coyleart

Midnight in Paris

[photo by Benh Lieu Song]

If you enjoyed the Woody Allen movie and the fantasy of descending upon Paris and running with the likes of Hemingway, Cole Porter and Picasso, you might enjoy these links:

A NYTimes article with background and photos of the various luminaries that Owen Wilson encounters on his midnight outings.

And the story of Rosamund Bernier on NPR. Her time is after the twenties, but some of the characters are the same and the story is as good as a dream - only for her it was real life.

Adobe Illustrator chats with Laura Coyle

Our Adobe Illustrator chats from last week were recorded and are now available for you to watch at your leisure. Follow this link to ReneeTV on ReneePearson.com and the links to the two archived chats are on that page under my name.

I begin the 2pm chat by talking about my intermediate online Adobe Illustrator class, Illustrator 2. After that, I take questions and do some demonstrations of working with the Pen Tool, points, paths and building art. I also demonstrate working with scaling a pattern in Adobe Illustrator and how to make small adjustments to a pattern we create in my Ink & Paint class.

The 9 pm chat demonstrations are all about creating repeat pattern swatches in Illustrator.

These chats were open to the public, and they were the first of my monthly Illustrator chat series. Starting in February, Illustrator chat acess will be limited to those who are enrolled (or have been enrolled in the past) in one of my online Adobe Illustrator classes on ReneePearson.com.

Our February chats will take place on February 15th. If you are enrolled and have an idea for a subject you'd like me to cover, post your suggestions in the Illustrator Lounge forum on ReneePearson.com. I hope to see you at our next chat!

Pencils and Pens

Geek-out with illustrator Scott Bakal in these two informative posts about the pens, pencils and sharpeners he uses daily in his work. You'll enjoy the intimate photos and all the detail he lavishes on these humble materials.

Creation of a Line - Part 1

Creation of a Line - Part 2

Live Illustrator chat with Laura Coyle Wednesday, 1/18

Join me Wednesday 1/18 at 2pm and 9 pm EDT (or Eastern Standard Time) for an Adobe Illustrator demonstration and chat. This chat is open to everyone and you can enter the chatroom via the link on this ReneeTV page.

Hope to see you there!

My latest illustration epromo

If you received this in your inbox today and it brought you here, welcome! My agent Kiki Pollard and I wanted to highlight my cocktail-drawing capabilities this month! You can see my portfolio on Kiki's site at alexanderpollard.com.

Adobe Illustrator How To: Paste in Place

Cutting or copying and pasting is practically as basic as you can get in graphics software. This past summer I was spending a lot of time working in Adobe Flash and got into the habit of using the "Paste in Place" command working between Flash and Illustrator.

I would create art on an Illustrator artboard sized to match my Flash stage so that any time I made a change to my Illustrator art, say the whiskers on this cat, I could just copy from Illustrator and Paste in Place in Flash. The whiskers would land perfectly in place on the cat's nose. I was amazed I had not used this feature in Illustrator after so many years working in the program, but when I investigated further, I found that Paste in Place has only arrived in Illustrator and Photoshop since version CS5.

If you're like me, and it's taken you a minute to catch on (hate it whan that happens!) jump on the Paste in Place bandwagon. The command is Edit > Paste in Place and the shortcut is command/control shift v, just like the regular paste command with the shift key added. When you Paste in Place your pasted object maintains the same x and y coordinates relative to the artboard.

I've been using it a lot to copy and paste objects precisely from one Illustrator document to another.

I also like using it for pasting objects and text precisely from one artboard to another. Just click on the artboard you want to paste the art to before using Edit > Paste in Place. When you click on a artboard it becomes the active artboard and it's outline is darkened.

To paste your object in place on every artboard in your file, use the command Edit > Paste on All Artboards.

For Flash and InDesign users, Paste in Place is nothing new, but I'm glad Illustrator and Photoshop CS5 have finally caught up, because command/control shift v is now one of my favorite shortcuts! Check out this blog post for the reason on why Paste in Place doesn't yet work between AI and PS.

 

Adobe Illustrator Essentials with Laura Coyle

This week we've launched my self-paced version of Illustrator 2 at ReneePearson.com. It's an intermediate Adobe Illustrator online class that teaches about Repeat Patterns, Gradients, Transparency and Live Trace in Illustrator.

