Yesterday, Jessica Gonacha Swift posted a few steps in her illustration process, and, back in November, Stephanie Corfee featured a similar process post about creating artwork from a few initial sketches. Both of these women astound me with their mad skillz; I own artwork from each that I enjoy daily! Seeing how their sketches are transformed from a raw illustration to works of art is completely fascinating to me! I really enjoy Process - it's enlightening to see how everything fits & flows from point A to point B. Regardless of the subject matter - earth, man, beast, music, art, you name it - process rocks!
Jess and Stephanie inspired me to share a similar process post with you - it's been a while. I've chosen an uncomplicated design b/c it lends itself well to brief notations. This is not meant to be a tutorial; I'm just showing you a few steps in The Process. However, if you're new to creating patterns, you may find something useful here.
This is an unremarkable, non-descript sketch (in fact, all on this page are rather bleh) that turned into a dazzling, bold, geometric design - just the way I like 'em! I never throw a doodle away! For real. Sometimes I use them as textures in other designs, sometimes I use them to practice a technique, sometimes I trace pieces of them and incorporate them into other sketches and sometimes I just play with them to see what develops. This was the latter.
1. Vectorized, cleaned and clipped the doodle.
2. Moved a few critical vector points to close the shape, added a round-edge square to center for no particular reason...just messin.
3. The round-edge square gave me an idea to clip out one corner and straighten the lines.
4. I began moving the new shape all around...randomized, nested, blended, stacked, lined-up, rotated...until this knot shape began to emerge. Quite a few versions to get to this point!
spring knots (c) 2010 Daisy Janie. All rights reserved.
Certainly, it would have been easier to have envisioned a knot design first and worked in a linear fashion to achieve that look. But my imagination doesn't always plop designs in my lap, so I do what works and just enjoy the organic nature of The Process. Designing patterns is like a box of chocolates...
I absolutely love the way it turned out! This is a very simple method to implement, and it's a great way to use up your doodles. Please let me know if you try it - link your post in the comments!
turquoise knots - color of the year! (c) 2010 Daisy Janie. All rights reserved.
hot knots (c) 2010 Daisy Janie. All rights reserved.
