View part 1 here
Day 11 – Rhymes with itten. I still want to add color to this pattern
Day 12 – Ogee. See more process images on instagram
Day 13 – Make up. I made circles in a “makeup” color palette and then drew a few patterns over them.
Day 14 – Tropical. This is my favorite pattern from the whole month. It was a very time consuming watercolor piece, much larger than showed here, but I think it was worth it.
Day 15 – Circle or Cube? I immediately thought of Q-Bert
Day 16 – Antique. This piece was inspired by the tiny fabric patterns from the 30s. While I was working I decided to try only half with the additional dots and leave half plain, because I rather liked the plain, but once I scanned it, I liked the more detailed part of the pattern after all.
Day 17 – Instrument. Another favorite. A wax paper comb. I drew the combs in Paper by 53 and then added the wax paper and music notes in photoshop.
Day 18 – Stay Warm. Watercolor illustration and then assembled at the desktop in photoshop
Day 19 – Chevron. This was my least favorite pattern from the month, mostly because I’m tired of chevron pattern.
Day 20 – Favorite Food. Illustrated in pencil and watercolor with added cheeky comments
There will be one more post coming to wrap up Pattern January
After #PatternJanuary, Anika continued on with 8 more weekly themes, and somehow I stuck to those as well.
Week One was Bouquet, which in reflection, was my absolute favorite finished pattern from the group. I took a lot of progress shots, so I’m devoting a whole post just to this pattern.
To say I loved the outcome of this pattern is an understatement. One of those situations where I question “that came out of me?!”
It was inspired by my contributions to the #tinyposie hashtag (looks like I need to do an update post with my whole collection so far).
I referenced my #tinyposie pictures for the flowers
and my hands for the rest
drew everything in pencil (I’ve probably said this here before) but there’s always this part of me that thinks pencil is not for “finished” pieces. I’m definitely getting over that and loving the quality more and more. It has to be the right pencil and the right surface.
and then used watercolor to paint
I pieced it all together in photoshop (top picture in this post) and then here is a variation which shows what it might look like in a more repeating style, and I added more color, digitally, to the background.
This is what I’ve been up to lately. I’m crocheting a very wide cowl, in a mustard yellow. It will basically be like a long scarf, but instead of having two ends, it’s all connected in a long loop. This way I can wear it long like a scarf, doubled up around my neck, or hooded over my head in place of a hat and scarf. I’m just using a basic crochet and I’m almost ready to head into the third skein. It’s a Lions Brand, vanna white yarn. I just had the urge to start it and had one skein of it in my stash from a year ago. Fortunately, because it’s a commercial brand, picking up more skeins at michael’s matched perfectly.
here here here
Yesterday I took a leap towards the biggest challenge on my 2009 list. I finally called up and scheduled a hot air balloon ride. I was hoping that I could wait until fall to cross this item off, this way the trees would be changing color. I was not thinking about how quickly schedules can book up, or that weather can be very unreliable. Fortunately the company I spoke with still had plenty of open dates. I’m crossing my fingers that everything goes to plan, but I understand it might take a few scheduled dates before a successful flight. In my excitement, I’m sharing a few hot air balloon Etsy items above.
I’ve participated a couple more times in the flickr pool What I Wore Today (drawings only). Oh, and thanks to a friend‘s heads up, now there is a blog that features WIWT drawings.
I really wanted to play too, so today I contributed to the What I Wore Today (drawings only) group pool on flickr.
It’s no marvelous work of art, and I’m no fashionista. I’m actually the girl who was just in Macy’s recently, running around saying “wow, they have really nice clothes here” in a truly surprised fashion. My actual outfit was pulled together entirely from Old Navy (the skirt and the tank top) and Target (the cardigan and the purse). I really wouldn’t have bothered to draw the purse if I hadn’t just changed it out for another bag I’ve been carrying all summer. Once I slung it over my shoulder I was surprised to see that the exact same color of my cardigan was matched in the pattern of the bag. I’m not the type to try and attempt or even care about such things normally, but I was drawing a self portrait of myself today.
Check out the flickr group and if you contribute, send me a link!
They are teensie tiny zines that fit into a matchbox. Part of assembling the zines includes emptying the boxes of all matches into a zip lock bag that I store my matches in. I have LOTS of matches.
Today was yet another bustling day, by the time I got to start on my daily piece I just knew I needed to work on a piece that would be very repetitive. I wanted something that would be meditative to work on. I got the idea to just recreate the same image over and over and over again. I spent some time sketching different ideas out and nothing seemed to be working. I got up to take a break and as soon as I did I thought of all the matches from earlier today. Yes, I wanted to just draw match sticks over and over. But how is that interesting?
What I really wanted to do was just fill an entire page with matches, but it wouldn’t be much of an interesting composition. I started to think about matches, which made me think of fire, which made me think of flame, tada! “Like a moth to the flame” and the piece design was born.
I illustrated the piece in pen and ink, colored it in watercolors, then finished it with smudging black pastel around the edges.
This piece is available in my Etsy shop here.
Last weekend I was downstairs looking for something in storage when I found these empty frames I had bought a couple years ago. They are small, cheap, IKEA frames, and I had bought a bunch of them, not knowing how I would use them. Well, all these years later, I see them down there and that was all it took. I think to myself – pencil drawings of posed arms, watercolored and framed with striping ribbon. A lot of my ideas come to me like this “aha! moment” but frequently I’m at a time or place where I can’t immediately drop everything and start working on my idea. Usually I will write and sketch out my idea, but often, by the time I can get to it, the magic is gone and I’ve already moved on to another “aha! moment”. Well, this weekend I was able to drop everything and work on my idea and these were the resulting pieces, the last of which will be used for Found Art Tuesday.
I could really see these pieces being something I would have done intaglio prints of, but I also like the idea of them being individual handmade illustrations. It makes them more precious.
Tomorrow I’ll post more about where I leave the found art piece. Matt thought of the idea, and I’m excited about it.
