Wednesday WrapUp Theme Design

Welcome!

Each Wednesday check this blog for a strategy, process, or reflection for illustration with the iPad app ProCreate. This Wednesday Wrap Up is a wrap up of some surface pattern / repeat patterns I’ve designed in several versions. Today I share the idea and theme behind three sets of patterns.

Inspiration

I decided to take as my prompts those from the free class I signed up to with Este Macleod: Color prompts. Sign up for the free #coloricombo class from Este Macleod. She provides the palette with the ideas, people, and art that inspired that week’s palette. For an entire year– marvelous palettes ready made for artists! Sign up here. The color’s in each week’s palette inspired the theme of the designs. The palettes I chose are these:

Portfolio Review

First, here’s the portfolio review from my Flickr Album, Limited Palettes. Take a look, and then read about how I planned each one after the colors inspired an idea. If needed, you can return to scroll through and pause the video to see the particular design or elements.

21 Ocean, Melon, Petrol Blue, Parchment

These colors reminded me of summertime — sky, lake, flowers, and bugs. I started with drawing flowers– and then considered the insects that are attracted to them. The floral and insect pattern with four different background choices and five different designs came first. I like these two backgrounds best— the dark cyan and the red-orange, both different tints from the required colors. You can see the stems, leaves, and bugs, just the flowers, dragonflies, and bees, and the whole flowers with stems. I imaged being in the forest or meadow and slowly zoomed in to the flower/stem and them just the flowers.

I continued with more flowers and insect designs with added seeds in four different background choices.

Resources:

• Brushes: studio pen, technical pen, monoline [no taper]
• Canvas Texture: Jennifer Nichols
• Classes: Este Macleod Coloricombo, Jennifer Nichols classes on repeated pattern, texture brushes, and swirly brushes

24 Polenta, Umber, Forest Green, Sienna, Dusty Rose

Do you see in these colors the autumn trees changing colors in the woods? That’s what I saw immediately. So with my own “tree” stamps made from a Jennifer Nichol’s [ of Leila and Po Studio ]Skillshare class [ A Perfect Cup of Cocoa ] I created a first pattern— with just trees. Next I took a closer look at the  trees and designed brushes for leaves in two versions- -a more realistic one but then one of whimsy like the tree. Next I added a design of flowers from the forest meadow which I then combined with the leaves into a diamond design which became my Father’s Day greeting background. I kept going with the birds [more of my own stamp brushes] in the trees and followed that with a bouquet, which I then decided was too pretty not to be in a pattern. Take a look at last week’s Wrap Up for more details.

The Brushes

• my own flower and leaf brushes [from a Jennifer class]
• Jennifer Nichols Abstracts over all canvas textures
• main brushes when creating elements: studio pen, dry ink, tinderbox; for texture and shading: noise, willow charcoal

25 Aqua, Lapis, Melon, Clay

For this pattern I started with a vase and opted for rows of different vases in the prompt colors. I then created more fun and whimsical floral designs as stamps to use again and again and placed them in front of most of the vases. The changes in this design is in the color of the backgrounds and the overall texture and background design layers. I did reuse the brushes in the next day’s doodle!

Brushes

• My own “floral” and “filigree” brushes and
• one floral from Jennifer plus her overall texture layers and Acrylic Dry Super Streaky for shading and highlight.
• Procreate Studio Pen for drawing vases

Resources for you to learn

Resources for you– the artist teacher links:

• Este Macleod: Sign up here for the free #coloricombo class
• Jennifer Nichols
  • Website, Courses, and Creative Journey Community
  • Stamp Brushes– How To [Skillshare]
  • Seamless Texture Overly [Lesson 4] on Skillshare
  • How to Make Repeated Patterns — blogpost on Spoonflower
  • Cat Coquillette Repeat Patterns and Surface Design

I thank these three teachers so much for their encouragement, sharing, and ongoing support for learning artists.

And, the Flickr album of my limited pattern artwork for your inspiration:

Try It

So, that wraps up this Wednesday Wrap Up. I hope this inspires you to think in terms of themes and colors — to zoom in or out to consider the “parts” and the “whole” of an idea to create your own portfolio varied designs in a limited palette.

With whatever skills you’re learning, with wonderful artists to learn from, I hope you find a way to give joy to others by sharing your work. See the Artists Resources page for links to more inspirational teachers.

I look forward to your sharing, and please continue to be a part of the  #warmup4art series to learn and enjoy our work together! See my sharing at IG @42Sheri and Twitter @42Sheri.