Happy Christmas 2020!

(Drawing in Pages)

Miserable as this year has been, still there is a cause to celebrate Christmas as a beginning of somethinig new and better.

Here is a drawing I made with tools available in Pages.

The faces are edited shapes from the Shapes menu. 

Eyes, eyebrows and the beard I made with the draw tool, the little pen you see at top right when you click on Shape in the Tool Bar.

Halos are coloured shadows from circle shapes hidden behind the faces. 

Note that Mary and Joseph have shadows going down to indicate their bodies.

The second image shows the shapes used in this computer graphics when selected.

If you have any questions ask me. 

Drawing a Snowman.

This is a video tutorial on how to draw a Snowman in Apple's iWork Pages. Watch it here or on my YouTube channel.

Use the Draw tool to create basic shapes. Activate it from the Shapes menu or by going via Insert > Shape > Draw a Shape. 

It works like 'connect the dots' exercises in children's drawing books. And it is as simple. Each click by the draw tool creates a dot. Each new dot is connected to the previous by a default line. To finish the shape, click on the first dot again, or double click on the last dot you've made.

To make the lines curve, drag the mouse around slightly after clicking. The dot will show a 'propeller' with two blades. 

Click on the tip of the propeller and drag. This changes the curve. Pull out to make a more rounded shape, push in to 'slim down' the shape.

Eyes, nose, the bellybutton and the bucket are default shapes from the Shapes menu edited to fit the design. 

Eyes are Ovals.

The nose is a triangle. Under Format menu, choose Shape > Make editable. The triangle will show red dots - editing points. Click on the red dot and drag it to change the shape of the triangle. Double click to make the shape curving and drag the propeller tips to shape the triangle into the Snowman's nose. 

The bucket is a rectangle from the Shapes menu. Make it editable and shape into a trapezoid (top side shorter than the bottom side.)

Use the Graphic Inspector to change colours,  thickness of the shape's contours and add shadows.

The whole project takes 30 minutes to one hour to complete.

I've used the tools and options available in both iWork'08 and '09. If you only have the older '08 version you will be able to make this Snowman too. iWork'09 has some additional features including Advanced Gradient Fill with which you can add a 3D effect to the drawing.  

This video does not contain explanatory notes and is meant for those who are already comfortable with iWork basics. If you have any questions or comments, please send them in.

Read the ten-step tutorial on how to create a Christmas card in Pages. 

iWork Cookbook. A perfect Christmas present for Mac users.

Click on the cover to go to the author's page

If you are getting a Mac this Christmas, or planning to give one, or already working on one, here's a perfect accompaniment: 'iWork for Mac OS X Cookbook.' 

The book comes from the author of I Work in Pages, the blog you've come to trust and rely on when using this brilliant productivity suite. Thousands of Mac users from all over the world visit us every day for tips and answers to their queries.

It's not about cooking, the recipes in the book are about completing projects you never thought you would be able to do, described as clearly as how to make porridge or cook a perfect poached egg.

It's not another chatty version of a user's manual, the book leads you to break through techno fears and discover an incredible creative power in yourself.

iWork Cookbook covers Pages (text and layout), Keynote (presentations) and Numbers (spreadsheets). 

Step-by-step recipes show little known tricks when working with text, photos and graphics, from making clip art and logos to creating cards and posters, or publishing newsletters, magazines and books. Learn how to make videos for YouTube and add your photos to graphs and charts.

Visit the author's page on Packt Publishing to read a sample chapter and order the book. Some free content is also available on Safari Books. iWork Cookbook comes in paperback and Kindle versions.

The book is on Amazon, Barnes and Noble and other major book sites.

If you are a reviewer and would like to have a copy to review please contact Packt Publishing (email: reviewrequest at packtpub.com) or the editor of I Work in Pages (post a comment or go via email in profile). 

Here are a few excerpts from reviews:

'I learned about iWork through the author'

'What many people do not realize is that Apple's iWork Pages software is an easy-to-use full-fledged Desktop Publishing program, and the author had been using the program for years in his own publishing company. When I first switched to Mac, I learned about iWork through the author, who helped me quickly learn the program. For any small company I think iWork is a cost-effective solution for DTP; we use it in our own company. And the author has written a book that teaches the reader in a step-by-step fashion, how to quickly and effectively use iWork. I have been using iWork for over 6 years and even I find his book a much-needed reference to show me tricks I don't know.' 

(Richard Koulbanis)

'Anichkin is making a deeper point: free your mindset with iWork'

'The gist of what the author is trying to convey is to free your mindset when using iWork. Do not be conceptually confined to just having iWork be for one purpose. See if what it outputs or can accept as input can also be associated with other supposedly unrelated packages on a machine, like the Microsoft Office suite, or its arch competitor, Open Office.

At a more mundane level, iWork can import and export to those packages, so as to transparently enable these data interchanges. So why doesn't the book just say so? Because Anichkin is making a deeper point. In your mind, ask what possible benefits could arise from this cross overs. Keep doing this, rather than putting iWork or those packages into standalone concrete silos.

