Post January

Greetings!
This is my first monthly round up post where I look at the work I've created in the last month, consider what I've learned and plan what I need to do next. I'm doing this publicly as I hope that it will be helpful to other people who are starting out. If anyone wants to give me advice or feedback, it would be most welcome!

Warning - These progress posts will be l-o-n-g and self reflecting! 

January went like this....

My 31 patterns for January...

My intentions:

• to rebuild my lost portfolio
• to complete 31 patterns and 1 collection
• to start blogging regularly
• start selling my cards
• make plans for my website

At the beginning of the month I set myself the task of creating a pattern a day with a view to selecting 8-12 of these patterns and bringing them together into a collection. It's been really full on in other areas of my life so some days I've found it to be quite a challenge but I've tried to keep up by doubling up on some days and doing quick, simple patterns.

Mid month, I stumbled across Laura Coyle's Illustrator classes in the second part of the month and threw myself into improving my technical skills. It's been  fantastic - so many keyboard shortcuts and ways of working I had no idea about! I spent a whole weekend doing back to back lessons and now I'm taking her basic Illustrator class a lesson a day - just to fill in the gaps in my basic knowledge.

What went well?

• Picking up new skills in Illustrator
• Resuming my activities on Pinterest - finding lots of inspiring images for my collection - just need to be aware of making too many comparisons and getting sidetracked by pinning!
• Getting into the habit of blogging - and I really love doing it!

What challenged me?

• Not enough time spent on motif development - being able to work in repeats is important but I noticed that I was spending more time on the repeat than on the motifs, so whilst the pattern might be nicely spaced and balanced I felt disappointed with the actual motifs I was working with sometimes - they might be limited in number or just very basic doodles. I love doodles and sketchy looking work but I also crave detail in my own work.  
• A lack of drawing and painting on paper this month. I've had one drawing session for my Strawberry Thief collection. I think this ties in with the above point - working on my drawing skills would help me have a better selection of motifs to work with.  
• My lemon timer that I use for Pomodoro technique broke. I kept meaning to replace it but never got round to it and I avoided using my phone or computer timer thinking that I would just keep my eye on the clock. Result? I spent way too long on single pieces of work - I would be working on smoothing the edges of a motif for half an hour or start again after working on an idea for 20 minutes. The Pomodoro technique restricts me to 25 minute sessions on a task and I find this really helps when I 'm designing. Just spending one session on the preliminary round of designing something and then working on something else for 25 minutes helps me to make better decisions. When I come back I can usually see what is wrong and what is right.  
• Not enough time spent working on my bespoke card design business. I know I have a good idea with what I am doing but I procrastinate and avoid tasks associated with it.  My work space for doing my cards and drawing was really untidy which I don't think helped at all! 

How can I go forward?

• Rethink my approach to building my portfolio and be more structured in my approach, i.e. give time to motif development as well as pattern development
• Consider starting a motif library
• Schedule in some drawing time away from the computer - outside of the house even? Exciting! 
• Buy a new timer!!
• Organise and tidy my workspace
• Challenge my tendency to 'hide' my work - be braver!
• Limit time spent on Pinterest, social network and other procrastination tools. Vampires!
• Finish my Strawberry Thief collection 

See you in February then!

Frankie x

Word Wednesday #5

Happy Wednesday to you all.

This Wednesday's words come from Pete Seeger, folk singer and activist who passed away on Monday, aged 94.

Frankie x

Progress #1

Hello!

One of the flower motifs for my new collection

Hope you have had a lovely weekend. It was incredibly windy and rainy here... Not that I needed an excuse to stay indoors. I am so fired up at the moment with wanting to build my portfolio and improve my Illustrator skills that I'm really having to tear myself away from the computer to get other important things done - all I want to do is draw and create patterns!

I am excited to say that I got stuck into my January collection on Saturday, drawing lots of cheerful floral motifs and strawberries. I'm keen to create an arborescent or Pampalore style pattern for this collection as I feel this will be a great leap forward in my practice. So far I have tended to mainly do toss repeats and I feel frustrated by the fact that I haven't yet made anything that repeats in this way - i.e. where the motifs are joined together by stems/branches, making it look very organic and not grid like at all.

Googling images of arborescent doesn't bring up many examples (a strange mish mash of pictures awaits!) so I've posted these two photos from Pinterest - neither of which are credited to anyone, anywhere, sorry. This is the kind of construction I am hoping to achieve, lots of motifs and stems intertwined. Being that I haven't studied the history of textiles I am struggling a little bit to come up with the correct terminology when it comes to pattern types/styles, so I apologise if I am rambling a bit! I do have a wonderful book called: 'Textile Design: 200 Years of Patterns for Printed Fabrics arranged by Motif, Colour; Period & Design' by Susan Meller & Joost Effers, which offers a wide survey of the many different pattern categories in existence. I will be reviewing this book in a later post but to summarise it offers a lot of inspiration and information with several examples of each pattern type/style and a brief explanation of each one too. It's a great introduction to world pattern but I think I might like to now try to find out a little bit more about one or two styles and periods. I guess what I really need is a reading list for Textile History from a degree course. If anyone wishes to oblige, it would be greatly appreciated! I am also in the market for buying second hand Textile and Surface Pattern Design course books from anyone who has recently completed a degree so please do get in touch if you have books to sell or have any recommended reading for me.

Thanks for reading!
Frankie x

The Strawberry Thief and other birds...

I try to complete one pattern every day. Even if this means it's not a particularly sophisticated pattern I still do it. And if I really, really can't for some reason or other I will make up for it by doing two the next day.

