Frogs!

Spoonflower Challenge of the week... fabric designs featuring Frogs! 
This week I tried to take a different approach, more like a graphic designer and less like an illustrator. All of this design was created in photoshop taking each element and individually making the water, lily, lily pad, and dragonfly into two color 'stamped' illustrations in the photo gallery using flat colors. Then added the yellow to the lily center, and more detail into the dragonfly with a third color, dark pink. The next step was to come up with a fabric layout using these elements and create my pattern.

Last the frogs were created using 5 colors (yellow, red, blue, green and black), and in 2 positions to create interest and make them noticeable against the lighter green of the lily pad. The frogs were added to my pattern and here is the result!

Previews will be show at (8" x 8"). Deadline for entry was Tuesday, May 28, 2013. Voting starts today May 30th,2013 and continues through Wednesday, June 5th, 2013! Don't forget to vote!

'frog + lily'
©2013 Patty Rybolt Designs

'Mod Wallpaper 194'

With the retro vibe being hot right now, 'Mod Wallpaper' was the theme for designers the week of May 23-30. The description of the contest was...'Mod Wallpaper designs influenced by the modernist subculture of the late 1950s and early 1960s'.
My approach was, as always, to do some research on this design movement and try to come up with a direction for this design. Most of what I saw online was fun and funky and displayed varying color schemes. I did lots of sketches in pen and ink, and on my ipad(my favorite app for drawing is Adobe Ideas), and drew them into many patterns and ultimately decided on this one...
This is my 'Mod Wallpaper 194'...

 'Mod

Wallpaper 194' ©2013 Patty Rybolt Designs

'Birthday Party Pets' fabric is now available!

Birthday Fabric Fat Quarter Bundles Available!

...including my 'Birthday Party Pets'!

Get a fat quarter bundle that includes the top ten designs from Spoonflower's most recent fabric design contest. Printed on lovely Kona ® cotton, their contest-themed fat quarter bundle is a bargain. 10 fat quarters of 10 different designs would normally cost $110, but this week only Spoonflower is offering it for just $60!

Greek Mythology and the Greek Family Portraits!!

...I haven't posted for my past two designs, so I'm going to post a few designs today to get caught up!

Spoonflower's Designers were asked to create a fabric design inspired by Greek Mythology for the week of May 16th through May 22nd... this was my entry. Design previewed at the fat quarter size (21" x 18"). 

My strategy this week was to combine many of my favorite Gods, Heroes and Monsters in Greek Mythology and present them as simple illustrations. However, I didn't know how exactly to combine these drawings to make an interesting overall pattern for fabric, wrapping paper and wallpaper.

I drew out vignettes of the characters but felt they resembled toile. Then came up with a wall idea, framing the 'portraits' of my characters in simple frames in the style of the drawings. This would work! It seemed be the best way to combine these portraits to create a complete overall design!! 

'Greek Family Portraits'
©2013 Patty Rybolt Designs

'Athena' from
'Greek Family Portraits'
©2013 Patty Rybolt Designs

'Cyclops' from
'Greek Family Portraits'
©2013 Patty Rybolt Designs

'Medusa' from
'Greek Family Portraits'
©2013 Patty Rybolt Designs

'Hercules' from
'Greek Family Portraits'
©2013 Patty Rybolt Designs

 Here are some of the Portraits
included in the pattern above... Athena, Cyclops, Hercules, Zeus and Medusa!
The pattern also includes... Icarus, Pegasus, Hera, King Midas and Poseidon!!

'Zeus' from
'Greek Family Portraits'
©2013 Patty Rybolt Designs

'Birthday Party Pets' Gift Wrap Makes Top 10!!

Just got the word!! Very exciting!! Thanks to all who voted!!

'Birthday Party Pets' gift wrap available at Spoonflower.com
©2013 Patty Rybolt Designs