Welcome to my Art Works Home Page

Careful observation of churches and cathedrals will reveal this beautiful symmetrical pattern. The graphic is based on triangles and circles and can be found in architecture featuring trefoil and quartrefoil window design.

Creating an impression of 3-D in a simple but superb design like this is an important aspect for the graphic artist - without the pseudo-lighting effect the final result lacks impact. To achieve this in ArtWorks requires time because we users do not have access to a Bevel tool as in packages like Xara and Illustrator.

The Graphic Sections

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Moorish architecture based on Replicated polygons. No longer available.

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Further designs using the Replication tool. No longer available.

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This section shows some of my earlier illustrations. They are all drawn using the fantastic and easy-to-use ArtWorks 2. A couple of the pictures have been embellished with a bitmap editor.

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Last year I held an exhibition in my library in Mansfield. I exhibited a variety of prints consisting mainly of vector graphic images created 'naturally' in ArtWorks 2 with some kaleidoscope pictures designed in Photodesk. Comments in the visitors book were very favourable to the extent I sold two limited-edition prints. I was surprised because the library staff were adamant that none would be sold. The Three Hares seemed to be the most popular image and is a personal favourite.

The picture of the fox was originally conceived from a tutorial written by a superb illustrator - Walter Briggs. The original article (Mammals Art Course - Fox Part 1) was published in Acorn Publisher (vol 9, issue 2) and photocopies may still be available from http://www.finnybank.com/qercus/misc/archives.html. Creating an impression of animal fur is challenging in a vector package and may take some hours to perfect.

Some of the examples are tessellations. Once you understand the principals these unique and interesting patterns are very easy to create using ArtWorks 2. Last year I gave a talk at the Wakefield RISC OS Computer Club describing how to draw a simple shape by converting the sides of a square to curves and then creating a tessellation matrix.

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ArtWorks 2 is superb when it comes to creating geometric images. The moire designs started out with a radiating pattern which is then copied and overlayed over the original - some unusual effects are produced. My favourite graphic in this group is the serpent. Because of the knot pattern it has to be one of the more challenging drawings to produce but I hope you agree the final effect is worth the effort.

These graphic thumbnails are now displayed using CSS giving a much cleaner layout. (All I have to do now is to convert the rest of the site to CSS compatibility).

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An interesting collection of graphic geometry that displays the capability of ArtWorks. The sine curves and spirals are produced using the excellent DrawLots.

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The three images in this section show how some Adobe Illustrator tutorials can be converted and made to look quite realistic in ArtWorks. The examples are from the American site Vector tuts+.

Owing to the lack of tutorial material available to ArtWorks users I ran a series of articles enabling readers to convert some of the graphics produced by Xara in their regular 'Workbook' series. Available from Foundation RISCWorld magazine the first article started in the August 2008 CD (Volume 9, issue 2). If you missed the articles you can see the final graphic illustrations here........ Foundation RISCWorld Graphic Thumbnails. All the drawings have a copyright notice overlay and was going to be the subject of my next article in Foundation RISCWorld but as most of you know the editor, Aaron Timbrell has decided to give up the editorship of the publication. The final release (April 2009) is volume 9, issue 6.

Animation in ArtWorks 2

Introduction

Animated Dodecagons

Simple to produce the counter-rotating dodecagons make an effective and colourful animation. Using a 12-segment circular-grid and the Line tool it is easy to draw the first segment. Using a sequence of colouring/cloning/rotating it takes a matter of minutes to duplicate the remaining 11 segments to complete the dodecagon. Duplicating the first page (the latest release of ArtWorks provides a dedicated menu option for this purpose) and rotating the polygons at a specified angle is the first step in producing the animation. The procedure repeated over many Pages can be used to produce a frame set. Each frame can be saved as a Sprite and rendered in InterGif to produce the result below.

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Links checked Friday the 16th of October, 2009