Great designed Bags & Beads

Red velvet handbag by Gabrielas Bags & Beads

If you like to look at great original hand crafted bags and beads, then here is a website to explore. Gabriela´s Bags & beads >. On the website Gabriela both show and sell her own designed goods. She have both designed and made everything by herself. So if you are looking after something unique, then this could be it. If you like to know more about the designer, click "profile" on the website.

Stefan Lindblad
Illustrator & artist

Laptop screens and colour palettes illustrating

Ask yourself how many times you have been sitting with a badly calibrated screen, colouring an illustration in Corel Photo-Paint, worked for ours, only to see how it comes out to bright or just simply with the wrong colours, especially when you look at it on a paper, or a better desktop screen. For this reason, one good thing is to make your own custom made colour palettes. So you are sure to work with the correct colours. I wrote about this earlier, click here, custome made palettes >>. There are several ways to make a custom made colour palette. Which is an especially good practise when you work on a laptop computer, because of the way a laptop screen show colour.

Me for example, I sit a lot working with my illustrations on a Laptop computer using Coreldraw or Photo-Paint and my Wacom intuos3 tablet. Either in a studio, or out on town at a café. Or just simply at home. And later check the colours on my desktop screen. And to add to the issue on colour using a Laptop, (this could be said about a desktop computer as well), if you sit in a room where there is a common light bulb, then you are sitting in a very yellow light surrounding. If you sit in an airport it might be a very blue light. And if you sit with a Laptop Sceen, then the washed out colour you thought you picked, show to be very bright. There are so many things to think about when you work with colours.

To sit in a completely grey neutral environment/room might not sound so fun, or you might not even have the possibility to either. So what is a good practise then when working with a Laptop?

I would say that one (but not the only) is to try to get hold of a PANTONE colour guide. Or any other colour guides. It doesnt have to be a Pantone. For example the Swedish Graphic Business Association have one they used to sell for a smaller price. My point is anyway to get a colour guide. With this colour guide you could get the correct RGB, CMYK or PANTONE colour settings/digits. With the colour guide at hand, using Corel Photo-Paint X4, go to the Palette Editor and make your own custom made colour palette. With "your" colours at hand (and of course you can add from the standard colour palettes), you can be more sure to get the correct colours in your illustration. You could then use that specific colour palette in Photo-Paint X4, and consequently not having to carry with you the complete Pantone colour guid. Which is just extra weight.

Stefan Lindblad
Illustrator & artist

Book tip, the creative digital darkroom

Okey, there are not so many books written about photography using Corel Photo-Paint X4 as a program to work with photographs, in a digital darkroom environment. This on the other hand doesnt mean you cant use a book, in this case the book "The Creative Digital Darkroom" as a reference book, and something to learn from, even if it says it use Photoshop. Lets face it Photoshop is more known basically, and because publishing company´s thinks money the book authors/ photographers use PS as their software reference. And because Corel PHOTO-PAINT X4 and Photoshop still have basically the same tools, its perfectly okey to learn from this book. Tone Curve is Tone Curve, and Levels in PS is called Contrast Enhancement in Photo-Paint X4. My girlfriend Mia bought this book, she uses PS CS3 and I uses PPX4, and its as good for both of us. All this said is because tools are just tools. A hammer is always a hammer. No matter what its called around the world.

What I like is that the authors/ photographers Katrin Eismann & Sean Duggan seem to pull it off in this book, when they say that this is a book about digital photography, about working with photographs digitally and not about Photoshop. And this is the good thing. This is what makes this book work. Hats off for that.

