A New Way to Enjoy My Work: Society 6

I feel like I'm a little late to this game, but I've finally started a Society 6 account. They do custom art prints on a wide variety of products, everything from prints to wood blocks to laptop sleeves to leggings. I haven't put a wide variety up yet, all patterns I've done that work nicely for things like duvet covers and shower curtains, but I'm planning a few things to create in the next few weeks that will print nicely. Check it out at Society 6.


I'm pretty excited because it's really cool to see designs on large-scale products and know people are enjoying them in their homes. I've bought a shower curtain from a difference artist, which should be here soon and then I can enjoy the same feeling with someone else's work!


They do sales and promotions regularly, so check out the website frequently because there's always a code for discounts at the top.

Organic Chemisty - Fabric Design

It's crazy how long I've been away from blogging and, to be honest, even creating much. But I'm finally getting back into things and one of the things I am trying to do is fabric designs for Spoonflower's Design Challenges, as a good way to regularly create and practice.


This one is for the "Circles and the New Triangles" challenge, which is a strange name for a topic but opened a lot of possibilities for designs. I did some research and doodling and came up with this geometric design, meant to be made of hexagons and triangles but give the impression of circles (or at least roundness) because of the colouring and pattern. Plus there are little circles connecting all the lines. It took ages to make all the little lines since I was doing them at random, but I really love how the colour turned out on this and am very happy with it overall. I named it after the hexagon pattern and because the randomness of the lines feel more 'organic' than strictly computer-made geometric lines.


Head over to Spoonflower to vote in the contest or buy this pattern (it comes in wallpaper and giftwrap too!).

Paint the Village

Last summer I went to one of the small villages in the area because the local artists' group was hosting something called 'Paint the Village.' It was a really fun day, in which people from all over the area converged to either paint or draw, or watch the artists and bid on their work.

I arrived bright and early after a drive from a wedding in another province. There was a lot of coffee involved. I brought a whole trunk-full of supplies, since I wasn't sure what I was going to make.

I set up my drawing board right near the bay.

 

 Notice the totally inadequate pillow. I hurt so much the next day.

 

 Then it started to rain! I finished the pastel while it was under a protective garbage bag.

I don't have a nice photo of the finished product, because it sold that night. Here it is while set-up for the auction.

It was really nice to get outside and spend the day doing what I love. I don't have much time to draw lately, and this was a wonderful day. I hope they do it again this year.

Paramour Bungalow - Blue Cityscape Chaise

I have a confession to make. I randomly decided to search for Red Pumpkin Studio while I was researching non-intrusive bookbinding methods this morning (I was having very little success). I'm so glad I did, because look what I found:

It's a gorgeous chaise done in my City View fabric, which is available from Spoonflower. It's really cool to see something like this done in one of my designs!

It was inspired by a great day playing at Winnipeg's Children's Museum.


It's still available and on sale! Head over to http://paramourbungalow.com/do-you-feel-blue/ to check it out!

Cheesecake Toy T-shirt

This t-shirt design came from the Toy Story-ish design of the "Teamwork to the Rescue" t-shirt. It's a similar idea, with toys coming to life, only this one "set" in the Second World War. It's based on the very famous pin-up poster of Betty Grable. It was a fun little design, though getting the angle of the green army man who is knocked over by the beauty of the poster was pretty tricky. I tried to keep the poses of the toys are true to the real thing as possible.

The Lego-style Betty Grable was a lot more difficult to do, since Lego people don't have a whole lot of curves, and I didn't want to change it too much. I used the shadows to give in controuring more than changing the square shap of the toy. The shadow, however, comes straight from the real poster, so it's got plenty of human shape. The half-tone dots are, in my opinion, what really sets that off. The dark part is coloured around the dots, and the light half the dots are coloured. Gives a good contrast with just black.

This was a fun one! I think the design works well at capturing a Forties feel, with the halftone dots and vintage shapes. The design is named "Cheesecake Toy" because pin-ups were often called "cheesecake girls."

It's available in a few different forms at RedBubble. Enjoy!

Yesterday's Jam

I really enjoyed The IT Crowd. It was a really great, geeky, show, and had a few really terrific moments. One of the most memorable is the scene about 'Yesterday's Jam'. So I took it, and made it into a t-shirt design:

There are many references to the show packed into this little design: The 8-bit opening credit sequence is referenced in the lines, colours, and square 'half-tone dots'; the logo is 'The Internet', the 'Red door' of the jam (do you see the shape/colour of the jam and also the doorknob?), and the company name; and lastly the best before date is the emergency number.

