Snowmen with mittens!

This week the design theme… Mittens for gift wrap! Create a design for gift wrap featuring images of mittens.
I approached this weeks challenge with the idea that I wanted to put mittens on a character, not just use mittens alone. I drew countless illustrations of santa, elves, deer, bears and other woodland animals but kept coming back to the happy snow people that you see below. I had also doodled a lot of snowflake frames and added them to my design. The last bit was the evergreen trees that were drawn in a loose fashion, their simplicity just felt right. I added all of the color and texture in photoshop, but every part of this layout was drawn by hand including the textures!
This pattern was designed for gift wrap but works well as a fabric too. I think I'll make gift tags and print them on the decal fabric!

'Snuggly Snowmen'
wrapping paper, fabric, wall decals + wallpaper
available soon at Spoonflower.com
©2013 Patty Rybolt Designs

Previews will be shown on a gift box mock-up. Voting starts on Thursday, November 21st and continues through November 27th, Please Vote!!

Autumn Love!

Design of the week…  Fall leaves!!

This week's challenge was to create images celebrating the colors and shapes of fall leaves!! I approached this challenge with some black india ink and simple brush drawings of peacocks and leaves as well as paper cut-outs of pods and berries. I assembled the images in photoshop and colored them when I found a layout that I liked. I find the combination of drawing by hand (in black + white) and then coloring in photoshop allows me to present a painterly, organic feel to my images. The coloring in photoshop gives me more control over how the colors will look on the finished printed product. Choosing color for the images came directly from my interpretation of the assignment…fall leaves… golden yellows, organic oranges, rich reds and greying greens. The background started as white (which will also be available soon), but I felt that a stronger statement was needed. I auditioned colors from brown to blue and found that this combination of both worked well!

'Autumn Love' (peacock)
©2013 Patty Rybolt Designs

'Autumn Love' (white)
©2013 Patty Rybolt Designs

Designs presented as a fat quarter (21"x18"). Voting starts on Thursday November 14th and continues until the 21st! Please vote!! 'Autumn Love' (peacock) 

2014 Calendar Tea Towel Design!

It's that time of year again…
This week… a 2014 tea towel calendar design featuring pen and ink illustrations. I started with inspiration and research online, then rough sketches in my sketchbook. I wanted to try something different this year with my calendar so I decided to incorporate some of my own type and loose illustrations using a tea theme with a very bright color palette.
After deciding on the theme, 'Have Tea With Me', I designed the template for the calendar, picked fonts, and set up the calendar dates in Quark Express. Then the fun part… the artwork. I painted with india ink using a #8 round brush and drew teapots, teacups, textures and type. I tried to keep it loose and ended up scanning about 30 pages of images. Working this way is great because nothing is permanent, the illustrations and text were pulled from the scans and manipulated in photoshop. The text layout was brought into photoshop and layered onto the final illustration... the end result is what you see below.  I think these would be great in a gift basket for the holidays this year!

'Have Tea With Me'
©2013 Patty Rybolt Designs

Designed to be printed on a Linen-Cotton Canvas fat quarter (27" x 18"). Deadline for entry was Tuesday, October 29th, 2013. Please vote…voting continues through Thursday morning November 7th 2013!!