SheamusBurns.com

Emphasis Design: Focus, Anomaly and Subordination,

Shea — Mon, 04 May 2009 18:05:26 +0000

Rhythm Design: Repetition + Scale + Contrast = Movement

Shea — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 16:33:47 +0000

Photoshop: Two ways to select & replace color

Shea — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 17:33:24 +0000

Here are some images you can use the following tools in photoshop.

1. Magic Wand Tool

2. Magnetic Lasso Tool

3. Select & Replace Color

Design of Depth: Photo Montage

Shea — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 12:54:11 +0000

Design Student Responses: Alphabet

Shea — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 22:15:16 +0000

A collection of designs from my students responding to the challenge: Create an alphabet using 26 characters.

Sunyan Lee

Nick Diamantoni

Jen Burchfield

Nicole Hedley

Nash Jenkins

Risa Watanabe

Jonah Robinson

Sound Design: Cassette Tapes

Shea — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 17:00:40 +0000

Some objects and designs inspired by the ol’ cassette tape.

Alphabet Design: A System of Signs

Shea — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 21:09:04 +0000

Some found images inspired by alphabets.

Typography Design: Letters as Raw Material

Shea — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 23:18:31 +0000

A few found images that employ letters for their forms, not their meanings.

How to draw a sphere and shade it

Shea — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 19:33:23 +0000

Start out by drawing a circle on your page, lightly with a pencil or soft charcoal.

Begin by adding a light gray tone. Leave a circle of light where you want the highlight to be on the sphere. This highlight end up being the lightest part of your sphere, where the hits it directly. It’s position on the sphere will also determine how to place the shadow.

Over the next few steps, gradually add darker and darker shades of gray. Work progressively, you'll be getting darker and darker by adding layers of gray.

A slightly darker value

A little more.

As your sphere starts to take shape, you'll want to leave a little strip of lighter gray toward the bottom. This will be important later to creating the illusion of three dimensions -- when light hits the ground around the sphere, it bounces up and hits part of the sphere -- the reflected light.

Begin to go back into the many layers of gray and smooth out the transitions between each band of gray -- you'll want it to look smooth. You're working to recreate the effect of light moving over a curved plane (surface).

Keep smoothing it out. You can do this by carefully blending with your finger or a blending tool (cotillion), but carefully blending with your drawing medium will give you more practice and increase your dexterity and skill.

A little more.

Now it's time to cast a shadow. Carefully draw an ellipse underneath the sphere. Since I've drawn my sphere with the light source coming from the upper left, I oriented my ellipse toward the light source. (this means drawing a square base in perspective, projecting a circle inside that base, and then turning that base toward the light source), to make it look more natural. Choose a relatively dark value for the shadow -- it should be as dark or darker than the darkest part of your sphere. Don't go too dark or it won't harmonize with the rest of your image.

For the background, choose a light-middle gray. It should be a tone you can work with later to improve the effect of having the sphere sit in illusionistic space.

Soften the edges of the shadow. The cast shadow will behave differently on different surfaces and textures.

Adjust the tones of the background. Here I've used a gradient to show that the light is hitting the ground closest to the sphere and the space darkens further behind the sphere.

In the last step, I had my sphere placed in illusionistic space. All my values (tones) were set, but the sphere looked a little odd, so I went in and darkened some of the tones on the shaded part of the sphere near the bottom. Now it looks pretty good. Have fun drawing!

How to draw a cube, cast it’s shadow, and shade it.

Shea — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 02:15:30 +0000

Draw a Horizon line near the top of the page.

Draw a basic cube using two point perspective. Mark two vanishing points at both ends of the horizon line. Below and between them, draw a straight vertical line representing the front edge of the cube. Draw orthogonals from the bottom of the edge to each vanishing points. Repeat for the top of the edge. Draw vertical lines to represent the two side edges of the cube. Draw orthogonals from the top of those edges to the opposite vanishing points. The top corner of the cube's back edge will be at the point those two top lines intersect.

Erase the major construction lines. Now you're going to draw the "invisible" edges, or the edges that aren't visible from your perspective. Draw a light line from the bottom right corner to the left vanishing point. Repeat for the bottom left corner. Draw in the back edge.

Erase all the construction lines. Now you have a transparent cube.

Now you're going to choose the general direction of your shadow. Pick a point on the ground to the left of the cube. Lightly draw three lines, connecting the point with the three corners of the base, closest to that point.

Draw three parallel lines that represent the rays of the sun. Each sun ray should pass through the top corners of the same three edges connected to the ground rays. Draw lightly, so you can erase later.

Now you can define the shape of the shadow. Mark a point where the ground ray and the sun ray which pass through the back edge intersect. Mark the same intersection points for the rays on the side edge, and the front edge.

Draw the outline of the shadow by connecting the dots to the front and back edges. Erase all the sun rays and ground rays.

Paint in the background of the page with a light grey-brown. Leave the cube white.

Paint in the area of the shadow that will be visible with a dark gray value. Erase all the "invisible" lines.

Paint in the two sides of the cube. Choose a middle gray (a value halfway between the dark gray shadow and white). Paint the side of the cube in shadow with this middle gray. For the left visible side of the cube, choose a value very light gray (just a little darker than white).

Paint sky in above the horizon. To create the illusion that the ground recedes into the distance, blend red into the ground toward the bottom of the page and blue for further away.

Gently erase the harsh outlines. This creates the illusion of realism, as we don't see outlines in real life. The meeting of planes, usually represented by an outline, is simply a change in value. Accentuate the form by applying the following rule: where two planes meet, gradually darken the darker one, and lighten the lighter one.