Ninja November 11th, 2009
My inbox and I are grinning!
Anne and Callie are the mother and daughter quilting team from South Australia who made this amazing, amazing quilt inspired by my First Kiss print.
Just look at that intricate stitching!
Thank you, Anne and Callie, for sharing your beautiful work!
Related postsNinja October 2nd, 2009
I <3 Rilla Alexander from Rinzen! And my heart flutters even more at the sight of her darling penguin illustration for Fataim. OK, fine, it’s not all about the penguin — Noah’s whole ark is there — but naturally, I’m drawn to the penguin.
Ark Pattern and Tag
Description: A procession of animals make their way across this textile print, climbing aboard the ark on the hang tag. The penguin protests when he remembers he can swim. Troublemaker.
Client: Fataim
Software: Adobe Fireworks
Year: 2002
Check out more of Rilla’s work here.
Related postsNinja September 28th, 2009
Yael Miller’s mascot illustrations for Elyon Marshmallows are so cute that I almost wouldn’t want to eat them. Almost.
Ninja April 6th, 2009
I just received a friendly email saying that my Daydream Believer and First Kiss prints are featured on the blog, postersandprints. What a pleasant surprise and a great way to start my Monday!
Thanks, postersandprints, for showing some NvP love! ^__^
Ninja April 6th, 2009
NvP reader, Pernille, was inspired by my First Kiss illustration process and painted her room to match! How cool is that?
Thank you so much for sharing your photos, Pernille! I can’t wait to see how it looks when you’re all finished.
Related postsNinja January 21st, 2009
In one week, I got emails from 3 brides-to-be, 2 bands, and 1 curious student all asking:
Q. How did you create the swirls in your First Kiss Illustration?
First Kiss
A. I drew all the paths using Adobe Illustrator’s pen tool—no fancy shortcuts. This was before I discovered the handy swirl tool. I would endlessly tweak and make many trips to my local Kinkos for large-format prints.
Now, I wouldn’t leave you hanging. Here’s my tutorial on making swirls and curls in Adobe Illustrator. It does require basic knowledge of the pen tool. If you’re not familiar with the pen tool, the University of Massachusetts Amherst has a great pdf guide and practice exercises here.
And for the truly pressed, I’ve included links to free vector swirls and curls at the end of this post. Now, on with the tutorial.
Click and hold down the mouse on the Line tool to reveal the other tools. Select the Spiral tool.
Click and drag outward. If you’re a bit of a control enthusiast, you can also click on your art board, and a Spiral Options window will appear. Here, you can enter the spiral radius, decay, spiral segments, and spiral direction. I’m using the default 80% of decay, 10 segments option.
Using the Direct Select tool (white arrow), you can choose points and drag them outward to alter the spiral’s decay. Or as mentioned above, you can change the decay in the Spiral Options window.
Set the stroke weight to 10 pts.
Object > Path > Outline Stroke
I like to work in outline mode, so I can see stray points more easily and then delete them. To access Illustrator’s outline mode, hit ⌘ + y. If you’re on a PC, substitute the ⌘ symbol for the Ctrl key. To exit outline mode, hit the same key combination again.
Once in outline mode, use the Direct Select tool to choose points and drag them to alter the line weight of your swirl.
Related postsNinja June 20th, 2008
Here’s some fun type by Kassel-based designer Christian Wieners for the in vector we trust project.
Ninja May 29th, 2008
I recently received an email from a lovely lady from Canada. She mentioned that she found us through a Google image search for the word, “kiss.” That got me wondering, so I too did a search and discovered that our image for First Kiss is number one and the First Kiss process sketch is number two on the Google image search. Wow… we even beat out the band, Kiss.
Penguin April 20th, 2008
Thanks to everyone who voted at Mostly Lisa! Your tireless dedication brings great joy to us here at NvP and brought us a big “W” and some nice link lovin’.
Most importantly, thanks for sharing our joy. 
Congrats, Ninja!
-Penguin
Related postsLimited edition lithograph prints. Signed + numbered.
