An exciting start to the week when my first ever sampler from Spoonflower arrived on Monday morning for proofing. I worked in the print industry for a number of years, so I am no stranger to proofing, or finding unexpected results and learning from them.
I ordered proofs for a variety of different patterns to see what works and what doesn't. The printing itself is very good and close to the original, but I could see that I need to buck up my design ideas! The one that worked best of all was the 'vintage tie' design. Patterns which look the strongest on screen printed the least successfully; Yay! Flowers for example, because the close tones and colour harmonies don't show up so well.
After close critical scrutiny I made a check-list for designs for Spoonflower ...

I selected 6 of the sea-urchins I made last week to work in exactly the same way as I draw the pareidolia images, tracing over the image onto layers above using Procreate's HB6 sketch brush. It was one of those overnight "what if ..." thoughts and I wasn't at all sure how it would look. The idea was to make them more consistent with the pareidolia series drawings. From the first experiment I could see I liked it a lot, the texture and scumbly marks and saturated colours looked good. I like the semi-transparent quality, whichever background I use changes their appearance; but at the moment my favourite is anything dark enough to enhance the chalk-board effect. I am currently working on a pattern which combines little creatures with these roundels.

Today's Instagram post ^

Thanks for visiting, see you next week!

This week I reconstructed Dog Days Friday, pictured below. It was the only one of the series of seven artworks which I either didn't save as a PSD file or lost, the only record I had was a screenshot of its Instagram post. It involved quite a lot of rummaging around in my archives to gather together all the constituent parts, but seeing artworks I had forgotten inspired the little scene above: some pareidolia creatures putting on a play.

​On the subject of Instagram, this Friday I was interested to read Lisa Congdon's thoughts on how Instagram has changed over the last 10 years, which totally echos my feelings in so many ways. She was in the vanguard of Instagram from day one (over ten years ago). Today she has made nearly 11,000 posts with a following of 442k. By contrast I made my 458th post today, consider myself blessed to have 707 followers, and didn't join Instagram until 2014 when I got my first iPhone - but even on such a modest scale I have experienced the same disappointing changes. I have written a bit more about it on Heather Eliza's blog.
Visit Lisa Congdon's website and shop - she really is some kind of superwoman! Must try harder ...

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This morning I was getting Instagram and blog images ready for posting when, poking around in Procreate, I saw this collection of creatures in one document close by my 'digital sketchbook', a collage of textures spread like pages I put together back in February. It was a complete coincidence, I had only imported the sketchbook document the other day to look for something unrelated to the beasties. The two images were talking to each other so well I thought to put them together, and loved the result. The dark background is the original pavement photo I originally set the collection of beasties against last week which I liked well enough, but this is so much more fun! The colours and textures work off one another so well, a chance encounter has become quite a new favourite.

​Thanks for visiting, see you next week!

Sea creatures and birds all in the same place - well, why not. In the combined world of pattern-making and pareidolia these things really don't matter! This new pattern is made from last week's creatures I found in water-stained pavements in the park.

Midweek bonus post - I made a pattern from all the pareidolia creatures I have created so far, set in a cloudy sky.

An immense relief to take a break from making artworks which are all digital clicks and numbers! It must be an annual thing, because exactly a year ago I was making works based on scenes I saw in rain-soaked cracks in the park pavements after the sun has burnt off the puddles. Perhaps the rain is just the right sort at this time of year, I know exactly when I'm going to get the best photos which inspire pareidolia.

At first it was tough to get going on these, following an extended period of pattern-making and uploads of designs, but it soon came back to me. I wanted to get back into illustration mode because there is still some work to do on that children's book with author Amber Hunt.
I made the image at the top first, a mermaid taking her catfish for a swim, for yesterday's caturday hashtag on Instagram; after that the work began to flow freely. These are two interpretations of the same pavement splodge, pictured below, I simply turned it a different way around for each - the mermaid in the first image here, and cheeky little winged doggie in the second.

I spent the last few days redesigning my notebooks which feature artworks (rather than repeat patterns) on Redbubble. I wasn't very happy with the hardcover journals in particular, I wasted so much time uploading and tweaking the old designs over and over each time with no success, I decided a radical rethink was required for them which would also work for future designs from the off when uploaded. I also wanted the back covers to be more intrinsic to the design, so I made the decision to free the artworks from the frames I had created previously which were an absolute nightmare to line up on the products on Redbubble, and which I found a bit uptight anyway.
Luckily I keep all my psd files, so it was possible to simply remake the artwork to spread across the spine and flow. I am now very happy with the hardcover journals - they are a lot of fun made this way! I haven't yet changed the spiral notebooks in all cases, but I'll get there in time; it's the kind of work I really have to be in the mood to do.

