Cat in a huff - I am looking after Minnie the cat this weekend, and she is often spectacularly huffy, so funny. I also worked on a composition of coloured dots which I later made into a pattern.

I backdated this post because I took the day off for my birthday!

Thanks for visiting, see you next week!

Feeling his inner tiger for Caturday, still inspired by those children's playground drawings; and working on colour schemes. I started with this hot spice palette because I thought it would be the hardest, and yes, it did present some problems but I thoroughly enjoyed the work. I always imagine mixing and matching duvet covers, pillows and cushions when I 'm doing this - I'd love to see it in real life.

This is a proper catch up session. I moved my blogs to publish on Wednesdays because I get through a lot of work over the weekends which I finalise at the beginning of the week, so it makes more sense; but now I have 10 days worth to talk about.

The headlines since my last entry are a new pattern (above), reworks of old patterns (top image and below) and a major reorganisation of my files and iPad.
​Reworks were mostly to create half-drop patterns from old grid ones, having decided I don't really want to make grid patterns in future because of their 'bang-bang-bang' appearance which works well for some designs, but my recent work suits either half drop or brick repeats.

For this rework I replaced some elements with ones I am interested in at the moment - so now it has constellations, planets, stars and a flying saucer instead of big round flowers and circle shapes. I have also made sure that I keep colour separations for changing colourways using clipping masks; previously I was relying on colour drop, but I have found there are good days and bad days for its success in iPad. On a good day all looks fine, but on a bad day the dropped colour creates a halo, omits pixels and renders edges shaggily on even the clearest and simplest shape. It's a bit rough and I require reliability and quality, so now I use colour drop only for quick sketches to see how a colour might work.
My major reorganisation was to create folders (stacks on iPad) for colourways so I can clearly see how designs work together in a set colour scheme. It was getting rather bitty and confusing, and I was losing track of what I had and hadn't done with each palette. It also makes it easier to offload work onto MacBook to free up space on iPad, then retrieve designs to continue work in another palette on iPad, where each stack now has its own 'header' image with its colourway clearly displayed.
It's a great feeling to clear everything down and establish order.

Thanks for visiting, see you next Wednesday, if not sooner with more catchups!

Big, bright and bold is the current mood - still catching up on last week's work, having been hampered by getting locked out of my accounts due to password security alert.
​The sun is rising early now, which means getting to work early and lots of new things on the go.

I completely reworked the possums pattern into a half-drop. I had convinced myself I liked the original 'quickie' block or grid print I made previously, but it really was a bit rigid and I was so much happier with this. The variety of scale and new incidental motifs is much more engaging, simple, and natural - just the way I like it.
At the same time, I went big and bold with dots and geometric abstract designs - it was such a hot week of flowing ideas! Here is a composite of some of the new designs.

It's been a week of possums! Last June I challenged myself to make a pattern very, very quickly, and what I came up with then formed the original idea for this new design. It took rather longer this time, working with 11 colour separations for any number of colour combinations. Above is a block (or grid) repeat I worked in a few colours, and below is a brick repeat which I haven't yet played around with in different colours.

At the beginning of the week, I really wanted to hurry spring along when we had a beautiful burst of sunlight and calm between storms. I noticed that the sea crests I was working with the week before suggested a rhythm or even a pattern, so I created this riverside scene with spring flowers and swallows. It's just a sketch at the moment, but it shows promise when arranged in a brick repeat (I'm a huge fan of those), so I may be working it into a nice clean pattern for reproduction in the near future.

Then the winds came in in big, blustery gusts - far too violent to be flying kites, but it did put me in mind of lovely breezy days on the hills with our kites as youngsters. Above is a work I created called 'Kite Party' with pareidolia critters last year, but I never resolved it or posted it anywhere; so I got it out again, refreshed it with a lovely green hillside (with polka dots, of course), and rejigged some of the critters - and here we have a celebration of breezy (not hurricane) weather. It was actually so windy the dog was terrified during the stormy nights, and we had to move her bed further away from the fireplace where she usually sleeps because of the wind booming in the chimney. I personally love that sound, so cosy, but it did get rather loud and scary at times.

Now, I have been moving back into pattern-making mode recently. I found the kites from the 'Kite Party' illustration very interesting. I separated them from the rest of the work, made clean drawings which should print well, and arranged them in a brick repeat. I actually really like this, in fact I fancy the grey-green colourway in the middle as wallpaper for our downstairs loo.

​Thanks for visiting, see you next week!

In 2018 I made several artworks on the subject of crows. I do love crows, colonies of these beautiful birds inhabit the tall trees around our house. They combine the macabre - Nature's cleaners, carrion eaters - with their dark beauty and excellence as parents. I have seen two crows desperately nurturing a young fledgling fallen from the nest with such tenderness until it was strong and able to fly, defending it from all dangers every day and night. 

I am thinking of making prints from these cleaned-up originals, the poetry and inkiness of the crows has an otherworld quality. When my parents died I was convinced their souls were still inhabiting the environs of the house and garden in crow form, looking over me and protecting me, and I still look up to the trees and speak to them.
When I was living amongst the mountains of rural Perthshire a local farmer used to hang dead crows by their feet all around his lambing fields. He told me it was to deter the crows, who would come in the spring and peck the tongues out of the mouths of new-born lambs. The lambs would subsequently die because they couldn't feed. It's a gothic horror story of nature's wild, untamed force associated with crows. It adds to their frighteningly powerful dark side. I suppose lambs' tongues must be some kind of superfood for the crows' young, or perhaps a great delicacy, and I can't help being reminded of King Crimson's 1973 album Larks' Tongues in Aspic which I loved when I was in my mid teens.

I will have an update of the finished pattern very soon, I hope - to go from bees to bottles in total mood contrast, I have to get on with making this years' Christmas cards this coming week!

Thanks for visiting, see you soon!

I did take a break from social media with no blogs or Instagram and very refreshing it was, too; I was able to put all my focus into new designs. This blog doesn't quite reflect the break because I like it to be a chronological diary of my work, so today I simply posted back-dated images of my work at the time into the missing weeks without much writing.

Still on my mission to create a Spoonflower shop, this is another rework of Yay Flowers I completed this week, in a clear, bright style which I hope will reproduce better than the last. I introduced extra movement and texture with the use of stippled lines which excited me a lot, it made me think of cartoons so I experimented with some big, bold colours as well as quieter palettes.

When I first started using a new, clear and flat style I was nervous - nowhere to hide! Now I am enjoying it so much I don't find it strange any more, and I find there is much more I can bring to it than I initially thought. I have just started a new version of Birds and Berries which I hope to have finished by next weekend, then I'll be onto Christmas cards. Bring on the mulled wine and sherry!

Also this week, my godchild/B's daughter came to stay which was wonderful and a joy; not so wonderful or a joy was yet another failed job application. Oh well, more time for artwork!

Thanks for visiting, see you next week!

I decided at least for now not to use the Schooldays pattern because it's a bit spindly, but I have singled out some of the motifs from it, reworked them, and used them as pattern elements.

​Okay, it's getting weird now, so I'm going -
Thanks for visiting, see you soon!

I came across a Spoonflower printing review on the wonderful Tuppence Ha'penny Vintage website last week. This paragraph confirmed what I thought: "The DPI isn’t as high as some other services, so some very fine detail may not come out and the lines may not be razor-sharp, but that’s not a negative for me - I rely on that very tiny bit of dye bleed to give it a more authentically vintage feel."