It's Saint Patrick's Day Season and in honor of the holiday I made this little Irish Setter piece. He/she is available for sale at my online store. Just follow this link: Diane Sammet's Shop

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For the last week or so I have had the greatest opportunity to design an eight panel, gate fold brochure and trade show booth for HPEV and their Ultimate Power Truck product. I give a special thanks to Regina at MTV Group, Inc. for hiring me for the project.

I am thrilled, tickled pink :-) with the progress of this piece. I call this zigzag style because as you can see, the rendering of lights and shadows is accomplished with the repetition and stacking of zigzag shapes. One great advantage to this style is that transparencies are not required.

The inspiration for this style came from studying Rockwell Kent's illustrations. I truly believe that if we reach back, embrace our heritage as image makers, then leap forward with the new tools available to us, that we will make new styles of art. This is what is so exciting about the new renaissance of illustration.

It's a bit chilly in South Florida, 48 degrees Fahrenheit. I fully admit that I am a whimp when it comes to any temperature lower than 60. But, today is Valentine's Day and there is warmth in our hearts.

I hope you enjoy these two little snuggly muskrats. My inspiration for creating them was the Captain and Tennille recording of Muskrat Love, written by Willis Alan Ramsey way back in the 1970's. Happy Valentine's day to Susie and Sam !

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Making the folds of fabric is actually not that difficult in Adobe Illustrator. The real trick is to think of the repeating surface pattern as one element, then think of the shadows and highlights of the folds as a second element. Separate the two visuals in your mind, and then build them separate. For this tutorial you will need to understand how to use the gradient mesh tool and clipping masks.

Here are the instructions:

Download Patterned fabric with folds_Diane Sammet

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This video will show you how to make a pattern brush in Adobe Illustrator that looks like the interweaving of a three-strand braid. Once you make the brush then complicated looks like this braid are an easy snap.

How to make a vector braid

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Yolanda is done! On to the next project :-)

I have 25 more of these little ditties to illustrate when I am between jobs. What a fun way to start the day.

Hope you like her, let me know what you think.

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I love design just as much as I love illustrating. Here are a couple examples of past graphic design brochures I created.

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Yolanda now has some shading and minor coloring. Her "fur" has been added as well. She is meditating and contemplating, so I need to give her a thought bubble. She is almost ready for her official debut.

Children’s picture book art is stunning. Children’s picture book stories are amazing. I love that there are usually layers of meaning, and that each viewer and reader can take away from the story exactly what they need to see and hear. I have long had a fascination with fables. I adore the metaphors.

Small Dog is a children’s picture book that I wrote and am now illustrating. Using sparse words and rhyme the story unfolds to reveal that gratitude is far more than simply saying thank-you. With gratitude you can change your life.

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Working on this piece allowed me to explore more methods of adding the illusion of texture to flat vector imagery. The lighting was also a lot of fun to build. To add the look of rim lighting required the use of gradients and the feather effect. This chimpanzee (like most of my characters) is basically a “puppet.” His body is composed of a series of separate shapes that can be moved for any type of gesture needed.

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As a child my mother told me that whenever an angel kissed me, that they left behind a freckle. This image is in honor of my mother. May we all have angels on our shoulders.

Technically it required almost every trick and technique known to Adobe Illustrator.

There are hand built brushes, multiple appearances on a single path, gradients, gradient meshes, variable widths, masking, blends, offset paths and more.

Just for fun, I want to show you the path work behind the scenes.

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2015 marks the 25^th anniversary for the Humane Society of Broward County’s annual “Walk for the Animals” fundraising event. For something special I was asked to illustrate and design a commemorative T-shirt that will be sold on the day of the Walk (Feb. 28^th, 2015).

Part of the fun of the “Walk for the Animals” is seeing the thousands of dogs all in one place. There are big dogs, little dogs, old and young, purebreds and mixed breeds. There are dogs in wagons and dogs playing Frisbee. The “parents” of all these pets are as varied as the dogs themselves. There are vendors of every type imaginable. I can’t say enough how much I look forward to attending, with or without my beloved dog.

There is only one condition, no cats allowed at the event (but the money raised does go for all the animals the HSBC cares for, not just dogs).

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Each year I have the privilege to illustrate and design the T-shirts worn by all the volunteers and staff at the Humane Society of Broward County’s huge fundraiser “Walk for the Animals.” The dogs on this T-shirt are very special to me. They are the friends of Small Dog, the lead character in my picture book series.

The Walk will be held February 28^th this year. If you love dogs, this is a must attend event!

