Meditate 'editorial art' for Lilla Rogers Bootcamp!

©2014 Patty Rybolt Designs.
Editorial piece from Huffington Post article by Grace Suh, L.Ac., Dipl.O.M.

This week, a different assignment. I'm taking another on-line course from Lilla Rogers called the Assignment Bootcamp.
It's a portfolio building course with monthly assignments for illustrators. This month the focus was on the 'editorial' market. The students read the article "How To Meditate: A Primer For People Who Don't Like To Meditate," published in the Huffington Post written by Grace Suh, L.Ac., Dipl.O.M., and we're asked to provide an illustration to accompany the article.
The article talks about how it's impossible to meditate when so many things things invade our thoughts. It stresses the enourmous benefits of meditation, and ultimately anyone can meditate by choosing a method that works for them.
I attacked this assignment with cut paper. I drew a ton of people in a meditative pose. I drew textures, and 'things' that were mentioned in the article that were running through the mind of the author. (Phone vibrating, chocolate donut, book ideas, plumber, etc.) I cut out many of the drawings and scanned them into Photoshop where I colored the shapes, added details and assembled the layers of my figure. Next the type was added. I hand drew the word Meditate, scanned and colored in photoshop. The other type was then added to complete the headline. Last was the background pattern, a lotus flower repeat, which helped to put the figure in the forefront. Finis!!

Crayon Monsters + Mosquitos for Spoonflower!

   Spoonflower went 'old school' and asked their designers to dust off the crayons for this week's contest, 'create a monster design using crayons!'

'Monsters + Mosquitos' (crayon)
©2014 Patty Rybolt Designs. All Rights Reserved.

   This design was done by sketching many monsters in pencil. When I had creatures that I liked I drew them with crayons. I couldn't get the color intensity needed to use as a fabric design so I remembered an old trick from elementary school… color over a hot surface.
   Sister Madeline Carrabino was my art teacher from At. Augustines School from 1st grade until 8th grade. She was amazing.  She did incredible things with crayons, but my favorite was when she would iron our paper and then have us draw on it when the paper was still warm. It was beautiful the way the colors would intensify, merge and smell. So I did as I learned from Sr. Madeline and ironed my paper first then drew with crayons over the warm paper until the crayon had a smooth and more solid appearance. Next I scanned all of my monsters and the mosquitos and made an appealing pattern in Photoshop. I adjusted the color levels to bring the intensity up a bit more, then made a background design. I like the paper that kids use to practice their spelling homework, so I drew straight lines in blue and red to mimic that look. Last I added the type in a bubble using the 'Monstro' font. Done. Ta DaH!!
Previews are viewed as a quarter yard (21" x 18"). Voting starts on Thursday, May 15th, 2014, and continues until Thursday morning, May 22, 2014!
Please Vote!!

Terrariums... 'Tiny Gardens Too' for Spoonflower

   Even if you don't have a green thumb, bringing the outdoors in can be fun with a tiny garden. This week at Spoonflower… 'create a design that celebrates terrariums'.

Tiny Gardens Too! ©2014 Patty Rybolt Designs. All Rights Reserved.

    A couple of months ago I did a composition using terrariums for the 'Chinese Paper Cutting' design. The shapes were all cut paper and scanned into photoshop and presented in only red and white. For this week's assignment I did a bit of recycling and used many of those same elements combined with new ones to create this fresh pattern.
   The first decision I made was to once again try to keep it simple. The plants have intricate shapes so I felt that the terrarium containers should have clean lines. I removed the details of the terrariums by just using their outside contour and keeping their shapes a solid white. The idea of keeping the color palette simple made sense too, so I limited the design to 2 colors with black and white.
   I opened a new photoshop file (21x18") and a copy of my original layered file for my existing terrarium design. Then copied and pasted the white containers into my new file and created a pattern with my shapes to repeat seamlessly. I gathered a page of my plant drawings and colored them all the same green and copied + pasted them over my container pattern. Stones were added to the base of the container to 'hold' the plants and then the grasshoppers and caterpillars were placed with some stray lily of the valley buds. The last part was the irregular grid pattern that I added between the background layer and the other elements. This helps the green layer to pull forward and adds texture to the piece.
   Previews designed as a quarter yard (21" x 18"). Voting starts on Thursday, May 8th, 2014 and continues until May 15, 2014. Please Vote!!

Mom's recipe tea towel for Spoonflower!

'Ham Hawaiian' tea towel design at Spoonflower.
©2014 Patty Rybolt Designs. All Rights Reserved.

 This week at Spoonflower… designers were asked to celebrate Mother's Day with a tea towel design featuring a recipe from their mom.

My Mom rocking the
Ham Hawaiian this past Christmas

   The concept came from one of my families favorite dinners. Ham Hawaiian. My design started with many drawings of the ingredients in the recipe… a ham, cherries and pineapple. I also added a serving plate,  bowl, parsley, berries and an egg slice. I wanted to make the presentation something mom could be proud to serve. The drawings were done with black india ink on paper and on my iPad with the Adobe Ideas App.  The images were scanned and added to Photoshop where I colored and arranged the parts into the composition that you see. The design is meant to be hemmed by folding a 1/4" and then folding again to show a finished edge.
Recipes fit a fat quarter of Linen-Cotton Canvas fabric (27" x 18"). Voting starts on Thursday May 1st and continues until May 8th 2014. Please Vote!

Ham Hawaiian detail  ©2014 Patty Rybolt Designs

   Ham Hawaiian, the real story… My Mom presented fabulous holiday meals but to be honest, the day to day dishes were not always winners. She does so many things well, but cooking was not her favorite part of being a mom to eight. We couldn't waste food, so on the rare occasion that there were leftovers Mom would reinvent them into a new dish. After serving a holiday ham much like the one she is pictured with from this past christmas, Mom decided to take what was left (which wasn't much) and dice up the ham in small pieces so it looked like there was more and put a few cans of chunk pineapple on top. She baked this for a very, very long time. When she saw the smoke coming from the oven she declared that dinner was ready… as always when faced with a problem her sense of humor took over. The ham had shriveled up and the pineapple was burned. Undaunted, she presented the smoking dish to the hungry brood at the table with the declaration that we were having 'ham hawaiian'. It didn't matter that dinner was ruined, we all still remember that night as being one of our favorites dinners because she had us all laughing till we cried. This is the legend of ham hawaiian and my fabulous Mom, Claire! #Clairethelegend !!