I started doing this at the beginning of last month when I lost all my work in attempt to rebuild my portfolio. I also do it because I love making patterns and sometimes the pattern making can get left until the end of the day because there are so many other things to do when you are self employed and work from home. So I decided that no matter how brief the time spent and how clumsy the result, I would just get on and do this. And then each day I might go back over previous patterns and work with them in the hope that from these daily patterns I might be able to make a collection at the end of the month. And that's the plan.

So, on Sunday after all my learning over the weekend, I thought I would try making my first half drop using Laura Coyle's automatic pattern template. I started off with a strawberry doodle and ended up with this. It's not the best thought out thing I ever did but it's a start. And when I looked at it the next day...

...it made me think of this:

Image from Morris & Co

So then I decided that my January collection would be based around the strawberry and song thrush motifs as featured in this classic pattern The Strawberry Thief by William Morris and since then I've been hunting around on Pinterest for some more ideas and inspiration and here's a few things that I found...


This lovely bird/floral by Gennine D. Zlatkis called Walkabout available from Cloud9 Fabrics. It's such a cheerful print!

Image from Cloud9 Fabrics

This gorgeously minimal painting by Natasha Newton called Nest Number One which has inspired me to try using eggs and nests as motifs...

Image from The Blackbird Sings

And I do love this 1850's Scandinavian print which is currently available to buy on eBay

eBay

This strawberry print is so cute!

Amyisla Mccombie

You can see my full January Pinterest board here and please do check back as I will be continuing to add to it over the course of the month. Or you could follow me!

As ever, thank you so much for reading and have a fun weekend!
Frankie x

Word Wednesday #4

Hello, hello!

This week's words are from Steven Pressfield's book "Do the Work" which I am listening to at the moment. The book has been described by Derek Sivers as "A true manifesto. A call to action. A kick in the butt for any creative person. Great thoughts on overcoming the resistance to creating." You can read his personal notes here. He very generously shares his notes for many books. 

I really love the idea of starting before you are ready and I think it's something I need to try to do a bit more. Too much preparation and worrying 'what if's' can really suck the energy out of a project. I've been trying to get a venture off the ground since October, I know it's a good idea but too much time spent preparing has really made me doubt my abilities and every time I'm faced with that project's tasks on my to do list, I procrastinate like mad! So it's certainly a lesson for the future! In the meantime I am using the iPad app Unstuck to help me come up with a way out for my current problem project.

I will let you know what I think of the book - it seems very useful so far, but in the meantime I would definitely recommend Derek Sivers' own book 'Anything You Want' particularly on audiobook as he has a really positive, upbeat voice - you can hear him smile and its very motivating! He talks about his experiences as founder of CD Baby and gives lots of sound advice and tips for start ups which can be applied to all manner of business and not just musicians. Find out more here.

The fonts used here are all by Kimberly Geswein and are A Little Swag and Love You Like A Sister. The arrows and zig zags are from her Flavor and Frames 3 font. Love Kimberly's fonts. 

So, what you could you start before you are ready?

Thanks for reading my blog. Please feel free to comment, share or say hello! It's been really nice to start getting feedback and retweets. Nice to know I'm not talking to myself!  
Cheers,
Frankie x

Essential Surface Pattern Design Resources #2 Laura Coyle - Illustratoring

This weekend has been a feast of learning! Last Thursday I tweeted the question: What size art board do you use to design repeat patterns on? I only got one reply! But it was probably the most valuable reply I could have wished for. A tweet came back from @eyecontactart telling me about the wonderful Laura Coyle's automatic repeat pattern tutorial and so off I went in search of Laura's tutorials. 

There are many of Laura's videos on YouTube but sadly the Renee Pearson website where Laura's classes are hosted is taking no more students. I seemed to have got in at the very last minute and have spent this weekend learning how to mimic the Ai 6 pattern tool in Ai 5. It's great to see a preview of your patterns live and I also picked up some general Illustrator tips along the way. Lots of things I didn't know about that are fundamental to using Illustrator properly! 

Here's a pattern I made using Zapf Dingbat glyphs - something I would never have thought of doing! A fast way to create simple shapes.

I'm self taught on Ai - I haven't really delved into all the resources available on Lynda.com or elsewhere and relied on what I had learned as part of my ABSPD course which was basic but proved sufficient for a good while. I do think it's important to know the look you're trying to create and then seek out the skills to achieve this rather than knowing Illustrator inside out but not having an idea what to create! A balance of developing style and skills is what is needed.

It's been a fantastic weekend and I've still lots more to do - I've decided to do at least one lesson a day now in Basic Illustrator just to make sure that I'm not missing some other vital skills. There's been a lot of "Oh, that's how you do that," and "Oh I always wondered about that," this weekend! And a lot of pyjama wearing too! 

If you are using Ai 4 or 5 and would like to learn about automatic patterns, there's a video here from Deke's Techniques where Laura originally got the idea from. Then this is Laura's follow on video from her paid for tutorial on how to make swatches, which as I said, is not really available at the moment I don't think. It doesn't really follow on from Deke's video exactly - you need to have multiple artboards in place but maybe it's possible to understand this by watching these two videos side by side. If anyone really, really wants me to try and explain it you can email me but in all honesty I just really hope that Laura's classes will be available again soon as they are fantastic for beginners in Illustrator. She has a lovely clear, fast paced style of delivery and a really good working knowledge of Illustrator. 

So, that's all for now. I hope someone somewhere enjoys my blog. I'm certainly enjoying writing it! Please feel free to comment if you wish.
Enjoy your day,
Frankie x

Word Wednesday #3

A little Winston wisdom on Word Wednesday!

These gorgeous fonts are created by Kimberly Geswein and can be downloaded here and here and I designed the repeat pattern.

I've had a few challenges lately and found this quote rather appropriate! 

Have a lovely day,

Frankie x