The book can among places be found at Amazon, but my girlfriend bought it from a Swedish online store instead. ISBN ISBN 10: 0-596-10047-7 | ISBN 13: 9780596100476 and direct link to Amazon is>> or via the O´Reilly Publishing website>>

Stefan Lindblad
Illustrator & artist

New Book Razzia now released

Finally, the new book "Razzia", published by Hegas Publishing House in Sweden, came out. Click here to be taken directly to the book on their website>>

I made the cover illustration and the cover itself, and 9 additional illustrations, black and white inside the book. It was again a fun illustration assignment. Thank you Hegas for the illustration assignment. Leif Jacobsen, the author wrote a text I immediately found easy to illustrate. Hopefully you will all like it. Its in Swedish though... The book is targeted toward kids of 11 years and older, but I think even slightly younger kids could read it as well. A Swedish daily newspaper in South of Sweden "Skånskan" wrote about Leif the author, read more>


Quote from a Swedish review critic & a school librarian:
With youthful current talk of today, seasoned with the technicalities of the trimmed two-stroke engines mysterious realm, with enough realism to make the story probable, and with a lot of conciliatory humor the author successfully and certainly will catch even novice readers and get them to smile in recognition. The dozen expressive, full page, ink drawings by Stefan Lindblad surely brightens up the portrayal, description. Books of this kind will hopefully lead to more read of more advanced literature. - Bo Nordstrand, at BTJ

"This is a book that will fit many students, and with an attractive cover as well. This one I will buy several several items of to the school library. " -Lisbeth Göransson, librarian, Kirseberg School in Malmö, Sweden

Stefan Lindblad
Illustrator & artist

Wacom tablets, when doing digital work

After I wrote this post, I posted a new about the new Wacom Intuos4, read here>>

I work as an illustrator proffesionally in Sweden, on a daily basis, and use Wacom tablets for all my work both in CorelDRAW X4 as well as Corel Photo-Paint X4. And I use a scroll mouse from Logitech as well, for the scroll & zoom part. (With the scroll mouse you zoom in and out when using CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X4) My suggestion is to only use Wacom tablets for the simple reason, because of its superior simplicity working with it. The Pen´s are great, both the standards and the extra pens you can by from Wacom. My wacom tablets are Wacom Intuos A5 and the Wacom Intuos3 A6 Wide. These sizes and tablets work great for my needs. And the Wacom Intuos3 A6 Wide aint to pricey either. Wacom offers several kind of tablets, so what is a must for you might not be a must for someone else. There is no "must" when you use a Wacom. Only towards the comptitative brands. You understand when you go from using a Trust tablet to a Wacom tablet. No more words needed.

If you dont like to by the Intuos3 line of tablets, then I can higly recomend Wacom Graphire 4 or the new Wacom Bamboo line. They are more than half the price of a Wacom Intuos3 line, depending where you buy them. The new Bamboo line is really nice in that they give you the pressure sensitivity as well. I have tried all these tablets, and if it wasnt for reasons of resolution and pressure sensitivity I would have now hesitation in buying the Bamboo or Graphire. I have done a lot of proffesional work with them all, when I didnt have my Wacom Intuos with me. And hade to borrow tablets. There is no quality differens in respect to DPI and PPI when working with CorelDRAW or Photo-Paint. Meaning when you create a document in CorelDRAW or Photo-Paint in let say 300 DPI/PPI and then draw with your Wacom Intuos3, Bamboo or Graphire4, the quality is the same when you do for both printed material on paper as well as for clean digital work. Its when you like to get more out of your brush strokes in details you will see the differences. For example if you in Corel Photo-Paint or Corel Painter paint a "water colour", the details is better drawn/painted with a Intuos3. It imitates real life much more. Its so much more subtle and detailed. But in all tablets from Wacom here mentioned quality is excellent. And you almost need a trained eye to see it.

If you work as an Art Director, Graphic Designer or making daily work that doesnt NEED to be extremely sensitive in the details of the brushes like many illustrators and artists need, then its more than okey with a Bamboo or Graphire - or the Intuos3. And this said, many illustrators and artists will never need this either. Because they dont work in such a style or technique.

They are great to work with. And you really don´t need to have the largest size of tablets either. Relax. I use to love the large size tablets, but because I like to sit outside my studio, at cafés and work, to be able to work where ever I go, the smaller sized Wacom Intuos3 A6 Wide, have come to be my absolute favorite size. Easy to put in my back-pack together with my laptop. IN total contrast to a fellow illustrator I used to share studio with. She bought the biggest Intuos she could find. I thought it just hindered me, and was way to big. As an artist I have made a painting big as 192 (Kvm) square meter, and other paintings in large sizes, so its not necessarily so that you buy a smaller size becaouse you draw small images, that has nothing to do with it.

My over all feel is that if someone have used a Graphire before, they will feel comfortable with this new Bamboo line. And if the go further and buy any size of the Wacom Intuos3 they will feel "safe". Its a pure joy to work with them. I would say that if you made a decision on pressure and resolution issues, then its just a question of portability. Designwise I prefer the look of the Intuos3, but after that the simple Bamboo Classic which is kind of small but in black colour.

Here is a link to a previous post of mine about Wacom on my blog for those who read it.

Stefan Lindblad
Illustratör & konstnär

Swedish newspaper article: Cuban blogger about Cuba

I read an article this morning, in the Swedish daily morning newspaper called Dagens Nyheter. The article was about a Cuban blogger living in Havana, Cuba. Who I would say is a brave blogger. She can tell more herself on her blog: "GenerationY". Important reading. She lives in Cuba and dare to write about things that are being taken for granted in a country like my own. Where everyone have internet and complete freedome of speach. Where she lives its not . Click here >> to read her blog. And you can red it in many different languages. Her friends outside Cuba help her with the updating and translation. GenerationY>>

To quote here own blog headline:
"Generation Y is a Blog inspired by people like me, with names that begin with or contain a "Y." Born in Cuba in the 1970s and 1980s, marked by schools in the countryside, Russian cartoons, illegal emigration and frustration. So I invite especially Yanisleidi, Yoandri, Yusimí, Yuniesky and others who drag their "Y's" to read my Blog and to write to me."

Stefan Lindblad
Illustrator & artist

Photographers - use Photo-Paint

I am an illustrator by profession, and I do graphic design occasionaly. What I also do is using my own photographs in some of my mixed media illustrations. This means I do image adjustment in Photo-Paint. Many photographers probably use either Photoshop, Lightroom or Paint Shop Pro, and Photo-Paint. For those of you who do take photographs, and like to have a great program in which to image adjust your images, as well as adding illustration and graphic design elements into them. And maybe work at times with layout, putting together your own portfolio and broshure material, for you CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X4 could be a very good choice. To know more on what you can do with your photos, using Corel Photo-Paint, go this website CorelDRAW.com, with a very active forum, with people from all over the world. Just recently http://www.coreldraw.com/ crossed the 20.000 member. And this alone since last year. Look at the main site, and browse to Photo edit or Photo-Paint X4 when you like to ask questions. Post your own photos in the Gallery and get comments. Just a little tip to start the new year.

Stefan Lindblad
Illustrator & artist

Photo-Paint effects & custom made Halftones

Illustration copyright Stefan Lindblad 2009
In Corel Photo-Paint X4 there are several effect filters one can use. Halftone being one. But one other nice thing is the Texture>Canvas filters. If you choose "other" in the Texture>Canvas dialog, you can add any filter you have created yourself, or the preset ones that comes with the program. All though Halftone in effects is okey to use, I like to have even more control over the halftone.

So by using the Texture>Canvas approach I make my own halftone texture filter effects, which I apply to my illustrations. In this illustration you can see it on the human face, and the background. On the background I added a preset canvas texture. One other thing is the outline to text objects in Photo-Paint X4. It could be quicker to do, but it really just take 4 steps in 3 seconds. Not more. So what the heck, how lazy can we be these days if we think that takes a long time to do. As long as you know exactly how you like to have it. As long as you use the short cut keys on the keyboard. Its your own custom made stuff that takes time to make. The artistic stuff.

In this illustration I used the Lens filters in the Object Docker, such as Contrast Enhancement, Add Noise and Posterize Lens filters. And of course the Merge Mode: add, subtract and Hard Light effects. I used two different custom made textures of my own Halftones for the face. On the text with added outlines, I used the 3D perspective effect. To add outline on text you select the text object, ctrl+m, press P, hoover over and choose outline width and then right click and choose brushstrokes>outline.

I post this illustration for this reason, to give a little tip on the effects we can add to illustrations & graphics using Corel Photo-Paint X4.

So who is Mona Sahlin? She is the former Swedish vice Prime Minister.

