Going with the flow – floral pattern
Part of the new calmer lifestyle I’m trying to adopt, I’m throwing out all my design career goals and schedules and plans and ‘going with the flow’. That doesn’t mean I’m not going to do any work for studios – but I will only do so when I have the time and when it’s a call/assignment/trend that really calls out to me. There are opportunities at all of the studios I work with for this, but I have a tendency to try to challenge myself to new things (not always a bad thing, of course) or to do a gazillion designs for one assignment, rather than one considered one.
Mostly, though, I want it to mean getting back to enjoying creating art that I love – both creating and looking at. Enjoying the process and just really embedding myself in whatever I’m creating (this is a mindful thing in itself, I believe, from what I’ve read).
Friday night, I did some loose pen and ink doodling – flowers (so often flowers!) and Saturday night I dived into Illustrator and dug into my most preferred method – and then mixed it up a bit. I had such a lovely time (I did watch something at the same time – that’s a habit I may struggle to break – The Hundred Foot Journey, which was a lovely film to watch) doing and was really pleased with the result.
My favourite is the grey blue background. I like the faded silhouette leaves in the background, but I wonder if they might be better done to fit in much more in the gaps of the main design, rather than just as a repeat behind them.
Anyway, the point is that this is what I love to do. Create patterns from the heart – whether based on drawings, paintings or completely digital. Explore colour combinations and test out what different background colours do to a design (I love how different purely changing the background colour can make the feel of a design). Play about with fitting motifs together in a pleasing way.
I really like the effect of having the black and white collection of flowers, juxtaposed with the colourful print/cutout effect ones. This is a bit of a new thing for me.
The whole process of this was free of stress or anxiety. It was just for me, without the need to meet a brief, meet a deadline, or try to work in new methods. Proper relaxation. I hope I get to do more and more of it.
Drawing, drawing, drawing
Much of my December designing was all done in Illustrator – though almost always starting with sketched ideas and plans.
I then squeezed in some painting at the end of the month, using some new paints – Golden Acyrlics – oh wow, I am totally and utterly in love with these paints. The only acrylics I’d used before were fairly cheap ones and I hadn’t really taken to them. Of course, I end up taking to the really expensive materials. But they are expensive for a reason! I only bought four colours, plus white and black, which was actually oddly freeing.
Anyway, this post is supposed to be about drawing, not painting! Maybe I’ll write a painting post one day. 🙂
This month, I’m diving into what I intend to be a super-productive and extra successful year. Included in that are MATS Bootcamp (this is a much more relaxed pace than the full MATS courses, but still great fun and you get to meet loads of other creatives around the world and see their awesome and inspiring work and learn new tips and tricks from them – just love it) which started on Monday, signing up for Patternmash, for which a new brief came out at the weekend, doing a weekly flower-drawing challenge (thanks Lidija for this) and also working to produce a regular supply of patterns for Patternbank and other pattern agencies.
So, I’m doing lots of drawing at the start of the week, which will then feed into Illustrator (and maybe even Photoshop, you never know!) later in the week. For Bootcamp and Patternmash, the assignments are not due for a while, so there may be less drawing next week and more digital work. But I’ll frankly never stop drawing on a daily basis – even if it’s just doodles and sketches around my work notes!
As I was looking through my pictures for some of the digital images from December, I noticed that quite a lot of drawings, too. So, yes… even when it feels like I’ve been concentrating on Illustrator work, I’ll still be drawing loads!