I'm very happy with how this guy turned out! Head over to RedBubble to get a shirt or iPhone case.

And We Shall Call It This Land

I suddenly realized that I haven't posted about the t-shirt designs I've done over the past couple of... years. Years! So, I'm going to begin a series of posts covering all the designs, because some of them are really good, and I want to share them.

This is a reference to one of my favourite TV show, Firefly. It's from the very first scene, one of the funniest moments in the show. I decided to make it into a Soviet-style propoganda poster, which included having to make the font. Right now it's just in Photoshop, but I might look into getting a program to make it a real font. I'm happiest with how the dinosaurs and half-tone dots came out on this, it really worked well.

Head over to Redbubble to get a t-shirt (or hoodie, or iPhone case).
 

Moroccan Tiles Fabric - Times Two

This fabric design (designs, if you could colour variations) came from a very real need for curtains for my bedroom! I'm sure the neighbours will appreciate it. Here's a photo of my very cool new bedroom in the old house I'm slowly restoring (the colours area  little dark, sorry):

Pay special attention to the stained floor pattern! I did that to excuse the crappy wood planks that are in the middle and are meant to be covered with an area rug. All the rooms are like that, it's pretty common in older houses, in order to save money on flooring. It probably made a lot of sense back in the day when the new area rugs were probably part of the overall house budget. Moving into a house that needs six or seven large rugs (including a custom shape in this one)... a little harder to figure out how to afford them. So, I stained a pattern on them instead. It looks really awesome and is my favourite part of the rooms I've finished.

Point is, it's a Moroccan pattern, and the room has a lot of colour in it, so I decided to come up with a very subtle Moroccan tile pattern for the curtains:

 

But to keep it interesting, I made a colour version as well, and that will be the bottom border, and I'll use a copper ribbon between the two in order to finish everything off.

The cream and white fabric turned out so much better than I ever expected! It's phenomenal in real life! The colour one looks great too, but the different off-white colours really suprised me.

I'll post photos of the finished product as soon as I find my sewing machine and the right ribbon.

Head over to Spoonflower to take a look at and purchase the fabric:

Moroccan Tiles in White

 Moroccan Tiles in Colour

New Honeycomb Fabrics

It has been a really really long time since I've been able to do anything creative (I moved and bought an old house that needs a lot of work, and I don't want to flood this blog with photos. Yet), but a few months ago I was in Winnipeg on course, and so I had spare time in the evenings to work on a few designs. I drove the person sitting beside me a little crazy doodling honey combs all week. The results are really nice, though!

I set myself the challenge of using a honeycomb pattern and the Pantone 2014 colours, and here is the result:

But all the doodling (and just the way I happened to make the pattern in Photoshop, which lent itself to some playing around) also led to this pattern, which uses one of the colours from the first design, Dazzling Blue.

Today they finally arrived, and here are the test swatches. They look terrific, especially the small honeycomb pattern. Well, and the blue is really rich and lovely as well. I'm very happy with them! These are on cotton-silk, and the fabric is really nice. I'm going to experiment with making them into book-cloth someday.

Both patterns are available at Spoonflower:

Honeycomb Pantone Rainbow

Honeycomb in Dazzling Blue

Doctor Frankenstein's Monster Book: Finished

My monster book is finished, and if I'm allowed a small self-congratulatory moment, looks pretty terrific! It takes an astonishing amount of pressure to sew the leather onto the cover, so if I ever do it again I'd definitely try simply sewing it to the paper, and then just glueing the paper to the cover, but I'm not sure how to get the placement exact enough to make that work. This way I was able to stretch the leather a little bit, and it fits very nicely over the book.

Here are a couple shots of the terrific paper I used for the endpaper. The anatomy poster looks great, but it was pretty thin, so I had to glue it to another sheet of paper before I used it, or ever single bump from the stitches would have shown through. I put the page at the back sideways because I wanted to continue the whole 'random recycled parts, use what's available' theme, a little like the way Doctor Frankenstein made his monster.

