mother's day florals

If there is one thing that the Lilla Rogers MATS bootcamp has taught me (so far) it's that I need to draw more. In the last couple of months I've spent quite a bit of time drawing into my sketchbook and then using those (scanned) sketches to create patterns or design pieces.  I've also been using the wacom tablet more too - which I still find quite tricky, although the more I use it the more natural it becomes. This is giving my work a more hand drawn feel in general and I quite like that.
During the last week I created a few pieces (card designs) for this months tigerprint competition - 'mother's day florals', and a coordinating pattern, you know, just for good measure.

underwater

The MATS bootcamp assignment is taking a break for the month of April, but a few of the members have decided on an unofficial assignment for this month with the theme of underwater plants for dishwares.
We took a trip to The Deep recently and I took a few pictures of the plantlife and animals and used this as a jumping off point for my sketches

I'm endeavouring to learn more and try different techniques as far as my design work goes, so with this assignment I worked pretty quickly in pen and ink creating basic shapes and icons, then scanned my images and recoloured and rearranged to form a placement pattern:

Next up, I need to arrange my icons and patterns onto dishware - fun stuff.

When you get 2 days a week to work, progress on anything seems to take such a long time - it feels very much like I'm doing a bit here and a bit there and not really getting very far with anything, except growing my to do list. My brain is full of ideas and it's frustrating that I don't get to realise things as quickly as I'd like. I'm adapting to this though - it's going to be my working style for a good few years yet I think. It certainly does make you admire people who work for themselves part time whilst being a parent full time.
That said, I'm happy to report that my new print (of a wedding/anniversary nature) is now available in my shop.  

 

I'm finding instagram is pretty good for helping me quickly log day to day work progress or capturing moments of inspiration, and of course helping me capture lots of fun moments with my little chick. I'm there most days if you fancy a snoop, or just want to say hello.

draw a bird day

Apparently today (8th April) is draw a bird day (who knew?), so I couldn't pass up the opportunity. Here is the bird I drew today: