"365 Sketches"

Posit: John LeMasney is a renaissance man.

Argument: [summary from his 365sketches.org website]: He is a designer, artist, writer, poet, technologist, consultant, open web advocate and open source evangelist. He has worked for 11 years at Rider University as the Manager of Technology Training. He was recently awarded a Master of Arts in Organizational Leadership with honors from Rider University.  And he's a father and husband.  

Evidence: 365sketches.org, where he has posted each of the sketches he has created every day using Inkscape, an open-source computer program that users can use to "draw" original art and "trace" photographs to make original art. He started posting sketches on January 1; you can visit the website to find out how far along he is now. You also can rate each creation and see which ones are most popular. If you really like one, you can buy it here: http://365sketches.org/purchase 

John, an engaging speaker who has spoken to us about open-source software and Linux, will return to speak at the BCUG General Meeting about the 365 Sketches project and Inkscape, and will show slides of his artwork. "I'd love to give an overview of the people, processes, and reasoning of my recent project, 365 Sketches, in which I make and post a single digital sketch a day using Inkscape," John wrote in an email. There are also links to his FaceBook account — http://www.facebook.com/365sketches — his Twitter account, his Flickr page, and his Google Profile page, where there are links to his other accounts with websites too numerous to mention. John has posted, at http://www.slideshare.net/lemasney/365-sketches-project-overview, a slideshow based on a presentation he did in June to the Princeton Public Library, where he offered seminars on using Inkscape during the summer and showed prints of his work (which are for sale through the 365sketches website) in September.

During his slide presentation, John talked about how the website has served as way to express his creative ideas and inspirations. "I have academic training in fine arts, I've drawn and built things for very long time," he said. "[Artists] carry sketchbooks, make these little notes, work out their ideas.... 365sketches has become that for me, a daily way to work out my ideas, but instead of a sketchbook, I make a website." 

He talked about how Inkscape helped him bridge his art and interest in computers and free, open-source software. "Inkscape … allows you to do this extremely easily, really in just a few clicks, that's what this project was primarily about allowing people to know that there is software out there that doesn't cost you a thing, it is so powerful, allows you to do so many things, if you play with it, he said. "It's a really beautiful, simple tool."

The same ethos behind Inkscape, freely sharing ideas and resources to enrich everyone involved in the process, also underlies how he does his art. He based many of his art on photos and other graphics he found on the internet, either freely given by the creator, given to him directly, or art he could secure permission to use. He releases all of his digital art under the Creative Commons license, so other digital artists can use it for their own work — as long at those artists acknowledge him as the creator of the art they use, as he does himself. 

And he talked about what he hoped the project would accomplish: "A lot of this project has been about making sure that everyone is happy with the outcome, and so it's been an interesting project from that point of view." "As long as you attribute me … I don't care what you do with my work. Go ahead, please use it. Because it doesn't do me any good if it's just sitting in my bin, on my computer," he said. "I want it to be used, I want it to be out there." 

We hope you will join us to see the results of John's fascinating project. Here are links to his websites and ways to contact him:  
LeMasney Consulting and Design 
lemasney@gmail.com  
(609) 553-9498 
http://twitter.com/lemasney  
http://facebook.com/lemasney  
cv: http://john.lemasney.com