Beach Bags - Make Art that Sells Bootcamp

I created these two patterns based on a brief from Lilla Rogers' in her 2017 Make Art that Sells Bootcamp. This month's assignment was abstract designs for backpacks. 

One of my guiding principals when I create a design is to make something I would love to own. I think about how I would use a backpack and really, the only time I pull out anything that looks like a backpack is when we are heading to the beach in the summer. 

I pulled a color palette of pink, purple, periwinkle, navy blue, peach and olive green. I wanted something fun and playful but had a vintage nod. My designs were painted in gouache inspired by stones collected from the beach. 

This is the first time I transformed my paintings in vectors in Adobe Illustrator and then created them into patterns. It was a huge learning curve but once it clicked working in Illustrator did make creating patterns much easier. I will be exploring Illustrator much more in my patterns since I'd love to work with fabric companies. 

Make Art that Sells Bootcamp Review

I finally finished all my Make Art That Sells Bootcamp assignments. A few weeks into the Bootcamp we had an unexpected opportunity to buy a house and move, along with lots of traveling and teaching in April and May. So not every assignment was submitted to the gallery, but I feel pretty accomplished having new pieces for my portfolio and loved the 5 months of inspiration from my favorite artsy fairy godmother, Lilla Rogers. 

I was watching Lilla's Periscope this afternoon, as I do every Tuesday while I'm working away in the studio, and won an entry into the Global Talent Search! Of course, I am already signed up so I will happily take the refund and put it toward my future art class fund, which I'm hoping is the Children's Book Class. I really did need the encouragement to enter though, now there is no way I will not submit an entry while I may very well have talked myself out of it if I hadn't just won a spot! Oh self-doubt - why do you always want to arm wrestle?

Any way, back to my Bootcamp review. I can't recommend it enough for 5 months of portfolio building and market insights. I'm going to go backward through the assignments. The first one here was for July and was an assigned flower based on our locale and to create a journal cover.

June's assignment was a children's book character study and Vicuna's were our subject matter. This inspired some pretty stinking cute beads!

You just never know what will be inspired by MATS bootcamp!

May's assignment, is actually the last piece I finished. I decided I couldn't leave one undone and really dug deep to finish this project. Wall art inspired by tarot card imagery was our assignment with our subject matter based on our birthday. So Leo and Strength were easy enough to wrap my mind around. I love the idea of quite strength and depicted my maiden in a plus-size body because strength comes in all shapes and sizes.

April was so much fun! Christmas ornaments with a lumberjack theme. I'm not much of a lumberjack kinda girl so I went with woodland and plaid inspirations - things a lumberjack would see! Ha, sometimes you have to let the assignment inspire you in ways that are outside the box. I did these in June, after my move and life was settling back to normal! But I could paint Christmas themes any day of the year. Next, I need to clean these up in Photoshop and get them laid out properly.

And our first assignment, way back in March was a coloring book cover inspired by 1920's flappers. Of course I had to tie it into beads! I'd love to make this project a reality. I should really add this to my my to-do list and send in a submission to my publisher. 

Along with the assignments, there is an awesome Facebook group for participants that is always filled with the most encouraging and helpful artists. And seeing how differently everyone approaches each project is an education in itself!

So that's the last 5 months and my bootcamp round up. Stop by Make Art That Sells to get the scoop on their current classes. 

50 Shades of Taupe Assignment

Last month in Lilla Roger's Make Art that Sells Bootcamp we were given an additional assignment to work on during the break for April.  We were challenged to play with neutral colors and the first part of the assignment was to paint 50 shades of Taupe. I pulled out my Holbein gouache paints and yummy Arches watercolor paper and went to town mixing up these delicately hued colors.

Lilla encouraged us to make an affirmation using our new found color palette.  I've been smitten with this quote I recently discovered from Van Gogh and decided this was the message that most spoke to me.

I enjoyed painting the quote so much that I did one in another color palette that was shared with us. I love the color palettes from bootcamp because they really push me out of my comfort zone. Now to hang these in my studio!

Make Art that Sells - 1st Class Assignment Complete!

I feel like there should be some fan-fare, a marching band, some fireworks - something to show you how excited I am that I have put together this collection of images from my first assignment for Lilla Rogers' Make Art that Sells Bootcamp! 

I had a little breakthrough about making images for this class.  I separated my sketches into the major images and painted those, from there I made them into images on clear backgrounds in Photoshop so I could play with colors, scale and layering.  It's a really different way of thinking for me, but it opened up a whole lot of possibilities for designing images for products. I've also been painting and finding my way with gouache - there was lots of light bulb moments this week!  Next on my to-do list is to figure out how to make repeating patterns in Photoshop.

If you scroll down and see where I was at a few days ago, you'll understand my excitement. I learned so much in just the first 3 weeks, I can't imagine where I will be in 5 months from now at the end of this class. 

Make Art That Sells Bootcamp

So I took the plunge last month and signed up for Lilla Rogers' Make Art That Sells Bootcamp.  This is a 6 month class to build up your portfolio. We are finishing up our final projects for the first month - cell phone covers with clock designs.  I love the class, I'm learning so, so much - but boy is it a stretch creatively and professionally.

My goal for the class is create a portfolio that bridges the gap between my bead designs and my illustration.  So I'm visiting the themes and motifs used in my beads, but in watercolor and gouache instead of clay and paint. The painting above was a warm up before I jumped into the assignment. I needed to have a practice piece that I could play with and not feel any pressure.  I designed something that I'd want on my Ipod, which is always by my side!

Oh, getting fancy - I did my first mock-up. I have so much to learn it hurts.  Like, hey - try putting your name it on Heather - sheesh!

I did several pieces, but this one is my favorite so far. I'm going to play a little more before our deadline and see what else I can come up with and how to work it into more portfolio pieces.  Like this could be a wedding design of some kind.  I just need to wrap my brain around how to think like that - with icons and borders and such.  Not my language, but I'm learning.