Doctor Frankenstein's Monster Book

I decided that the first thing I wanted to make in my new studio was a book. Just something small, to get back into creating things. 

I've had an idea in mind for a Hallowe'en themed book for a couple of years now, for the BEST Hallowe'en Contest, and I finally had some time to make it. I want it to look a little like a twisted journal, with scraps of leather sewn together like Frankenstein's skin, to form the cover:

I tore up random scraps of paper for the book block. Considering all the different papers, and how I was none to careful tearing it up, it came out surprisingly uniform:

I was originally going to bind it with a Raven's Claw binding, because it will be open and visible, but then I realized that if I want this to follow the Frankenstein theme, it should look like the binding was unintentionally left open. I used a French stitch instead, and it actually looks a little like stitches:

I'm quite happy with it, and I'm looking forward to finishing soon.

New Studio

I have excellent news! I finally have my own studio here in Winnipeg. It's not much, but it's got plenty of room for all my toys, and more importantly, it's a place for me to work. I've hardly done anything in the past few months, between being in school and having no proper space to use. BUT that should change very soon, because now I have a dedicated spot, and need to justify the rent. So new projects/old projects I haven't worked on in a long time should be coming up soon!

How Doth the Little Crocodile - Cover

One of the things I want to ensure for this project is that I have done every bit of the designing for the entire book. For that reason I've chosen to make my own fabric pattern, and have it printed at Spoonflower. It's a great site where I can order custom made fabric. I have a few designs for sale there already. This design is only going to be for me, and only for this project. I'm going to order it in the cotton-silk blend, for that extra bit of luxury, and then make it into bookcloth. I'm going to do the spine in leather.

I wanted a William Morris style design, because it fits the time period of the poem, but adapted to the subject matter. I decided to use leaves in the shapes of card suites (hearts, diamonds, spades, and clubs) for the background:

The picture above is of the start of the design process. I pulled some colours from a William Morris print (the little picture to the left), which you can see above. Originally I had a dark blue background, with darker leaves, but it just didn't work very well. Also, I want the spine to be in dark brown leather, so I needed more contrast. I changed the colours around, it ended up closer to the inspiration print:

The final design is of different papyrus flowers, buds, and leaves on a light background. I think it works really well. The only thing I have to decided now is what scale I want it on. I made it in vectors, so I can make the flowers and big or small as I want without losing any detail. Then I can order a test swatch and see what it looks like in real life!

How Doth the Little Crocodile - The Beginning

I have wanted make a book edition for ages. I even started planning one last year (Jabberwocky), but ended up making it as a one of a kind book, mostly because I choose a format that was much to elaborate to actually print with my somewhat limited space and equipment. And for that matter, experience. However, the idea hasn't gone away, and this time I've choose a better poem and format, and I've done several elaborate lino cuts over the past year, so I feel I will have much better success with this one. Also, I've discovered the website Kickstarter, and I intend to put the project up on there, because I want to see what happens if I do. 

Kickstarter is a really cool website that allows creative types to generate funding for their projects - many documentaries and video games get their start through it. Basically it works by people pledging a certain amount of money for the project, and if it gets it's base number, the project goes ahead. This is great for a book edition, because editions are much cheaper for people to buy, so it's more likely there will be a buyer than for my much fancier one of a kind books, I can set the amount of money I need to raise (so I don't have to buy materials without knowing there's a buyer), and I will know how many to make. 

With my project I'm thinking of offering several different items/packages to people who support the project:

Tentative Pricing

$30     A print of the title page of the book, which will be an elaborate lino cut

$80     A copy of the book (a max of probably 50)

$100   A copy of the book and a print

$500   A special edition of the book, including case (max of 5). More to follow about these ones.

Much more on all of that later, but for now that's how it stands. I'd probably set $750 as the minimum price to justify going ahead with the project, since that will cover all the materials and a good start on my time. (And lets be honest, I'm going to put a ridiculous amount of work into this whether I get paid or not, so I'm more worried about covering the cost of materials. But it would be really nice to actually have something to show for the hours too).

So, what is the actual book going to be?

I've chosen a nice short, well-known (public domain, of course) poem: "How Doth the Little Crocodile", by Lewis Carroll, from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Thanks for the suggestion Andrea!

How doth the little crocodile

Improve his shining tail,

And pour the waters of the Nile

On every golden scale!

