For the last 4 weeks I’ve been participating (more or less!) in a fabulous on-line course in Surface Pattern and Design.  It’s been a direction I’ve been keen to go, and an area I’ve wanted to learn more about for approx the last 18 months or so.  You may remember me posting about it here, or here, or even here…  I’ve been stumbling along learning what I can on my own, so when I saw the course available on-line, I jumped at it, as going to TAFE or Uni isn’t an option for me.  Once again, the stars have aligned, it’s been perfect timing…

I just thought I’d share with you a particular motif I’ve been working on in the last week.  It started out as a rough sketch of a Ginger flower taken from a photo I took about 4 years ago while visiting the botanical gardens in Brisbane. 

I then simplified it somewhat and started playing with some decorative aspects…

Here is a new design, simplified even more, and with all the decorative elements in place. 

 The words on the left read “go and hug the one you love right now” 

And here it is after I’ve had a bit of a play in Illustrator.  I learnt very quickly from this little exercise though, that hatching is not a good option to use unless I have copious amounts of time on my side – as you can’t colour in whole sections, but rather small sections, one. at.  a.  time.  

I know I have a very long way to go, but I really love the idea of being able to turn hand drawn images into something  new and different.  Hopefully I’ll have some more patterns to show you over the coming weeks as I practise and refine the skills i’ve just been taught!

Much love,

X D