Chapter 6 addresses a long running complaint about iWork - that it lacks a Clip Art folder. Instead, the author suggests that the complaints are misplaced. There are numerous other applications from which you can readily import images. And he goes on to show at some length how to do this. Again, as earlier, this is simple. Once you know that it is possible, that is the main thing. The precise steps involved are a lesser detail.

Going further, chapter 8 is for the person needing professional quality output printing of graphics. It shows how iWork can be used at this level, for creating press ready PDFs. The process steps here are not confined to operations inside iWork. You are advised about manual real world steps that you need to coordinate with your local print shop to achieve the best quality hardcopy.'

(W Boudville)

'I've now got the book right next to me, already marked with stickies'

'I became a Pages devotee when I launched a monthly glossy magazine on a shoestring and didn't want to (couldn't afford to!) invest in InDesign etc. By following Anichkin's step by step tutorials I was soon able to master all the design and graphics I needed to create a smart looking product.

Better than going to the blog, I've now got the book right next to me, already marked with stickies so I can go straight to the recipes I need. Definitely recommended for anyone who wants to create sophisticated design and graphics without shelling out a fortune on software.'

(Miranda Ingram)

Christmas Projects in Pages

As the festive season approaches I would like to post a few links to previous articles here on how to make clipart, cards and bring Christmas theme in other projects.

Read the complete tutorial to desinging your own original Christmas card in Pages: Card Design in iWork/Pages: A Complete 10-Step Tutorial (jump links to all 10 blog posts, includes tips on how to put a Santa cap on your photo and how to make clipart with your own photos).

Draw an original Snowman in a few easy strokes with Pages tools: The Snowman: drawing and editing images in Pages

Update for 2012/13 season: see the 2012/13 snowman and a video tutorial showing the drawing process step-by-step in this post.

And in the article Сhristmas graphics and clipart: a few easy tricks see how to use Christmas theme in your print or web project, where to find holiday clipart that is already on your Mac and how to use elements of Pages templates, for example, a champagne glass from the Catalogue template.  

Сhristmas graphics and clipart: a few easy tricks

Do a Google search for Christmas clipart - and it returns over a million results. Many images are free to download and use, some are for sale. But there are many simple tricks to create your own original clipart or ad a festive theme to your projects.

Here are a few of my favourites:
1. Use your own photos as background images.

2. Create panoramic photo strips

3. Use elements from Pages templates

4. Create graphic elements from the Character Pallette

5. Create your own clip art.

1. Use your own photos as background images for festive theme.

Here I put a narrow vertical mask on the photo of a snow covered fir tree on a sunny Winter day in my garden. Then added a picture frame with blurred edges (Object Inspector - Picture Frame - bottom left option) and put this graphic element on the outside margins of a double page magazine spread. If there is text or other graphic elements over the background photo, fade it to around 80 percent (reduce Opacity in Graphic Inspector). Read a more detailed description of this method in this previous article.

To see the original picture click here

2. Create panoramic photo strip.

- Choose your photo, import into the Pages project and duplicate (once or more).
- Flip second photo horizontally (in Metrics Inspector)
- Align the photos so that they look like one continuous image. Here I used the edges of the glass shelves for aligning. You may need to move photos backwards and forwards to achieve a perfect fit (this option is under Arrange menu).
- Put masks on all photos and adjust the Mask height dimensions to be the same for all photos. Vertical coordinates (distance from the top edge of the page) should also be exactly the same for all masked photos in the strip.
Now you have a perfect panoramic shot.
- Next put a text box over the image and type your heading.
Photo was made in Café du Théatre, Vire, Normandy with Nikon Coolpix 8.1 megapixel camera.

3. There are many graphic images in iWork/Pages templates

They can be used to add a holiday theme. Here I used a photo of champagne glasses from the Catalogue template. Choose Image Fill in Object Inspector and pick the photo. Set Image Fill to Scale to fill. One advantage of using Image Fill-Scale to fill is that the photo automatically adjusts itself to fill the object as you resize it. Here I just dragged down the bottom edge of the box to fill whatever space was available. You may find Image Fill easier to work with than Masking.

4. Create graphic images from characters in the Palette

There are several snowflakes and stars in the Character Palette>Miscellaneous Symbols (if you don't see the palette in your screen menu, go to System Preferences>International>Input Menu and check the Character Palette box to activate it). Characters from the Palette behave like ordinary letters. To make them into graphic elements choose colour as you would for text, enlarge as needed and take a screenshot to get a PNG file. (Screenshot: press Command+Shift and type 4, drag crosshairs over the characters and release)





You may want to remove white background with Instant Alpha (under Format menu) if your graphics go onto a coloured background. (as with the Holly twig in the box at the top)

5. Create your own clipart.

Read how to here and here.

And read more about clipart for Pages here