Patty Rybolt Designs: surface design

Showing posts with label surface design. Show all posts

Wednesday, July 22, 2015

Everglades Alligators!

National Parks are the focus of this weeks challenge.

Designers were asked to create a pattern to represent a national park close to them. I live in south Florida and am closest to the Everglades National Park. I chose to focus on my favorite Everglades creatures... alligators, and of course some birds including egrets and the great blue heron! I finished the pattern by adding some water snakes and tropical greenery like sea grape leaves, water lilies and palm fronds.

Voting for this design contest will open Thursday, July 23rd, 2015, and continue until Thursday July 30th! Vote Here!

While living in Florida over the past 15 years my family and I have encountered alligators from time to time in our own back yard. (I took these photos of alligators on the golf course behind our house from my patio!)

We see large alligators like this one fairly regularly.
I took this photo behind my house on the golf course.

Every once in a while an alligator has to be removed
if he's considered a 'nuisance alligator' and he's over 8' long!

The Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation
Commission sent out Trapper Nick
to move this guy out to the everglades.

Out for a stroll...

Thursday, January 8, 2015

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'!

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!!

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!