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Logos  •  Icons  •  Emoticons

Characters  •  Packaging

Brochures  •  CD Covers

Books and Magazines

Ads • Product Renderings

Textiles  •  Posters

Banners  •  Illustrations

Silk Screen Prints

And So Much More...

Sometimes beauty is its own reason. These daffodils (any daffodils really) bring me joy.  Building these vector flowers was every bit a love affair. As with every project, I get to practice what I know and stretch into areas unknown. For those of you that know Illustrator, the leaves are brushes with the twist built in. The flowers themselves are blends, and radial and linear gradients (no gradient mesh).

Whenever a sign of spring is needed, this little beauty is there to remind me.

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So exactly how do you go about morphing (blending) in order to create a M.C. Escher inspired tessellation.  You need to know how to use the Blend Tool, Live Paint and Symbols.

Download this .pdf file to see the process I developed: MCEscher morphing in Illustrator

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It seemed to me that if M.C. Escher had Adobe Illustrator that he could have developed his metamorphosis tessellations with a bit more ease. At least that was my initial thought. Once I got into the development of this piece I soon realized that using Illustrator really did not make the process any easier. As with all vector art, the building of the shapes and then the rendering of the shadows took a lot of time.

The effort was worth it. I now have a solid process figured out and look forward to developing more metamorphosis tessellations.

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Every year I create a poster for our local Humane Society that promotes their most important fundraising event, The Walk For The Animals. For 2013 they asked me if I would design an image that could be screen-printed onto T-Shirts. I jumped at the opportunity. Then I learned that I could only use the limited colors from the logo, no gradients, and no special effects. I love a challenge.

Also, I love the graphic black and white work of Rockwell Kent. With such a limited palette, he like many of his contemporaries defined form via silhouette shadows and then gave the illusion of 3-D with fine lines and zigzag shapes along the transitional edges between white and black.  

Using Rockwell Kent’s style as my inspiration, I developed a process in Adobe Illustrator that uses flat opaque color but along transitional edges I applied a zigzag pattern. From normal viewing distance, the zigzag “softens” the stark change from dark to light as our human eyes close in the gaps. Close up the zigzags add an almost woodcut feel.

How was this done?

1. The black lines were created with the Pen Tool and then I adjusted their weights using the Variable Width Tool.
2. The shadows and highlights were drawn on separate Layers (without zigzags).
3. I built about four different pattern brushes from triangles.
4. I applied a pattern brush to a portion of a shadow’s edge (only the portion transitioning from dark to light).
5. I adjusted the pattern brush with the Variable Width Tool.
6. I repeated steps 4 and 5 for all the shadow and highlight shapes. When all the shadows and highlights had zigzags and variable widths, I used Expand Appearance to make them permanent.
7. I used either Unite or Merge from Pathfinder, to finalize the shapes with zigzag edges.
8. Lastly I recolored the shapes. 

When done the final image has moved past Rockwell Kent’s style into a new derivative. I think that is how it should be. Digital art learns from the past and builds upon it, making imagery that exceeds boundaries.

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This is  work-in-progress. I am developing a yeti character (abominable snowman) for a "contest" Chronicle Books is having.  I wrote a little rhyme to go with Yolanda. As you can see the face still needs rendering. One leg and one arm still need work too.

Our Next Chapter was the capital campaign program for Unity of Fort Lauderdale.

I designed the 12-page booklet, and miscellaneous collateral pieces. I created all the vector images as well. The photographs were shot by someone else.

The puzzle theme was exciting to figure out. I am especially thrilled to now know how to take any image and map it to interlocking jigsaw puzzle pieces. Most puzzle graphics I see sort of cheat by not having the image flow across the puzzle pieces. I know the secret to making this happen

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I love rendering weather scenes. This is just one of many images of mine that incorporates a specific weather or time-of-day. You can probably tell that the clouds were pure delight to create. I find silhouettes to be important for any scene. The negative spaces and shapes formed with the silhouette can either help or hinder the visual communication.

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Don't you just love giving emotions to animals? I do. This little guy has been displayed hundreds of times.

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Here are some examples of my vector renderings for specific products, props or tools. I love rendering objects just as much as I love creating characters and telling stories. There is nothing better than getting into the fine detail of a rivet or a bolt.

It is so much fun to simplify the shapes and then make those shapes come to life with gradients and transparency.

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The palm fronds on this tree were created with a double art brush technique in Adobe Illustrator. I posted a video for you to see what I mean. Go to: Feathery Palm Fronds

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