Daisy Janie

quilt layouts created from typepad avatars.

Just messing around. Warming-up my brain and nimbling-up my fingers for the week.

Anyone else out there who has thought for years that these placeholder typepad avatars look like fabric swatches???

a door, a floor, a ceiling & some relays.

Door & floor pics taken outside University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archeology & Anthropology. Man, that door was solid, massive and gorgeous - right down to the rusty handles! Taking a pic was as close as I could get to putting in my pocket and bringing it home. There were 3 pairs of these doors on this facade. M and I were both in awe!

The scallop pattern in the stonework below speaks for itself. After seeing this vast expanse of mesmerizing, perfectly imperfect repetition, I appreciated the comparative & relative ease with which I can assemble and disassemble art and pattern repeats in Illustrator.

Below:
At Starbuck's. A very clever, framed, hanging panel of decorative woodworking (not sure what to call it?). It was about 5' x 5' and made the space a bit more cozy. But, it was a dust collector! Can you see it? Eee-woo, which is DiCintio-speak for "ew".

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We were in Philadelphia yesterday for the Penn Relays - the stadium is across from the Museum. If you've been reading my blog for a bit, you know we love our fitness and running over here! J has fallen right in step in that vein. He loves to run, and I love to watch him run. I love watching any running, really! Nothing but legs and guts.

We saw the high school 4x400s yesterday, including our HS team, as well as the USA vs. the World Women Sprint Medley. USA, Russia, Jamaica, Great Britain. It was a nail biter, but the USA ladies took the medal! Freaking incredible athletes!!!

seeing | fabric texture.

'Tho this is gorgeous in its own right, I will be playing with both texture and color tomorrow. Shades of Grey anyone?

pastel art discovery & manipulation

Image, design, artwork (c) Daisy Janie/Jan DiCintio.

I was digging through some old sketchbooks recently to see for myself if where I've been looks remotely like where I am. This is an old pastel & acrylic ensemble from 1999ish. I see some resemblances in color preference, layered geometry and a bold vibeology, but mostly I see the perfect imperfection that my brain is hard-wired for. That is, no matter how random I try to be, something precise and pretty balanced seems to force its way through. Can't get away from it. Most of the time, I don't even make an attempt to fight it - I simply go with the harmonious flow of simple repeats that want to come out of my hand. Other times, it's a mental double-dog dare to be more random. Those victories can be extra sweet.

Do you ever go through your old books and doodles? Do you see similarities?

How do you challenge yourself when you're creating? What's your hurdle?

Image, design, artwork (c) Daisy Janie/Jan DiCintio.

This one above has a nice beat - I think I can dance to it.

Couldn't resist the urge to clip it, copy it and move it all around.  Okay, just added the 2nd clipped & cropped manipulation below. ADDICTED. Look for a few more of these to be added periodically for the halibut.

Image, design, artwork (c) Daisy Janie/Jan DiCintio.

design inspired by snowy handrail.

It's a rare day when my roving eye misses the geometric inspiration found in the mundane. If you're a follower of my blog or work, you may already know that I like to stretch my design muscles by *trying* to create repeats from obscure objects, textures & shapes or random doodles. 95% of the time this activity is simply a way for me to segue from one major task to the next or a nice background activity while I'm in a big think about something. I suppose I could take a walk around the block to clear my head, but I'd have to keep my my eyes shut to additional inspiration - and that might not end well.

Truly, it's such a release to sit here and manipulate the h-e-double-toothpick out of these shapes. And as luck would have it, another 50% of the time these kooky designs contain incredibly functional elements that I wouldn't have discovered otherwise. [yeeha!]

This snowy handrail is a perfect example. It doesn't look like much at the very top - just a cute letter J. But once I cropped the image and tessellated the squares, a distinct and pleasing pattern emerged that triggered other ideas worth trying out. Even the pattern created by the foliage in-between the scrolls was useful in the iteration below. Do you see it? This is really addictive - try it out! You'll have the added bonus of knowing your design is 100% original!

winter scroll | chocolate (c) 2010 Daisy Janie. All rights reserved.

winter scroll | mustard (c) 2010 Daisy Janie. All rights reserved.

winter scroll | verde (c) 2010 Daisy Janie. All rights reserved.

free printable | ancient proverb digital print

Did you ever read or hear something that strikes such a chord with your philosophies that you feel like it was meant just for you? And you're so moved when it happens that you feel compelled to share it immediately with whoever is standing near you, stranger or not? That's exactly how I felt about this ancient Indian proverb. About 17 years ago, I had the good fortune of stumbling upon this quote in a shop selling Native American art, and I remember tugging pretty insistently on Matt's shirt to pull him over and share it with him.

