Finally, a cure for freckles. (Taken with instagram)
An illustration I’m working on right now has an intricate radial dot pattern, not unlike the ones in Osamu Akatsu’s lovely wedding invitations. I was coming close to these results but not quite, so I asked around the Internets (thanks, Twitter!) and had a few approaches that were better than mine.
I ended up using a great solution offered by Ben Allison, who discovered the following method:
The only step left after this is to turn the resultant shapes into geometric circles — easily overcome using the Convert to Shape -> Ellipse filter (don’t forget to ungroup all the shapes first, or else you’ll get one giant circle shape from the group).
I did email Osamu himself, who just today came back with a surprisingly different approach:
What I like about Osamu’s steps is that the dots are created parametrically (easy to change by adjusting the stroke properties), so there are fewer steps and a less complicated resultant group of shapes. Of course, whereas Osamu’s works only for circle/ellipse shapes, Ben’s works for almost any.
Combining these two, just follow the first two steps of Ben’s and the last three of Osamu’s, and you’ve got yourself a pretty decent method for creating the radial dot pattern in any shape.
Thanks also to Cody Petruk and Cameron McNab for their great tips too.
I know this is heavier than what I normally publish on this blog, but I want to commemorate my father, who died almost three years ago. I wrote this three years ago to the day.
I am clear-minded today and not too depressed. So I can at least write about what’s happening with some degree of articulation. Dad is dying of cancer at the age of 63. It is unlikely that he will live through this summer, no less the next month. It is a bittersweet process. We have the opportunity to say our goodbyes and to express our love for each other, and to cherish every moment we have together. We also have time to clear up all the practical matters regarding the termination of one’s legal status of “person”.
On the other hand, it is awful to see my father fade away like this. As I have already said to a few people, I wish there was a door through which we passed to die. We are here and then we are not. We could say our byes, and then, when the time is right, we would simply walk through. But such a door is offered to very few in this story of humanity. Dad, like the rest of us, has to die in a rather awkward and ungraceful process of decay, first in body, and then of mind. Two months ago, he was going for 3 hour hikes in Tasmania. Three weeks ago, he was walking an hour in the woods by his house. Two weeks ago, he was still living in his own house. Last week, he was sitting in a wheel chair but as strong a character as always. This week, he is bedridden, has a bedsore, and can bareley stay awake to finish his meal. I am losing him fast.
This transition between living and dead is most troubling to me when I see the realms of the living and dying side by side. While at my father’s favourite restaurant on Monday, I sat with my father on one end of the table while the rest of our bunch sat at the other, eating and conversing so freely. The sun was shining, cars were criss-crossing on the streets outside, people were walking by, restaurant patrons were enjoying their meals, and even those at our table were talking about seemingly trival topics. My dad and I were on the other side of the table, in a slower realm, a realm where smiles and conversation come slowly, at about 1/100th the speed of normal life. Every bite of food a labour, and a rest needed after each. The placid music filling the restaurant seemed either to mock us or sympathize with us. It seemed to me that my dad was no longer a part of the rest of the living world, only a visitor from Planet Hospital, where dying people belong. For the first time, life seemed to me a cruel arrangement. We think we’re going to live forever, and then we must pass on. Even we, who hold my dad’s hand through to the grave, continue to live the life of the living, and we coldly ignore the reality that my father alone experiences. Death must be extremely lonely.
We speak and deal with my father as from the other side of a long tunnel. I imagine my father’s experience to be one that is distant from ours. I imagine his mind to be far off, as one who has been strongly drugged and intoxicated, only tired and wanting to put his head down for once and sleep it off. “Come on, Dad”, we say. “Go here,” and “Time to do that.” It sounds so far away to him. We set some of this distance by our own choice, by not willing to reach as far into the experience of death as we might. It is dark, and we still have to live our own lives. The rest of this distance is set by default: we cannot go too far, for any further and we ourselves might never come back.
“Give me a smile, Dad. I love you.” He smiles back, his head shaking slighty from the effort it takes to open his eyes and raise his jaw. There is still a glow in his eyes, a sparkle, a pride and joy in his children. He loves us. He wants nothing but our love. He doesn’t want to go yet, he wants to be around for us still. “Dad,” we say, “Rest now. You’re tired.” He does not want us to go yet. He strains to stay awake, to tell us something else he needs us to do, to get something for him. It is painful to leave him but we know he must rest.
He fades away, but he is too strong to die out completely. That’s why it’s so hard. We have shoddy reminders of him, a child’s drawing of his reality. We want our dad back. I want my dad back. Had he gone through the door fully himself, I might not be mourning him so much. It is seeing him die, seeing how alone he is, that is hard.
Now, he prepares to start a journey none of us have any experience in: that from life to death, and then through death’s gate to the soul’s journey into the beyond. What he must face there I don’t know. As one who believes confidently in God’s lovingkindness, compassion and mercy, I am not worried about anything one might expect a Christian to worry about. But I believe it will be a lonely journey from here to there, from this cold, sin-darkened world to the world of Christ’s everlasting light and joy. He is already being taunted by demons, at least those of his own mind’s imagining in the form of nightmares. I can only pray that my father’s guardian angel stand by him now more than ever. Christ stands victorious over death—over its victory and its sting. During this Paschal time, the refrain rings even louder: Christ is risen from the dead trampling down death by death and upon those in the tomb bestowing life!
Detail (Hong Kong) from the Methanex Reponsible Care Report illustrations.
Illustration from a recent project I worked on.
The mother of all Instagrams
Lumbercat
Pink and Green
Taken with instagram
Excited about this sustainability report I worked on while at Signals! (Taken with instagram)