Pairing Illustrator 2 with my Beginning Illustrator class makes a complete and comprehensive course in Adobe Illustrator. Whether you are an absolute beginniner, or you're looking to refresh your skills, you'll be energized knowing all the amazing things you can do with Adobe Illustrator. We've bundled the two classes together to offer a discount. The classes are $60 each on their own, and $50 each when purchased as the Illustrator Essentials Bundle.

I hope you'll check out all the information, samples and videos at the links above. If you have any questions, send me an email at laurac at reneepearson.com.

Or, come to one of my live chats on Wednesday January 18th at 2pm and 9 pm EDT. I'll be giving an Illustrator demonstration and taking your questions on ReneeTV!

Get inspired by Ed Emberly

There is a wonderful documentary on Lynda.com now about Ed Emberly, one of my favorite illustrators whose books I used to pore over as a young artist.

If you are not a subscriber to Lynda, you can still watch the intro and the first of the three chapters: Getting to know Ed. It's an enlightening tour of his studio where he talks about his education and about using crowquill pens, brushes and woodcut. He also talks about striking out on his own as a children's illustrator and author.

In the other two chapters he talks about his style and the genesis of his "drawing alphabet" books for kids. You also get a peek at Ed talking to school kids, meet his family and see him collaborate on a book with his daughter. Ed Emberly also gives his entertaining take on adapting to changing technology and how it's affecting the market in publishing.

How to make iPad Wallpaper in Illustrator

I'm having fun with my new iPad and thought you might enjoy a quick tutorial on creating iPad wallpapers in Adobe Illustrator! I have so many repeat patterns locked in my art vault and wouldn't you know, they make a nice background for my ever-growing collection of apps. The art licensing business dictates that you have lots of art and patterns on hand, and many of them go unused so here's a chance to give some of your art a fun new purpose.

The basics are quite simple, you start with a square that is 1024 x1024 pixels. The square format allows for the vertical to horizontal rotation of the iPad. Repeat pattern designs are a great match for iPad wallpapers, because they are designed to work perfectly well in any format, regardless of how it's cropped.

In Illustrator, set up a new document (File > New...) with units set to pixels and the dimensions set to 1024 x 1024 px. Set the color mode to RGB and the Raster Effects setting to 72 ppi.

Next, make a safe area guide to visualize the part of your artwork that will be cropped as the iPad rotates. Start by creating a square at 768 px. Center the square on your artboard using the Illustrator Alignment icons at the top control bar. (For more info, see the bottom of this earlier post.)

Select the square and choose View > Guides > Make Guides to turn the square into a guide. You'll be able to see the guide as you work, and it won't show up in your exported image.

Create a new layer named "safe area guide" and move the guide to the new layer so you can lock it and keep it separate from your artwork. Save your new document. (Also, save it as a template for future iPad Illustrator Wallpaper designs: File > Save as Template...)

Now copy your pattern art from another file and paste it into the new document. The area inside the square guide will be visible in both the horizontal and vertical orientation. If you are creating the wallpaper for distribution, you'll want your signature or copyright to appear inside the safe area, so it remains visible.

When you are finished tweaking your art, choose File > Save for Web & Devices. Make sure to check Clip to Artboard to crop your art to the 1024 px square. Preview and choose the file type that works best for your art, jpg or png.

For more information, check out this post on Digital Citizen. This is where I found the safe area dimensions and the post goes into more detail about which areas of your wallpaper are visible as the iPad rotates.

My current iPad wallpaper is set to one of my favorite unsold designs: Club Penguin by Laura Coyle  Download Coyle-clubpenguin.png, it's free for your personal use. It reminds me of a pattern you would see on a pair of flannel pajamas for the winter, just right for cozying up and working in Illustrator!

 

Happy New Year!

I want to take a moment to wish you a very happy new year! One of the highlights of 2011 for me was seeing my Illustrator classes and tutorials gain a steady following. I always feel lucky to make my living as an artist, but becoming a teacher of Illustrator and working with Renee and Kent Pearson has made me even more grateful to be in the creative field.

The sense of genuine community and support from those who have signed up for my classes, attended chats or subscribed to my YouTube tutorials has been an unexpected reward and continues to fuel my excitement about this new avenue in my career. I'm very grateful for your participation, encouragement and questions, and I'm looking forward to more classes and chats with you in 2012! 

Wishing you all the best,

Laura Coyle