Progress: Mini Moodboards

This week I decided to turn my lack of internet access into an opportunity to work slightly differently. Knowing that I would not be able to turn to Google or Pinterest every time I needed a shot of inspiration made me plan some research in advance. I'm away from home and couldn't bring many books either. So I spent Tuesday morning gathering photos, magazine clippings and colour chips and put them all into a box file along with an old notebook.

I'm now spending a little time everyday putting together sort of mini mood boards in my book and it's really fun and inspiring.

I'm really glad that I decided to do this - I feel like I'm learning a lot about my style through my choice of imagery and colour combinations.

Coincidentally, on MATS part B today, Lilla Rogers showed how you could do trend research like this which made me feel like I am on the right track with my new book.

So now I'm really glad that I had to leave my books and internet connection at home!

Have a lovely weekend,

Frankie x

Plans: MATS Part B & moving out of my comfort zone...

A new month full of plans and ways to get out of my comfort zone...

I'm going away tomorrow until the end of the month but I'll be packing lots of materials and books and setting up a little workspace for myself. It's supposed to be a holiday but I've so much to do. I will be making time to relax though for sure.

 Lilla Rogers' course Make Art That Sells starts today and I am signed up for Part B. I found MATS A very challenging so I am feeling a little nervous! The main challenge for me is not to lose confidence when I see everyone else's amazing work. I feel better prepared for that though this time round.

A piece I did for MATS A

This month I also plan to spend some time exploring characters and lettering as well as further developing my abstract floral watercolours... 

Hope you have a fab week!
Love
Frankie x

Progress: Tigerprint & Shibumi

This week I decided to go for it and enter the Tigerprint floral pattern competition and I'm pleased to say that one of my patterns was shortlisted. It's a pattern that I designed last summer but I reworked it into a half drop repeat and recoloured it. I've been creating a kind of fake half drop repeat in my patterns until I did Pattern Camp and so I'm now going back over a lot of old work to make true half drops and improve them.

I also entered these two prints that didn't make the shortlist. I think the purple one needs a bit more work - it's a bit clumsy. Out of the three I thought the last one would be the one that was shortlisted but I guess that's just because I'm really in love with the palette I used for it. The standard was very high and there were more than 1400 entries so it's great to have made it this far. Obviously I REALLY would love to win - winning a Tigerprint competition is up there on my dream goal list but if not this time I will just keep trying and of course having fun in the process.

I've completed my Christmas jumper print to go with the bauble print that I made last week. I really enjoyed making this print and it made me think that I should really try to bring more fun and quirky motifs into my work. I loved designing the jumpers and they made me embrace my imperfect drawing style.

Finally some really great news: The Shibumi  Store has gone live and products are now available to order. I'm so excited about this as it is my first licensing deal. I'm so happy for Julie, the owner of Shibumi, who has put a lot of heart and soul into making it happen. Here's a couple of my designs - head over to the store to see more...

Hope you have a great weekend!
Love Frankie x

Play: Florals, watercolours and layers

This week...

My obsession with layers continues... I'm spending lots of time playing with watercolours - I love the accidents and imperfections. 

I'm using a variety of media: Derwent Inktense pencils, watercolours, gouache, felt tips, white gel pen, fountain pens and my Derwent Graphik Paint markers arrived yesterday so I've added these into the mix too now. 

I love painting circles and then drawing floral motifs over them. It's fun and relaxing. 

And here's some jumpers for the Christmas collection I'm working on.

I really love working like this on paper. The challenge is to create this look in Illustrator! 

More on Friday,

Frankie x

Plans: Christmas, paint, pens and lots of birds

Hello Monday...

Here's what I'm looking forward to creating this week...

Christmas in February
I was doodling around towards the end of last week and ended up creating these vintage style Christmas baubles with gouache, Stabilo felt tips and my white gel pen. My minor obsession with scanning and tracing resulted in me creating this repeat in Illustrator that I'm really pleased to say has retained some of the original hand drawn qualities and now I hope to create a collection based around this pattern by the end of the week.

From this...

to this.

Birds... Everywhere!

I have so many bird motifs to work with! They've been hanging around for a couple of weeks now so I need to do something with them. 

Playing around in Photoshop with my painted birds...

I love this little tweeter and this palette.

   

This fella started out life in my sketchbook...

And this bird is part of a design I'm creating for my Pattern Camp collection...

So I'm hoping to have some of these completed by the end of this week.

In other news I'm patiently waiting for two very exciting products to arrive. I've order myself a pack of Derwent Graphik Line Painter Pens and some J Herbin ink in white. 

So here's to a productive week! 

Frankie x
 

Progress: Geos and my Pattern Camp collection

Hello!

What a busy week it's been. I've been working on some more new techniques this week in an attempt to get my work to look more hand drawn. Don't get me wrong, I love very clean, smooth vectors and make plenty of patterns in that style but I also love to paint and scribble and I wish I could get that look in my Ai repeats. So here what I've been doing...


I did some geometric collage and paint pieces and started exploring different ways to bring them into Ai. I played with layers to try and emulate a watercolour style. 

Playing with the blob brush in Ai.

Manual tracing, drawing and layering it up...

More experiments...

I really like these soft edges...

I completed the patterns I started on Pattern Camp. I also did some more research and sketching for some further patterns for the collection.

Love this but have since tweaked the flower slightly...

Did this...

Then changed it to this! Decided it looks more interesting like this!

This was the first thing I developed on Pattern Camp. I've edited it a few times but think it's done now.

Started doodling some more motifs for this collection.

I did some scanning and tracing experiments with Ps and Ai and really loved the results.

My January Bootcamp stuff much improved! 

I also drew some Christmas baubles, danced to a lot of cheesy pop music and took this little cutie out running and walking a lot.

My lovely little Border Collie Jip

Have a great weekend,
Frankie x

Play: Watercolour Circles

I love to paint and draw circular motifs in my patterns... Suzanis, flowers, snowflakes... concentric circles, dividing a circle up... It's all good fun. I also love to layer which is something I would like to do more in my digital work. Here's some experiments with watercolour layering that I hope to go digital with very soon...

Painting these circles feels like some form of therapy! I'm pretty sure I could do it all day given the chance. I love how the layers create new colours, the happy accidents where edges bleed and the imperfections...

The colours and shapes brought to mind an underwater world - anemones, urchins, shells and deep sea flora and fauna. 

I took it a step further and started to draw over my circles with white gel pen and various inks. 

I feel like this is the start of something really exciting so expect to see lots more of this!

Thanks for reading,
Frankie x