Saturday, February 16, 2013

A Flying Bear

Well, if this won't cheer you up, I don't know what will. In an exercise to accurately show fur, feathers, and wood grain all in one drawing, I gave this wonderful brown bear I met in a berry patch a way to fly. You just take some feathers and stick them in your nest, put your nest on a stump, and take off. It's as simple as that!






7 comments:

  1. It did cheer me!!

    Also.. Beautiful technique! Makes me miss design school and drawing class!! Love!

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  2. Grace- also laughed out loud at "Well, if this doesn't cheer you up, nothing will!" Hilarious.

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  3. Absolutely beautiful. Bring on the 3-D printer!

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    1. Thanks! You'll have to explain what you mean about the 3-D printer.

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  4. Have you heard about 3-D printers? They are kinda exciting and scary. Exciting because the technology could actually be used to print body parts you happen to need, like essential organs, or ears, for instance. Check out http://www.livescience.com/27280-3d-printed-ear-created.html
    However, they could also be used to make guns. http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21571910-regulatory-and-legal-challenges-posed-3d-printing-gun-parts-ready-print-fire
    I heard a discussion on CBC (up here in Canada) on that very issue just a couple of days ago. It is all so strange. I also don't like that 3-D printers might be available for household purchase in the not-distant-at-all-future. Ostensibly, you could say, hum, I want a new cup. Then design it, print it, and out comes a plastic cup. Plastic, plastic, plastic. I envision all of the planet going greedily wild and printing up plastic everything. Horrible. But I like to imagine, and this is utter make believe, that you could insert a lovely whimsical design such as yours and press print, and out comes the real live thing, in 3-D. What a magical and chaotic universe it would be.

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    1. Oh yes, I know what a 3-D printer is, I just wasn't sure how it applied to the bear but I see what you mean now. I'd read in the Economist about how you can print certain parts of guns with them. It's not worrisome to me though, because you can't print the essential parts of the gun- the barrel and upper, which have to be made out of metal so that the heat of the bullet doesn't melt them, and they have very complicated parts, such as a firing pin, bolt, etc. that have to be put together carefully. Many parts of a gun also need special metal spring you can't print. You'd still need to practically be a gun smith to make one. I also can't see them working that well, at least not yet. But it's something to think about.

      Fortunately, it's pretty expensive to print something of much size on a 3-D printer. I know this because in one of my graphic design classes, we had a project where we designed something that could potentially be printed on a 3-D printer. First, you have to have the 3-D software to make the object you would want to print, and it's no small feat to figure out how to make it. Then, the resin it is printed with is very expensive, so printing a whole coffee cup would probably cost you a whole lot of money. Eventually the cost will probably be brought down, but I don't think a whole lot of people would be terribly interested in them because, like you said, it's plastic, not a terribly appealing material.

      It would be awesome if I could insert a design like my bear though and print it! Preferable in wood, but I don't see that ever being printable. :D

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