Herbs for Spoonflower!

This week on Spoonflower... Herbs!

Herb's Herbs!  ©2014 Patty Rybolt Designs. All Rights Reserved.

Concept…
The idea for this design came from looking at Pinterest and all of the illustrated recipes that I admire on my food illustration board. I wanted to try one. Seeing as it was herb week I thought a nice Caprese Salad would be fun. A Caprese Salad consists of buffalo mozzarella, fresh tomato and fresh basil. I thought I would add a few other herbs as well seeing as it is herb week… rosemary, thyme + parsley. A loaf of fresh bread, olives and olive oil were also added to complete the menu! Once I had the concept together I started on the execution of the design.

Execution…
I tend to go at these designs in the same way.
1. I start with reference material, looking at herbs and tomatoes and bottles etc.
2. Sketch the items in my moleskin sketchbook.
3. Photograph my rough sketches with my iPad.
4. Open the photos in my Adobe Ideas App and do cleaner sketches over the roughs. (With my finger). This app allows you to draw freeform vector illustrations virtually anywhere!
5. Send the clean drawings to my desktop computer and open them in Photoshop. (I put them in 'the cloud'.)
6. Choose a color palette and color the drawings in layers.
7. Open a new file in the size that I want my final pattern to be and build layers of colors to make my images.
8. Burn and dodge to add depth if needed.
9. Adjust the individual images to make a good composition for a repeat pattern.

I don't know if this is the right way to do this, but it works for me. I like drawing by hand and this method allows me to keep a hand drawn look to my illustrations.

Voting started on Thursday, July 24th, 2014. Vote here!

Encaustic Coffee... MATS Bootcamp Wrap-up!

I've submitted my last MATS Assignment Bootcamp project for my Lilla Rogers class. This month we were given a mini assignment to draw our favorite beverage and then asked to produce a personal piece of art, something that we would make for ourselves. 

'Encaustic Coffee' ©2014 Patty Rybolt Designs. All Rights Reserved.

I drew coffee cups and the stuff that it takes to make the coffee in my moleskin for the mini. I knew that I would love to get into my encaustic art supplies (it's been a while) and also incorporate some digital art to complete the final assignment, this is what I came up with...

This is a multi step project and the best way to describe the process is to list the steps…

1. photographed a vignette of coffee making supplies in the morning light from my kitchen window.
2. used the Waterlogue App. on my iPad to give my photo a watercolor feel.
3. printed the photo onto a silk organza fabric sheet and embed the silk photo
into my prepared encaustic medium on a wood base
4. painted over the silk with encaustic paint heating and smoothing the wax to adhear the layers.
5. used graphite to draw the "outline" illustration onto tracing paper and transfer the graphite by rubbing it into the wax from the tracing paper. The tracing paper is then removed and the graphite stays on the wax.
6. heat the graphite transfer to embed in the wax… done!

Lilla Rogers Studio!

I'm sad to see MATS Bootcamp end! I've learned so much in the past year through the Make Art That Sells A+B Courses and now Bootcamp. This year has been about updating my portfolio and I've been building a website to hopefully attract some attention for licensing deals.  In the past year I've been able to place in the top 10 at Spoonflower 8 times and even win once, and I got my first licensing deal with a clothing manufacturer! Thanks Lilla + Beth!
The next step for me is to take on the challenge of the 2014 Global Talent Search! Wish me luck!!

1. photo vignette

2. photo after waterlogged app.

3. silk organza printer sheets

4. encaustic paint palette aka electric pancake griddle

A Rhino for Spoonflower!

This week, I've created a fabric design that celebrates rhinos!

'Rhino + Friends' ©2014 Patty Rybolt Designs. All Rights Reserved. 

'Rhino + Friends' (1/2 brick repeat)
©2014 Patty Rybolt Designs. All Rights Reserved. 

My inspiration for this assignment comes from these photo's that I took at our local zoo… Lion Country Safari. It is a drive through zoo so you can get up-close and personal with the animals in their own environment. The rhino area is large and they have many white rhino's of all different sizes including some of the babies pictured here. 

The Design… Started with sketches of my inspiration photo's on my iPad (Adobe Ideas App). My family was on vacation and I did all of my sketches this week while on or waiting for airplanes. When I got home I opened the illustrations in Photoshop and colored and arranged the elements into a simple layout. The 1/2 brick repeat is sized as a fat quarter (21" x 18"). Voting began on Thursday, July 10th, 2014. Vote Here!

 

Mature White Rhino.

Rhino baby!

Baby White Rhino.

Sleepy

More about the Rhino's from the Lion Country Safari website… 
"White Rhinoceros are located in Hwange National Park which is a famous reserve located in western Zimbabwe.

Lion Country Safari is proud to be a part of the SSP (Species Survival Plan) of this endangered species, and many white rhinos have been born on our preserve since 1977. In the wild, rhinos have been hunted for their horns. Instead of being composed of bony material, rhino “horns” are made of fibers of keratin, a protein also found in our human hair and fingernails. White rhinos get their name from the Afrikaans word “wyde,” meaning wide, or square-lipped. Their color is actually stone-gray, not white as their name suggests."