potted plants

I decided to design some plants as a header image for each section of my blog so the design isn't the same on every page. I chose a colour scheme of red, blue, green and pink which I used throughout, swapping the biggest area of colour each time making them look part of a set yet completely different to one another. I wanted to put these on my blog to show I love nature and its one of my biggest inspirations! Below I decided to try out the plants with a character I created, incorporating them into the clothing and surroundings. 

ashmolean

This is by "Tea Through The Ages' illustration I designed in my first year of university for the Ashmolean museum in Oxford. I designed this map as a fun way to learn about the history of tea and where it comes from. 

my little sketchbook

Over the summer I've kept a little sketchbook where I've created patterns and started my developed process for my digital images. There's something I love the freedom of working by hand, documenting and working through ideas. I used fine liners and posca pen a lot, I love the effect they create when used together, the contrasts of the line thickness and textures of the pens. From page to page in my sketchbook I play with composition, I found having a lot of negative space on some images but none on others creating a really interesting mixture of designs. This is something I love in editorials, layout is one of my favourite things to be creative with. 

This is a simple design of my favourite flower, daisies. I try not to over work images leaving them clean cut and minimal. I found having the flowers in a row made the image more graceful then if they filled the page. Below is an image I created of different houses. I tried to give the houses personality by having them lean to one side or another, to me they even look like they have faces! 

For this image I used 2 thickness' of fine liner, there's something I like about them just being a simple line as the houses have lots of character. However I plan to work over this image on illustrator to create a colourful, refined image. When I develop this image I will rearrange the pattern to see what works best! My inspiration for this design was the houses on my street, on a rainy day looking out the window I wanted to see how much fun I could inject into them. :) 

When the sun decided appear I got myself into the garden to create some patterns from my surroundings! I really enjoy this simple way of illustrating and it was an inspiration for many of my digital patterns on my previous post. I love this colour scheme of vibrant summery colours, developing colour schemes is one of my favourite things to do, the possibilities and combinations are endless and thats so exciting!

patterns on MY WACOM TABLET

My fruity and floral pattern. I like to arrange my patterns my hand instead of using the fill tool on photoshop so I have full control over what element goes where, and I love creating patterns almost as much as I like drawing.  I wanted to create an eye catchy, citrus colour scheme that pops on a white background. I used a softer, calmer colours on my pattern below as i feel like this suits the flowers I chose, the berries and dark leaves reminding me of winter unlike the pattern above being more spring and summery. 

I like the use the Kyle T Webster brushes on photoshop, they are fantastic and so easy to use. I tend to use the gouache and watercolour effects the most, they create a more hand drawn textured feel then just a standard brush. I don't like to use a lot of texture in my work as I feel for my style it may make take away from the designs themselves. On the image above I used a very slight gradient on the leaves to give the image a bit of depth.

I thought i should mention I create the majority of my images with my wacom intuos draw tablet. I tend to draw out roughly the design I have in mind, scan it in and draw over the top adapting it as I go. I partically like the pressure sensitivity of the pen, making it easy to go from dark to light and creating contrasts in line thickness. I love this tablet it makes it so easy for me to create.