Have fun!

Stefan Lindblad
Illustrator & artist

Corel font book & Coreldraw.com Font survey

When the survey on how users look for fonts, it got me thinking that many people might not understand what a good book that comes together with the Box version of CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X4, and which can be bought from Corel Store. Its a great book which I use many times when I look for fonts I dont already have installed. I can highly recomend it to any who uses CorelDRAW X4 and Photo-Paint X4. It has more than fonts to look at, clipart for example. But to concentrate on the Font thingy, I really enjoy holding the book in my hand or on the table. Browsing around the fonts. And we are talking about a great deal of fonts. As always CorelDRAw Graphics Suite X4 comes with a lot of fonts. In X4 there is 1000 high-quality Open Type fonts and International Fonts, as well as 75 Windows Glyph List 4 (WGL4) fonts and 10 single-line engraving fonts. And of course if you still like to make your own fonts, Coreldraw is perfect for that too :-)

For all users like me looking for fonts, which I am doing as I am writing this, take a look in the book. Grab a cup of tea and enjoy!

Stefan Lindblad
Illustrator & artist

Photo-Paint X4 making 60´s pop-art & comics effects

Here is a very simple and straight forward tip.

A lot of people like to know how to make a picture in the same style as some of the pop-art in the 60´s and 70´s. Those halftone images. With dots building up the outlines and contour of a human face. And bright colours. So how is that made in Corel Photo-Paint. Well here is one way of doing it.

Pick a good picture to begin with. In my case I use the picture of the Swedish Prime Minister Reinfeldt. I didnt vote for him, but he is probably a nice guy in private anyway ;-) First is the actual steps, and below my explanation for doing it in a bit more detail.

1 Open the image and use the Magic wand on the background
2 Choose cut and past on a new object in the Objects Docker
3 Select the first object again and choose desaturate
4 Continue with image>transform>Threshold and choose 132 bi-level in the threshold dialog.
5 Go to Effects and choose Blur>Gaussian blur.
6 Effects>color transform>Halftone, and choose amount of dots to your liking.

Now over to the next steps. Colouring the image.
7 Face colour. In the Object Docker choose Lens>Photo Filter, and choose a colour.
8 The background colour
9 Choose the old background object you earlier cut and pasted before
10 Magic Wand and select it, and choose a colour
11 Choose Fill tool (the bucket) to fill the object with colour. And fill the object
12 Colour the right hand eye as red, make new object in objects docker
13 Choose Lasso tool and cath the eye
14 Choose Fill tool and fill with red colour
15 Choose Multiply in the Merge Mode in the Docker on the eye object.
16 Repeat the step for the yellow part of the hair on the head.
Finished.

Open the image and use the Magic wand on the background. When background is selected and masked choose cut and past on a new object in the Objects Docker. This will make outline around the head, which I personally add for my own enjoyment. Not necessarily in the style, but I like it. Select the first object again and choose desaturate. Continue with image>transform>Threshold and choose 132 bi-level in the threshold dialog. Go to Effects and choose Blur>Gaussian blur. And then Effects>color transform>Halftone, and choose amount of dots to your liking.

Now over to the next steps. Colouring the image.
Face colour. In the Object Docker choose Lens>Photo Filter Lens (only if you have at least version X4), and choose a colour. I choose a light pink. Done. Magic isnt it.

Step three
The background colour. Choose the old background object you earlier cut and pasted before. Use Magic Wand and select it. Choose a colour, let say blue. And then choose Fill tool (the bucket) to fill the object with colour.

Step four.
Now colour the right hand eye as red. Make a new oject in the Objects docker. Some would maybe tell you to use the Clipping Path. But why when you can use the Lasso mask tool. So use the Lasso tool and cath the eye. Use the fill tool to fill the selection. Its now all red. So therefore go to the Objects Docker again, and select the new Eye object, and the in the Merge Mode choose Multiply. Voilá! Transparancy. Looks great. Repeat this with parts of the hair and make it in another colour, let say a Yellow.

Easy isnt it.
It all sounds like a lot of steps, but it really isnt.

Stefan Lindblad
Illustrator & artist