Penguin Portraits for Spoonflower!

Yay penguins!
The Spoonflower guru's asked their faithful artists to design a penguin-inspired fabric to 'celebrate our feathered friends from the Southern Hemisphere'!

Penguin Portraits! ©2015 Patty Rybolt Designs. All Rights Reserved. 

This was a fun one… I did a little research on penguins and then started drawing. I had limited time for this design so I wanted to keep it simple. Sometimes it's hard to come up with a concept for a prompt but this was easy for once, I had a clear vision for this design from the start. Clean shapes that were layered using a limited palette, and of course add texture.
I typically come up with a concept and then draw about about 20 versions of each item in black and white (this gives me design options when I'm assembling my icons). I chose my palette in the photoshop phase using only 4 colors (blue, green, orange, pink) with black and white. I have found that limiting the palette helps to give the pattern a balanced look.
I designed each penguin icon, the fish background pattern, the trees and the patterned fish and opened a new file where I assembled the final pattern! Simple!

Voting starts on Thursday, January 8th and continues until the morning of January 15th, 2015! Please vote!!

Under the Sea 1-2-3... Counting for Spoonflower!

Happy New Year!
The first design post of the new year is all about celebrating Mathematics!

Under the Sea 1-2-3! ©2015 Patty Rybolt Designs.
All Rights Reserved.

I toyed with trying to use my daughter's calculus homework as a base for a typographical solution to this week's challenge, but then I started drawing. Picture books for counting came to mind and I decided to change gears and go with an under the sea theme.

I drew tons of sea creatures and numbers in my sketchbook and took pictures of them with my iPad. I opened the pictures in the Adobe Ideas app on my iPad and drew better versions of my illustrations to import into photoshop (where I assembled my icons in color.)

My favorite part of this process is adding simple details to each and every icon. The textures, shapes and colors bring each character to life and give them a personality! The last step is the hardest part for me… the repeat. Putting my artwork into a technical repeat is my nemesis and I vow to master it in 2015!

Voting started on Wednesday, December 31st and continues until January 8th, 2015! Please Vote!

2015 Goals…
With one design now completed for 2015 I'm hoping to continue with at least 3 designs per month using the Spoonflower prompts as well as Lilla Rogers Assignment Bootcamp projects. I'm setting goals to finish my website and submit my art to some new companies to build my business. Let's just see what happens, the worst they can say is no. Wish me luck!
Happy New Year!

'Nautical' wall art for Lilla Rogers Bootcamp!

'help sometimes'  ©2014 Patty Rybolt Designs. All Rights Reserved.

June with Lilla Rogers MATS Bootcamp was all about the Nautical theme. This was my entry.
I've posted before about MATS Bootcamp -  a portfolio building group for illustrators and designers looking to push their style into different directions. The category was 'wall art' but something like this would be great for cards, journal covers and maybe even a theme for a children's book as well!

Lilla Rogers Assignment Bootcamp

'Tiki Surf Club' for Spoonflower!

This week at Spoonflower… Surf's up!
'School is out, summer has begun, and it's time to head to the beach.'

'Tiki Surf Club' ©Patty Rybolt Designs. All Rights Reserved. 

What better way to spend the day than catching waves on your surf board?
The design…
The concept for this assignment was in my head for days. I knew that I wanted my surf design to include Hawaiian tiki's, surf boards, and sharks combined with some kind of type treatment. I  researched hawaiian patterns, Samoan tattoo design, Hawaiian art, flowers, patterns and even Ngatu (Tongan) art. After researching I drew basic outlines of surfboards, sharks, fish, paddles, a canoe and some tiki carvings on my iPad in my AdobeIdeas App. Then separately drew details like the hibiscus flower, leaf, the turtle and some traditional Ngatu symbols used in their art. The designs were opened in Photoshop where they were colored and layered to assemble the individual elements. When the images were complete I lined them all up to be the same height added the type 'Tiki Surf Club', then repeated the design in a 1/2 brick layout!

required restricted palette

All designs submitted were required to use the restricted palette and designed to fit a fat quarter (21" x 18"). Voting started Thursday, June 5th, 2014, and continues until Thursday morning June 12th, 2014!   Please vote!

Kuler Spaces... New Adobe App. for color!

My color palette !  I took a picture using my iPad of my sketch.

Mahi mahi watercolor sketch.

I had a lot of fun walking around my house taking pictures with this App and coming up with various color palettes. This Mahi mahi watercolor sketch from my sketchbook was my favorite for this challenge. I generally gravitate to these colors, but I decided to go for it anyway!

Spoonflower had asked their designers to be inspired by their environment. Create a color palette for your design using Kuler, Adobe's color palette creation tool using the free iPhone app or web browser version. You use your phone or iPad's live capture or upload an image to create a color palette from one of your favorite spaces. The winner of this contest will receive a year-long subscription to Creative Cloud. 

Design previews will be shown at the fat quarter fabric size (21" x 18"). Deadline for entry was Tuesday, September 10th, 2013, voting opens September 12th! Please Vote!

This is my pattern design that was inspired by Adobe's color palette creation tool Kuler!

'Kuler Mahi 2.0' fabric design for Kuler Spaces Spoonflower Contest!