Welcome
On most Wednesdays, check this blog for a strategy, process, or reflection for illustration with the iPad app ProCreate or Affinity Designer. This week, in fact this month, will be short on art and filled with poetry; I’m still working on the Jungle Nursery Challenge and sketched a Craftsman style quadrant design.
Jungle Nursery Design Challenge
Spoonflower’s Jungle Nursery Design has been a struggle for me. I’m following the Procreate / Affinity process where I draw in Procreate, create svgs of each different color layer, and finish the design in Affinity. Liz Kohler Brown has designed some cool tools for pattern design, vectorizing, recoloring, and sharing. I used the vectorizer and recolor widgets for this project.
The problem I was having was in the design stage in Procreate– getting the motif sizes and spacing to work. I wanted monkeys and parrots in my design sitting within tropical flowers, the hibiscus. You can see that the design easily forms because I used the vertical symmetry tool to create the Craftsman style.
I finally got the sketch correct and colored in the design. Liz’s widget made vectorizing so easy. I did have trouble with the top area of my design when the svgs imported into Affinity. Liz and I are not sure what the issue is, and it’s probably my error. The solution, though, ended up so easy: I just adjusted the vector nodes on the two affected areas and the pattern was fixed– no “pixel space” mistake.
I did use the recolor widget as well, but I need to work more on using it so it chooses the colors that fit. A few of the svg recolors I will be able to adjust in Affinity. But for now, this is my nursery design.
Another Craftsman pattern I’m working on is this, drawing with Liz in one of her LIVE Draw classes. I’m still deciding on the bees; I think I need a filler next to the center daisy. I like the bird. As you can see I am mostly using the quadrant tool to draw in four areas at once.
Poetry
I continue to write a poem a day for National Poetry Month and National Poetry Writing Month. One more day left, and I’ve actually written it today. 30 poems in 30 days, not that they are anything amazing, mostly nature studies of wildflowers, one of my favorite things to do: stop and smell the roses. Here’s the album on Flickr. Here’s the link to the NaPoWriMo26 Flickr Album and the NaPoWriMo 2026 tagged blog posts.
I wonder, if I draw a line... 