And.. NKS hits version 3 *Fan Fare!!!*
Not so much I know. But, honestly, this is a pretty exciting release for me. The goal with NKS has always been to get some of that sketch book feel in Photoshop, and this version steps it up in some really useful ways. Typically if you want to have a decent archive of your sketches, you’re either working digitally, using tools that feel, well, digital-or you’re spending a ton of time at the scanner. Sketch, sketch, sketch… scan, scan, scan. It’s not a horrible workflow, but there’s always room for improvement. While I’ll probably never give up sketching on real paper, a tool like this is a huge boon. I can get pretty close to the sketch book feel-and when I’m done, I’ve got a digital asset ready to file. One of the new features is a sketch book canvas. Not rocket science by any means, but it gets this experience a bit closer to the real deal. Tape a piece of paper to your WACOM tablet to get rid of that plastic-on-plastic feel and the tactile response is nearly right. In addition to the new canvas, I’ve added a complimentary color bar. Different from the traditional spectrum picker in that each colors’ compliment is available directly across the X axis. I’ve found this layout really fosters the consideration of other relationships as well. One-click for the canvas, one click for the color bar. Pretty straight forward. Pretty fast.

The tools themselves have undergone major revisions. With full rebuilds of the Ball Point, Ink Pen, Markers, Spray Paint, and the addition of new Stippling tools. The kit goes well beyond sketching in use and is viable for many rendering and texturing tasks. Oh yeah, and it’s free.

In addition to the new NKS panel, I suggest everyone check out Anastasiy’s custom color picker panel for Photoshop. Check out his site here.

Installation instructions included in the zip.
NKS3 is compatible with Adobe Photoshop CS4, on Mac OS or Windows machines.

>Download NKS3

(ZIP 11.6 MB) (Right-click + Save-As)

NKS3 by NKURENCE is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Back on the music front. I try to play guitar regularly, but am pretty horrible at remembering my lines. So in an effort to document them, I’ve started notating a few of the exercises I’ve written. These were made primarily as a right hand exercise, in an attempt to improve my up-down-up-down arpeggios across multiple strings. In that regard they are a bit on the repetitive side, but still maintain some musicality. I haven’t gotten the software guitar to express in a way I’m satisfied with yet, so I’ve settled on piano for these.

FP3 by nkurence
FP2 by nkurence
FP1 by nkurence

As an added bonus I’ve somewhat managed to salvage a nearly decade old rhythm experiment I did in 11’s. No longer having the source files, I’ve had to work from a flat wav file. It needs so much more, but it is at least listenable now.

On Eraser by nkurence

I’ve recently set the entire text of Miyamoto Musashi’s ‘A Book of Five Rings’ into a graphical poster. The text is divided into five sections, Earth, Water, Wind, Fire and Void, lending itself to a literal graphic structure. The full size of the poster is approx. 3′ wide by 4′ tall. Set with varying weights of Univers at 11 points on an 11 point baseline. The print is perfectly legible when reproduced at a smaller size of 27″ x 36″, which is a bit easier to accommodate on my walls. Printing is done on a 192 gsm matte finish paper @ 1440 dpi. I don’t have a proper shop set up at the moment, but if you happen to be interested in one of these I’ll run them on-demand, signed & numbered by request for $30 shipped. If you’re interested, contact me for further details or send a paypal payment to nreeves@tracewerks.com, subject ‘Five Rings’.

A higher-res version of the poster can be seen here.