this started with a tutorial on deviantart (knotwork tutorial, thanks esper for tipping me off). i followed the tutorial and made it to her first basic knot and thought her technique was lovely, so easy to make something that would take me so much time with a pencil and a ruler. but then i realised i hated my result because it looked too perfect! it looked almost machine made and straight, smooth lines just isn't my style somehow. so i started tweaking it a bit and then changing one of the crossings and then i saw it would look so much better if i changed that other crossing too - and the end of it was that i only used the triquetra knot in the centre from the tutorial, the rest was my own messy work . i've learned a lot from the tutorial though, in the future i'll use her path techniques for making the basic knots that i build up the bigger knots from.

mh, i love the complexity !

I love the knotwork (and anything Celtic being Irish) but the shadows don't seem to correspond to any particular directional light source.

If I had to guess, it could be accomplished by using a drop shadow thereby acheiving a mono directional light source, then using a Fuzzy brush or Air brush to paint in the shadow for any overlapping or "upper" segments on to the "lower" segments.

Just a thought.



These are the main offenders in this particular version using this drop shadow setting to give you an idea what I mean in case I wasn't clear.

esper: and after spending several hours putting it together i'm inclined to hate the complexity of it
draconian: thanks for the feedback, draconian! you're right about the shadows, i've been thinking about changing them. but i'm not trying to achieve realism here, just to give a little bit of depth to the crossings. i think i would be happy with the shadows if i took away the excess shading that i let over into the background around the crossings and then maybe turned down the opacity a bit. cool that you're irish, now i know what to say to you if i get really mad at you sometime

You can send me a PM with all the expletives you like. Check out my previous post.

yes, that's about what i was thinking ! thanks for taking the time, draconian!

That's a lovely piece of knotwork. I'm going to check out this tutorial.

thanks erisian! do check out the tutorial, it is a comparatively easy way to start making knotwork, i think.

Very cool, interesting tutorial too - I need to check out the paths tool more in depth.

Nice tut (for the not so lazy) and result AnMal but I'm just too lazy. lol