Summertime Cool

I'm wrapping up my project for Jenna Frye's Skillshare class on pattern. Here is the pattern collection I've created in three colorways:

Flames colorways

Here are some quick colorways I did for my flames pattern. The third one is my favorite.

Colorways

I've been learning a lot about color theory lately (especially thanks to Jenna Frye's fabulous and free Skillshare course), and I've applied this knowledge to my pattern designs. Here's a few colorways for patterns that I've created for this class.

Fire vs. Water

Here are two contrasting repeat tiles I made for my Skillshare classs. I drew the images with a stylus, then touched them up in illustrator to make the repeated forms and add values.

Grids

Tonight I played with grids and making repeats in illustrator. Here's what I've come up with:

Contrasts

I'm taking another Skillshare class on pattern design. The first exercise was to work with contrasting ideas.  Here's a page from my sketchbook.

This particular class is free, and self-paced. You can join here: Introduction to Surface Design: Creating and Mixing Patterns

Picnic Repeat

Here's my entry into Spoonflower's picnic contest. I've had a fantastic time in MaJo's Skillshare class. It's self-paced, so you can still participate.

Gingham Style

My computer can barely handle this illustrator file. There are too many shapes. It took me way too long to add a simple gingham texture to my half-drop print.

Half-drop picnic

Here's my first half-drop repeat:

Tonight's repeat

This is a looser pattern with a "tossed" arrangement.

Success

I started over on my pattern project in illustrator, and now I can create repeats just fine! Here's the first one:

Here's another:

How I spent my evening

I spent a good hour doing this six second loop over and over. NO PROGRESS.

Getting schooled

Most of my pattern work lately has involved the Skillshare class I am taking. I am learning so much about how to use Adobe Illustrator and what a great tool it is for creating surface pattern designs.

I'm trying a tiling exercise tonight, but the pattern swatch I made is not clipping at the edge of the artboard like I intended, so you see double loaves, cheese, and artichokes. Hopefully I'll get some feedback from the class on how to make it right.

Vectorization

Tonight's post is another Skillshare update. Tonight I learned about vectorizing drawings in Adobe Illustrator. I used the live tracing tool to retain my original color images.  First is the low-fidelity option:

It's a bit too cartoony. Now I brave the hard-to-edit but very sharp hifi option:

I did some minor retouches, especially in case my final image does not have a white background. I made the background layer bright pink and corrected any places in the shapes that had bright pink shining through. The images in blogger show up with a black background, which helps me see I need to tidy up my shapes a bit. The blur over the outline really doesn't work against anything but white.

I'll try to make time this weekend to actually turn this into a pattern!

Learning Illustrator: Cat colony

I'm still taking this Skillshare class where I'm learning why people pay an arm and a leg for Adobe Illustrator. This tool is really powerful and makes creating imagery a breeze. Look what I cooked up tonight:

This one goes out to all the shelter cats, and to all the wonderful people who adopt a pet in need. <3

Spoonflower proofs are in!

I got something exciting in the mail this week: my fabric proofs from Spoonflower! It's interesting to see how the digital design translates into cloth. Some of the colors are less saturated in real life, like the sea green waves. 

For this reason I also purchased the full color map. The smaller color guide is a great intro, but you'll soon find it doesn't give enough flexibility. The map shows every printable color and will be an essential tool for me.

Back to the designs. I think the clouds is the strongest: good crisp lines and contrasting colors.

This black one is a little weaker. Notice the tiny white edges here: I'll need to recolor this one to remove that. So the black one is not for sale at this point.

The only other pattern that I don't think is ready yet is the green on blue waves. It just doesn't pop. I'm going to try a brighter green on that one.

The rest of the patterns are all for sale in my shop:

I'm also continuing to work through this Skillshare course on repeating patterns. It's well worth the $20 (Use my link for the discounted price). I'm learning all sorts of things about Illustrator, and I like that it's self paced. Best of all, it connects me with other artists, so it's great to see other's creativity and get feedback on my project.

Skillshare Progress

Tonight I worked on the first part of the Skillshare class on Repeating Patterns in Adobe Illustrator. The goal of the class is to design a pattern to enter in Spoonflower's upcoming Picnic themed contest.

The first part of the project helped me come up with a concept. I've chosen "Gourmet Getaway" because if I have a picnic, I'm going to splurge on fine food.

Here are a few sketches:

Here's my class project, which I will update as I progress.

Skillshare class on patterns

Today I signed up for an online class for creating repeating patterns in Adobe Illustrator. It's only $20 with the new student discount, and you can do it at your own pace.

Reign Repeats: Create perfect repeat patterns in Adobe Illustrator

The class involves creating a pattern for Spoonflower's picnic themed fabric design contest.

I also got a free 30 day trial of Illustrator from Adobe's website. I've heard lots of great things about this tool, but it is really expensive: $599 for the CS6 version. The newest version is actually a cloud-based subscription service for $19 per month. I dislike the system of subscribing to software instead of owning it, but Adobe holds the best stuff around, so I suppose they will get away with this.

Anyhow, I'm excited to learn from other artists!