Patty Rybolt Designs: MATS

Showing posts with label MATS. Show all posts

Wednesday, April 1, 2015

Balloon Rides for Spoonflower!

'Balloon Rides!'
©2015 Patty Rybolt Designs. All Rights Reserved.

This week's contest was to create a flying machine-themed design! I completed a similar assignment for this theme in my Lilla Rogers Make Art That Sells e-course, I used some of the icons from that finished piece and added some new icons to complete this pattern.

Voting will open on Thursday, April 2nd. Vote Here!

Tuesday, March 3, 2015

Suzani by the Sea!

Coral, mint, black and white...

Spoonflower's challenge this week was to create a design using all four colors in this restricted palette,

restricted palette

no less, no more. The only restriction was the color, the design concept this week was left wide open, so I chose to make a Suzani* type print.

I had drawn hundreds of these elements for MATS 4A this fall and was looking for a way to make a design for Spoonflower using my sketches, so I opened my sketches in Photoshop and added my new palette. Then built my layered elements into designed motifs and created my pattern.

(*Suzani is an embroidered and decorative tribal textile made in Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and other Central Asian countries. Popular design motifs can include the sun, flowers, leaves, vines and an occasional bird or two.)

Voting opens on Thursday, March 5th and continues until Thursday, March 12th, 2015. Click Here To Vote!

Thursday, November 6, 2014

A Retro Christmas!

Ornament Gift Wrap for Spoonflower!

I love this theme because Christmas ornaments come in so many shapes, styles and traditions. I chose to illustrate some of my favorites from the ornaments that my family and I have collected over the years!

I started by just drawing as many ornament shapes as possible on my iPad with the Adobe Ideas App. (I love this app, I can take my iPad anywhere and draw without being tethered to my desk.) The next step was to add the details... I drew stars and dots and swirls and spots and hooks and pine branches a hundred different ways. All of the illustrations are just outlines and in black only until I open the PDF in Photoshop. When I get to this stage I make decisions on how many colors (in this case 5 + b&w), and come up with a strategy on the overall look. I decided to make the ornaments white because I wanted the details to be the focus and limited my colors to unify the shapes. Tried to keep it simple!

Voting starts on Thursday, November 6th, 2014. Please Vote!!

Wednesday, October 15, 2014

Cuckoo for Spoonflower!

The Spoonflower Design Challenge this week is featuring clocks or timepieces.
I did a bit of recycling on this one. I designed this cuckoo clock for my Lilla Rogers Make Art That Sells e-class in the Spring of this year and thought it would be fun to use it for this assignment.

In order to make the illustration work better with a fabric pattern, I added a few other elements. Starting with a new clock tower with grand doors, a spattering of stars, a tipsy moon and a wandering bear just for fun. Last, a textured element to the 'wallpaper' behind the clocks. :)

Voting starts on Thursday, October 16th, 2014. Please Vote!

Friday, May 30, 2014

Meditate 'editorial art' for Lilla Rogers Bootcamp!

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!!

Tuesday, September 24, 2013

Lilla Rogers MATS e-course Part A

Click Here to learn more about Lilla's School!

I am always trying to keep moving forward as an artist and designer and knew that I needed to push myself... try a new approach to the design process. I took a break from my fabric design obsession in May and June to take the Lilla Rogers 'Make Art That Sells' E-Course. (Part A).

I loved it!

I learned about Lilla and her Art Agent skills at the SURTEX Show in New York in 2012. I attended the show to find out more about the Art Licensing Business, and how to copyright my illustrations and designs. I wanted to know if I needed an agent if I wanted to work as an illustrator or do designers typically represent themselves? I attended seminars at Surtex to help me with those questions by Tara Reed, and others and learned that it is a personal choice. I could submit my own designs to manufacturers and retailers through their artist submissions page on their websites, or submit a portfolio to an agent who could submit my art to clients and help me to secure contracts for licensing.

Week 1 'Bolt Fabric'

The Show was fabulous and I walked the floor to get an idea of what type of illustrations and design are selling to manufacturers and retailers today. I was blown away by the booths and designers that displayed at the show. The art agents had some of the largest booths representing their artists to the buyers at the show. Lilla's Booth stood out to me as having really fun and colorful artists and I stopped by to get a business card. When I got back to Florida I signed up to get emails from her website.

This Spring Lilla announced that her Make Art That Sells (MATS) course would be available online. I decided that this was just the right class to upgrade my skills to the professional level needed to secure art jobs today. The course lasted 5 weeks and focused on 5 different segments of the surface design industry.

My week 2 'home decor' assignment!

Each day of each week I logged in to Lilla's online classroom where she had videos, interviews with industry leaders, examples of successful products in the market and one assignment to be submitted each week. The course was intense and fabulous!

Part B of the course starts Monday October 7th, 2013. I can't wait to dive into the second half of the MATS Course!! I am going to try to blog my progress this time on the assignments so stay tuned!