How cheerfully he seems to grin,

How neatly spreads his claws,

And welcomes little fishes in

With gently smiling jaws!

It's going to be a simple, traditional book style instead of some kind of fancy binding, because that is easiest to print, bind, and ship. The entire book will be hand-printed via lino cuts, some reduction and some traditional.

I've done a bit of research into Alice in Wonderland, and the poem specifically, in order to get some ideas for imagery. Here are a few things I want to play around with:

1. Contrasting scales

2. Things the look like other things, or are only defined by negative space. I'll do some MC Escher research for this

3. Puzzles. This will probably fit into the MC Escher influence

There also some images to include (besides the obvious ones pulled directly from the poem) to tie it into the larger Alice in Wonderland story:

1. Bees. "How Doth the Little Crocodile" is a parody of "Against Idleness and Mischief" by Isaac Watts, which begins with "How doth the little busy bee"

2. Suites of cards

3. Mushrooms

4. And I'm sure I'll think of something else soon...

I've collected a few pictures to get started designing the pages. I've been looking at a lot of Art Nouveau for the period, as well of flora/fauna illustrations, and plenty of other stuff, too, of course. Now to start sorting through it all! Here are a few things I've found:

Crocodiles:

William Morris designs:

Egyptian designs:

Antique fish:

Mushroom illustrations:

Any feedback is much appreciated, especially if you've done anything along these lines, because I'm just getting started on something completely unfamiliar!

The Sketchbook Project - The End

So. I finally made it to the end of the last page in my sketchbook. I didn't have any fabulous brainstorms for the final page, so I simply wrote 'The End' in the same style as the title page, to form a nice bookend (no pun intended).

So from there it needed a proper cover. I kept with the grey, of course, since that's the theme (or, mostly grey anyway) and did a quick watercolour wash. When it was dry I went over it in pen, simply following some of the more obvious lines between different shades and brushmarks. I've used this little method tonnes of times and it always turns out really neat. Here's the cover:

This it what it looks like rebound and finished:

And finally, do you remember when I said I found this boring, but had something up my sleeve? Well, this was the moment of truth to test my theory. First, I added a bit more colour throughout the pages, though, just to punch things up a bit. The real trick, though, was taking all the pages apart and rearranging them, so that all the pages had new partners. Turned out kind of neat, and definitely helped the interest factor. Here's what the new arrangement looked like:

And now it's all sent off, catalogued, and ready for people to check out. The tour starts next month, and unfortunately won't be coming anywhere near Winnipeg, but it'll be all over the States, a couple places in Canada (in the cool cities, not mine) and internationally. Check out the Art House Sketchbook Project's website for the dates.

The Sketchbook Project - Windows

More patterns. I don't have a lot to say on this one. I looked up some gothic windows and architecture, and used the designs I found. ummm, yup. That's it.

The Sketchbook Project - Moroccan Pattern

Freehanding patterns is HARD. Normally, and ideally, I would use a ruler for this type of thing to insure that everything is even. One of the most irritating things I think people say to artists, when describing their own artistic skills, is "I can't even draw a straight line." Neither can I. That's what rulers are for. However, I didn't really feel like it for this one, though, and was kind of curious what I could do by myself. So it's a bit off, but I don't think it's any the worse for it.

The Sketchbook Project - Raindrops

This is just a fun little pattern, trying something a little different than the all-over pattern of the previous two pages. I also like the proportions, with the giant raindrops next to the small umbrella. The idea for this one came from one of my original ideas for the them of this sketchbook, which didn't work out. So it made a cameo here instead.

The Sketchbook Project - Paisley

I'm a little (a month and a half? oops) behind putting up the pages from my Sketchbook Project book. I don't think there's much to say about this one, I find it a bit boring, which is strange, because normally I love this type of pattern. Oh well, once the whole book is finished, I'll see if I still feel the same way.

Spaceman Spiff Evolution

This was a fun little design that came about, like so many drawings lately, as I was waiting to fly. I was thinking about flying, and that brought to mind a character that also spends a good deal of time thinking about flying. I love Calvin and Hobbes comics, especially the ones about Spaceman Spiff's adventures. So this little design is a version of those "Evolution of ...." designs, but with Calvin's amazingly transformative cardboard box, becoming Spaceman Spiff's spaceship.

Buy this one on Red Bubble.