A few weeks ago I started the online course offered by Make It In Design called Summer School. It's a trend and inspiration brief sent out every two weeks, there are three different tracks and since I'm a very green beginner in the world of surface design I'm taking the beginner track. Our first week was Tropical Paradise. I was digging pineapples and zeroed in on them. I worked in mixed media using pencil, watercolor pencils and gouache.
My goal in making the art for this course is creating designs that I would want to wear, have in my home or give as a gift. I'm not a whiz at mocking things up so I have these in my Society 6 shop and borrowed the photos from there!
The fun part of the brief is that it's all trendy items and that has inspired me in my day job - making beads and jewelry. So here is a pineapple bracelet that I made for myself! I had never really thought of myself as a pattern designer, but I realized I make patterns all the time - they are just in clay rather than on paper. So working in clay first for each assignment has been a fun a way to find inspiration.
Tiny pineapple charms.
The second brief was on tribal patterns and I wanted to work with color and texture for this design. The feather pattern was inspired by African prints. I wanted to create more of a collection that would work together so I worked up three patterns in the same color palette and graphic line quality. These were created with Copic markers and oil pastels.
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