Draw with Loomis

Updated 14.01.06

www.saveloomis.org

Art-Instruction Books of Andrew Loomis

My friend Tucho told me that he was using the books featured in this site to improve his technique, and actually I found them all very inspiring, not only for artists as talented as he is, but for everyone whith an interest in illustration. The page is also relevant since it´s hard to find printed copies of the books.

For more info on Loomis himself, you can read his biography here.

[Update] In a recent visit to the site this article points to, I found out that the books are no longer available there due to a letter of removal. On the other side, you can now find the books for sale in various online stores, like amazon.com.

Glest 1.1.0-rc7 – Tools 1.3.2 released

www.glest.org

This includes G3Dv4 with packed structures, so it has broken previous G3Dv4 models. Affects Glest, G3D viewer and G3D exporter.

It seems that things are moving really fast these last days; there’s now serious work being done regarding the Blender plugin.

Let´s rock!

A high-tech tumbler that transforms rough rocks and minerals into smooth, shiny gemstones.

I like the idea… you throw in some raw stones that you got on your last day in the countryside, you then wait some time and voila, you get a handful of beautiful polished beads. You may want to spend a little more and get into a more serious, professional looking tumbler, like these ones from lortone. Anyway, keep in mind that tumbling is made for the patient one as it takes many days for stones to gradually polish. You may take a look at this page for more info on the whole thing.

The ZPrinter

http://www.zcorp.com

The ZPrinter 310 System creates physical models directly from digital data.

It may be “the ideal entry-level rapid prototyping system”, but at a price of $25900 (Options, shipping, local taxes and duties not included), it’s just a little too expensive for my budget. Yet it is so sweet! Just take a look at the technology video (skip some corporate blah blah) and see for yourself what it can do. With one of these and a 3D scanner, you’ll be able to replicate just everything! (evil laugh*). Ok, but I guess that any 3D-er would love to see these machines down to an affordable price.

*Disclaimer: I am in no way responsible for any misuse of these technologies, may it happen now or many years from now when everyone will be able to copy objects with ease. I’m just saying that it could happen. The evil laugh is intended to be a joke, it’s not really evil. I do my best to be a good citizen. Really. 🙂

Easy life through practical origami: fujimoto explained

Today I got an explanation on this technique. It is basically an iterative method that allows to approximate the measures until a satisfactory value is achieved; this comes to mean that you make an initial guess, you apply an operation on it and then repeat that same operation over and over, taking the result of the previous step as the starting point for the next, which will give you more accurate measures each time.

For instance, if you want to divide a segment of paper in thirds, you would do the following:

1.-Fold one side the paper into what you guess could be the right measure for a third of it. Don´t mark the folding completely, just mark the end of it so that you know where it is.

2.-Fold the other side so that it reaches the point you just marked, and mark the folding.

3.-Fold the other side so that it reaches the point you just marked, and mark the folding.

Keep doing this. In a few steps you should have accurate thirds.

Now for fiths:

1.-Fold one side of the paper into what you guess could be the right measure for a fith of it. Mark it just enough to know where it is, as I explained for thirds.

2.-Fold the other side so that it reaches the point you just marked, and mark the folding. Now make and mark a fold which is the half of this.

3.-Fold the other side so that it reaches the point you just marked, and mark the folding. Now make and mark a fold which is the half of this.

Keep doing this. In a few steps you should have accurate fifths.

… Now that I think about all these thirds and fiths, this looks a lot like the way one would tune a musical instrument 🙂

Thanks to my friends of the origami group in Santiago de Compostela for sharing these techniques with me.

Related Article: Origami cd case