amazon.com.

As the title states the book features "94" unique patterns. Each of the patterns is tileable, so you can fill any size space needed seamlessly. The patterns are fully customizable too, meaning you'll be able to adapt them to your own projects by changing colors, simplifying the content or combining more then one to create additional options.


"FREE Bonus Set of "12" Patterns for those who order the book."

Pattern names for each in order from left to right.
- Funkus
- Willamette
- Single Cell
- Grate Expectations
- PinWheel
- Alyssa Joy
- Synapse
- Windoze
- Latte Java
- Darjeeling
- Techno Shard
- Scorn Thistle


No-Brainer Deal.

The books DVD will also contain an additional "12" patterns not featured in the book and if that wasn't enough I am also offering a bonus set (shown above) for anyone who pre-orders the book! So when it's all said and done that is a total of 118 different patterns.


How to get the FREE bonus set.

To qualify and receive the FREE bonus set of patterns shown above just follow the following steps.

1. Visit Amazon.com and pre-order the book. Click here.

2. Make a copy of your Amazon.com pre-order receipt and email it to: info@glitschka.com

3. Once my book is released on or around May 2009 I'll email out a link where you can download the FREE bonus pattern set.


Tiled Patterns Demonstrated.


"Magic Beans" Pattern.


"Psychotronic" Pattern.


"Retrograde" Pattern.


"Grate Expectations" Pattern.


"Crystalyn" Pattern.


"Synapse" Pattern.


Download "3" Sample Pattern Tiles


"Solaris" FREE Download Sample Pattern.


"Spiro" FREE Download Sample Pattern.


"Chaos" FREE Download Sample Pattern.

Sample pattern download includes both CS2 and CS3 Ai Files.
Download sample pattern files.

Download additional sample patterns and preview book spreads at www.Vonsterbooks.com