It occurred to me during the notebooks process that I was able to get artworks onto throw pillows, so I worked a few of those with complementary cushions designed with the brocade border.  I visualised a sofa with a coordinated mixture of both.
However, the larger sized documents required for the products began to prove a bit heavy going on my now ageing iPad Air. Procreate constantly crashed, in spite of offloading all other works to storage files got wearisome, so I have only made about three of these artworks available on cushions so far. I do think they look pretty, though, so it is something I will continue during odd moments. I just feel it's time to move onto something else now before I go crazy!

Thanks for visiting, see you next time ...

This one has kept me busy all week with enough going on in it to satisfy even my horror vacui. Flowers do make themselves from flowers, don't they? Above is a composition ahead of putting it into repeat, I rather liked the tall yellow stalk branching out into bunches of flower heads (just right of centre) but it didn't look good in a pattern, rather irritating actually, so I modified it to better suit the flow of a pattern in half-drop. Below is the result. I am loving the exuberant jollity and personalities of the flowers.

I was quite thrilled with the glassy nature of a new texture I had created almost by accident, and made another wall art piece with it and a stork and a key. No, I don't know what it means, but it has a nice tranquil feel.
I mostly designed them as framed artworks, but they work well on a few other homeware products such as coasters and acrylic blocks, so I made separate templates for spiral notebooks and hard cover journals, complete with parchment textured labels to write the journal title, your name, etc for Redbubble. I can't resist stationery goods.

Still on the wall art theme, I made this composition of a naughty moggy on a table for the caturday hashtag on Instagram. I haven't posted a caturday for ages, it's so much fun!

Instead of just uploading patterns to my Redbubble store, I have been turning my attention to wall art. Below is a rework of one of last year's pieces, and I was so encouraged by how charming it looks framed in my shop I went on to make the new composition above.

The variety of work and different dimensions certainly makes my Explore Designs page more exciting, taking it away from the strict grid into a naturally staggered flow which is easier on the eye. I have also begun to mix up the designs; I had been uploading patterns in different colourways one after the other so they were grouped together, but I think that looks a bit boring so now I am alternating patterns to work the colours. I discovered that's actually a fresher and enjoyable way to work anyway.

Here's a version from this week, a blue colourway of the birds and berries pattern I have been working on lately, but I also got out the vintage tie daisies pattern plus a few others to put into new colourways. Mixing it all up seems to be really improving the look of my page.

Thanks for visiting, see you next week!

Last week's success reworking Yay Flowers! from 2020 inspired me to rework the Birds and Berries garden pattern I also made last year, but never used. I gave it a quick try on Redbubble at the time, but had concerns about it so I never launched it. Back then I was working by bouncing designs back and forth between iPad and Photoshop and it raised a few issues, such a line of just one pixel going missing etc - a minuscule difference, but enough to fault a good pattern, and although I tested the repeat thoroughly and it seemed fine in the end, I just didn't trust it.
I lost Photoshop when my very, very old MacBook finally died, but already had Procreate on iPad and was using that more and more. I won't subscribe to Adobe any more (don't approve, and can't afford it anyway) so nowadays no more Photoshop and I am working exclusively on my iPad Air. No, I don't have the wondrous Procreate 5 because it's only available for iPad Pro (which I also can't afford) but over the last few months I have worked out an idiosyncratic but completely practical way of making good patterns 'by hand', which I really enjoy; I can work in comfort at massively enlarged pixel scale for total accuracy. It's a kind of hybrid of the physical paper method and modern (well, sort of in my case) technology, and it certainly satisfies my inner jigsaw puzzler!
So, this week I had the confidence to get out my favourite pattern and rework it. I could only get it to work last year in merged form, solid state with background, so colour variations didn't really work. I rebuilt the pattern tile from scratch with elements I had filed away, and hey presto - colour separations!
​I love this silvery version (above), the original colourway is shown below. And yes, the pattern is going back onto my Redbubble store to play in all its colourways.