It fused itself to my soul and has been an overarching moral compass in my life ever since. To me, it underscores the importance of not only being kind to the earth but also, connotatively, being a good human on all fronts. It’s the idea that one’s actions & words create an impact well-beyond the second they’re expressed – they go on and on and on. Call it a spillover–trickle down–ripple–domino effect if you like…you get the gist, I'm sure. I'll leave it at that b/c I think the credo speaks volumes without my refereeing it for you...

When I googled the proverb today, this is what I found:
"Treat the earth well: it was not given to you by your parents, it was loaned to you by your children. We do not inherit the Earth from our Ancestors, we borrow it from our Children."

D E T A I L S . . .
If it looks like the text is cutout from the paper and the woodgrain of the table is peeking through, you'd be on the right track! I used a picture of my table as the background texture for each letter in the quote. Same with the leaf motif bordering it. Love the effect!

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D O W N L O A D . . .
Download a free 8.5" x 11" pdf printable of this quote in blue, green or pink. These are for personal use only; they are not intended for resale. I'll say it again, these are not for resale. Thank you for your understanding!

sketchpad morphs

Sometimes, when I don't feel like sketching a design for 'fabric' per se or getting out paintbrushes to exercise my imagination, but I still feel the need to move my hand in a creative way, I doodle whatever comes out. When I'm stressed, this actually relieves some of my anxiety b/c it's just play, and there isn't any pressure for my creativity to "be" something or "do" something. 

I colored in college as a stress reliever - seriously. I colored my entire standard-issue dorm dresser in rainbow colors one year, using the wood grain as my guide. (And shaved it all off with a straight razor at the end of the year, which was pretty fun, too!) I'm sure that's what all the Marketing majors were doing that year! :)

What's your stress buster?

This is a pretty typical 'whatever' above. Free-flowing, folding, bending, blending, swirling, whirling. Very feminine, very improv. It always feels good to get these moments out on paper. I don't often take inspiration directly from my surroundings; abstractions of geometric, organic shapes is my preference...again, no pressure.

Taking this a step further, I always take pictures of the pages in my sketchbook and keep them in a file for quick reference. I pull my sketches into Illustrator and use live trace to vectorize the image.

I thought I'd take you through this particular sketchpad morph to show you how patterns and shapes often begin to emerge as real potential for a simple or complex design - when I'm not even trying. Having done this a zillion times, I remind myself that I'm doing this exercise for fun - no second-guessing...just go with instincts...crop here, flip there, color here, color there....much like the original doodle, whatever comes out is what comes out!

It's kinda fun to see the morph in a sequential pictorial like this, even for me.

I ghosted the design & used my bamboo tablet to highlight a few shapes/patterns.

Recolored, recropped, reblended. Still messin'.

In the end, I really loved that simple finial shape in the center above, along with the 2 leaf shapes above and below it. I pulled them out and put them in a quick repeat. I love the way this looks! Will def be keeping for future reference!

in my hand: red, red raspberries

Freshly picked red raspberries. Yum!

As we picked our way through the raspberry bushes at the orchard, it was total sensory overload...
...rich ruby reds...
...flowery, fruity breezes...
...soft, delicate kerplunks...
...busy bees buzzing...
...sweet and tart bursts of flavor...

miles of doodling

"Road Trip 2009" by J.D. and J.D.

Since we returned from our Voodoo Doughnuts road trip, lots of inquiring minds want to know what Peanutman did in the car to entertain himself all that time. And, trust me, when I say 'all that time' - I mean it was a looooong freakin time. Well, we didn't have any DVD players or handheld games like a DS or whatever they're called. We had books on tape, books to read aloud (one of our absolute fave family pastimes...all 7 Harry Potters were enjoyed this way), a deck of cards, Yahtzee, a bin of Legos and a sketchbook & colored pencils. And of course big wide eyes to stare out the window to let your imagination wander! Never underestimate the power of daydreaming...no need to fill every waking minute of your child's day with activities!

We love passing doodles back & forth, where each person progressively adds a little somethin-somethin to the page. (Our "Hidden Faces" doodle was done this way.) As we made it to the Oregon coast and back, this fantastical drawing emerged from our cooperative efforts. We both got pretty pumped to see what the other had added each time we got it back! I highly recommend this activity - you'll be pleasantly surprised by the joy your child gets from it!

***edited to add: If you want to see some in-cred-i-ble cooperative doodling between a mother and child, you must check out doodlespark by Elissa Barbieri of loop and her artist Mom! I bought a set of her cards a few months ago, and seeing the detail in person is so inspiring!

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It's been a long time since I've done any texture repeats, and this sketch is prime for just such a thing.

Aren't these psychadelic?

texture repeat answers

Above:
I think just about everyone guessed fern for the first one - ding, ding, ding, ding. Right on! I didn't touch the image at all, just copied+pasted+mirrored a bunch of times.

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To see the texture repeats created with these images, click here.
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Below:
Lots of hosta guesses on the second one! The correct answer is lilies of the valley! Thanks for playing along!!