10:
But Wait... There's More! Not only do you have B-splines to play with in Expression, but you can also use Bezier Curves (among other tools) to draw with. We'll quickly touch on Beziers, then get back to the coffee, before it gets cold! Bezier's are different to B-Splines, as you can have sharp corners, curves with straight lines and combinations of these as well as curved/symmetrical nodes. The appearance of these curves and angles is controlled by the "handles" attached to the nodes. The best way to find what they do is play around with them. |
11:
The Image Again: So with the cup and mouse drawn out using B-Splines, I adjusted the gradients for them to show some shading. I then added a few polygons and scaled and rotated them to get the ciggy box. I added the text on the box using the Text tool, and scaled & rotated that as well. The packet is shown as a "paths view" so you can see it's individual components. |
12:
Smell the Coffee:  The "cream" on top was created with an oval, using a water-colour stroke. The steam rising from the cup used a similar stroke, whose opacity had been reduced using the opacity sliders in the Paint Style toolbox. |
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More Control Over Your Strokes: Apart from controlling the opacities of your individual paths, you can control the width along the entire length of the path. Pressing F7 will bring up the variable width control (shown above) An example is shown of a simple stroke, and how it looks after being modified using the variable width controls. Expression stroke widths are controllable with pressure sensitive devices such as tablets, but this gives that extra degree of control! |
14: Summary: Well, I think I've raved on long enough...that really is about it...as you can see from the paths view of the image, very few lines went into the creation of the objects. These were created using simple Bezier curves, and simple shapes (ovoids and rhomboids). Once the paths are drawn you can choose the stroke (line) style, width, opacity and if the path is to have a fill or not. Control over the gradients is through the gradient direction tool. Textures can also be applied to your strokes and fills. I applied one to the tablecloth in my image. This option is accessed through the paint style toolbox, as is the control of the opacity of your strokes and fills, and other aspects of the look of your stroke... All elements are editable right up until you choose File > Export > Bitmap...and yes Ctrl-Z works as you would expect as well!! The best way to learn is to play around with the program and it's individual tools yourself...above all HAVE FUN!! |
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