Progress: Geos, white pens and Pattern Camp

Despite very late nights at the computer doing Pattern Camp last weekend I was raring to go all week and thanks to the course I was brimming with new ideas and skills. I'd recommend the course even to experienced designers just for the infectious enthusiasm of Jessica and the other Pattern Campers. It was great fun and opened my eyes to working in different ways.

A photo posted by Frankie (@frankielovespattern) on Feb 9, 2015 at 12:01pm PST

As well as creating new work, I found myself reworking old patterns too. I made a true half drop repeat with this Suzani pattern. I've only ever done 'faux' drop repeats so it was great to finally master this. Next I'd like to put some stems and leaves on this pattern so I took a little time to teach myself how to create a pattern brush. I experimented with it and made the pink pattern below...

A photo posted by Frankie (@frankielovespattern) on Feb 9, 2015 at 7:55am PST

A photo posted by Frankie (@frankielovespattern) on Feb 11, 2015 at 6:09am PST

I played around with my geo shapes a bit more... It's a work in progress and I'm finding the endless possibilities quite overwhelming! I may have to set some further rules for limiting shapes and colours.

A photo posted by Frankie (@frankielovespattern) on Feb 9, 2015 at 3:57am PST

There are just so many ways to go with it! 

A photo posted by Frankie (@frankielovespattern) on Feb 10, 2015 at 3:23pm PST

My white gel pens arrived and I LOVE them. I tend to be a bit heavy handed with colour and often lose all the white when working on paper. It’s great to be able to work over watercolour and gouache with these to add detail.

A photo posted by Frankie (@frankielovespattern) on Feb 11, 2015 at 2:57am PST

A photo posted by Frankie (@frankielovespattern) on Feb 12, 2015 at 5:48am PST

To see more of my work in progress follow me on Instagram. Hope you had a great week too, Frankie x

Possibility: Fun with Shapes...

One of the projects I am working on this week involves making geos from 12 different shapes. It's working out to be great fun and I think the hardest part will be narrowing the final collection down to just 12 patterns. 

Here are the shapes, drawn with the pen tool in Illustrator. They're imperfect to give a looser feel to things...

I'm playing around with different combinations of the shapes, rescaling, rotating and recolouring them but not changing the actual proportions. 

 I'm trying to work quickly just placing shapes to explore possibilities and have fun. I like the 2 designs below - I think they would work as placement prints as wall art or on tea towels.

I'm also enjoying layering up the shapes to make more complex motifs...

...and incorporating these into a grid repeat...

I'm finding this to be a really fun exercise and would recommend it if you are feeling a bit stuck for ideas. It really forces you to be creative and playful and start to explore your own style whether that be minimalist, abstract, complex, whatever you are... I'd love to set this as a project for a class of surface pattern designers just to see all the different results!

More on Friday,
Frankie x 

Play: Geo Calendar

My experience on Pattern Camp this weekend taught me that I'm apt to overthink things... Too much research, too much second guessing, too much control, too much time spent deciding. I abandoned all these bad habits whilst on the course - the fast paced learning environment made me do it and I'm so glad I did. I discovered that working this way made me more creative and take more risks. I was less precious about things and more inventive.

Something I made at Pattern Camp

This week I'm creating a calendar. It needs to be pretty neutral in terms of colour and motifs so I've decided to play with geometric shapes. 12 shapes and 12 colours, combining the shapes and colours to create 12 patterns.

Quick & simple shapes drawn in Illustrator

There are so many combinations and so in order not to overthink it I will be working against the clock - 25 mins per pattern.

Fancy having a go at this? I'd love to see the results!

More on Wednesday,

Frankie x

New blog!

Good morning and welcome to my new blog!

I’ve just had the most amazing weekend doing Jessica Swift’s wonderful Pattern Camp, a two day intensive course in pattern making. Although I already have some of the basics of pattern design nailed I’m always keen to learn new skills, see how other people work and I just love the energy and enthusiasm of being part of a group. I'd really recommend this course - it's fast paced and Jessica is a helpful and capable teacher.

So I’ve been planning on starting a new blog for a while and today seemed like a really good day to do it. After reading this wonderful guide to blogging by Beth Kempton a few weeks ago I decided that my blog needed a bit of a shake up in order to be something that supported my wish to further develop my skills and style in pattern making. I was often finding that although I enjoy writing my blog it sometimes took me away from my work for too long and didn't really support what I was doing. Plus, I also feel it's time that I was braver and shared my work more instead of keeping it all hidden... So here it is!

Work in progress from Pattern Camp

I will usually be blogging 3 times a week: Monday, Wednesday and Friday and you can get my blog straight into your inbox just by signing up. My intention is for my blog to be an adventure in pattern - focusing on play, process, practise and progress. I hope you will join me!

Thanks for reading,
Frankie x