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

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