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| 'Today's Special' ©2014 Patty Rybolt Designs |
I also designed three coordinates for this bolt fabric that will be displayed on my website. PattyRyboltDesigns.com will be live within the next two weeks!! I'll keep you posted!
Sunday, March 23, 2014
'Today's Special' for MATS Bootcamp!
Just submitted my March assignment 'Today's Special', for Lilla Roger's MATS Bootcamp!
This month… My take on Jello! I liked the idea of the 50's and 60's jello molded salads. My mom had the old copper molds hanging on our kitchen wall when I grew up. My husband Terry had them in his house as well, and we have his mom's molds in our kitchen! (Not on the wall yet, but maybe someday!)
I also designed three coordinates for this bolt fabric that will be displayed on my website. PattyRyboltDesigns.com will be live within the next two weeks!! I'll keep you posted!
I also designed three coordinates for this bolt fabric that will be displayed on my website. PattyRyboltDesigns.com will be live within the next two weeks!! I'll keep you posted!
Tuesday, March 18, 2014
The 'Robot Project'
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| ©2014 Patty Rybolt Designs |
'should be inspired by scenes from a school science fair.'
Over the years my girls participated in many science fairs… I remember Olivia cooking hot dogs in a homemade oven made out of tin foil and using only the heat of the sun.
Hanna put dye in the water of white flowers to see if the color would wick up the stems and change the color of the flowers (it worked).There were many, many more that I must have blocked out of my memory.
I was thinking, if mom's could have a science fair project, what would I make? The answer was simple, design robots to do my chores! I thought this concept worked for moms as well as kids, and I went with it.
I started with the graph paper look to make the drawings appear to be in a notebook. Drew tons of robot parts, arms, legs, gears, etc. and assembled my robots in photoshop. When my robots were assembled I put my pattern together and filled the open spaces with spare parts.
Here is 'The Robot Project'...
Previews are sized as a fat quarter (21" x 18"). Voting starts Thursday, March 20th, 2014, and continues until Thursday, March 27th, 2014. Please Vote!!
Wednesday, March 5, 2014
'Bedtime Magic' at Spoonflower!
Spoonflower's design challenge this week is all about bedtime! The routines we go through to put the little ones to bed are full of 'ritual, song, story, special objects and spaces'.
When our girls were little they loved the reading portion of their bedtime routine the best. We started with picture books then moved onto 'The Big Red Kite', and other Berenstain Bear books.
'Arthur' books by Mark Brown were huge and as they got a little older my husband read the 'Kit' books to them from American Girl.
I always thought this time with the girls was magical. Good stories could take you wherever you wanted to go.
My first thought on a design for this theme was of magic carpets, so I went with it. I started like I usually do, by researching online and in catalogues. Checked out the kids beds and bedding and started drawing. I wanted to put a bed on a magic carpet and include side tables, and accesories needed for bedtime like lamps, drinks of water or milk, slippers and a pet. I know bedtime stories didn't happen without our black lab Midnight by the bed.
Most drawings were done in my sketchbook and on my iPad and opened in photoshop where I layered the images in the color palette that was required. I designed 3 bed vignettes and thought that they worked best in a half drop layout. When the pattern was complete I added the slippers, books and animals to complete the warm bedtime feel. The stars and moon shapes were added to finish the pattern repeat!
All designs submitted had to use the restricted 'bedtime' palette, and previews were shown at half quarter size (21" x 18"). Deadline for entry was March 4th, 2014.
Voting starts on Thursday, March 6th 2014 and will go through Thursday, March 13th 2014. Please vote!
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| 'Bedtime Magic' ©2014 Patty Rybolt Designs |
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| Stan & Jan Berenstain! |
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| Mark Brown! |
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| American Girl - Kit! |
Most drawings were done in my sketchbook and on my iPad and opened in photoshop where I layered the images in the color palette that was required. I designed 3 bed vignettes and thought that they worked best in a half drop layout. When the pattern was complete I added the slippers, books and animals to complete the warm bedtime feel. The stars and moon shapes were added to finish the pattern repeat!
All designs submitted had to use the restricted 'bedtime' palette, and previews were shown at half quarter size (21" x 18"). Deadline for entry was March 4th, 2014.
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| Spoonflower's restricted palette for the bedtime challenge. |
Monday, February 24, 2014
Cuckoo for Lilla Rogers MATS Bootcamp!
I'm taking a break from Spoonflower this week to focus on an online course I am currently enrolled in from the Lilla Rogers Studio, 'MATS Bootcamp'. I have taken Lilla's 'Make Art That Sells' (MATS A + B) e-courses and loved what it did to help me update my portfolio and better understand what art buyers are looking for when they are buying art to go on products. MATS Bootcamp will help me to further develop my portfolio as well.
The first month's assignment was to design a cell phone case using elements in a cuckoo clock. I approached this assignment by drawing cuckoo clocks of all kinds. Then the winter olympics started in Russia and I thought the architectural elements in their buildings were beautiful and would be fun to incorporate into my design. I started by drawing lots and lots of building, clock and bird parts and then assembled and colored them in Photoshop. I then drew lots of elements to make patterns within my shapes using my iPad (adobe Ideas app). I finished the phone case idea and then added pattern coordinates using some of the elements from my cuckoo clock design.
Lilla's suggested colors were a big change for me because I lean more toward using cool colors than some of the warm tones in her palette. I think I'll be using these colors more often!
This is where my design ended up...
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| Lilla Rogers' MATS Bootcamp! |
Lilla's suggested colors were a big change for me because I lean more toward using cool colors than some of the warm tones in her palette. I think I'll be using these colors more often!
This is where my design ended up...
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| 'Cuckoo' ©2014 Patty Rybolt Designs |
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| Lilla's suggested color palette! |
Tuesday, February 11, 2014
History of Jazz
This week's Spoonflower Design Challenge is 'celebrating the rich history of jazz music'.
I got started by researching on Pinterest. I have a 'vintage graphics + ads' board that has a ton of old Jazz record covers from all of the greats like Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie and Duke Ellington.
I am such a fan of the design from this era. Most of the album covers and posters were done with a limited color palette to keep printing costs down, so I restricted my pattern to 2-colors and white. The green and blue combined at 50% on top of each other make the background olive color.
The instruments were all drawn on my iPad with the Adobe Ideas App. All of the images were done in black and white, sent to 'the cloud' and then colored in Photoshop on my desktop computer. The details like the pigeons, starbursts, dots, stripes and details on the instruments were done with india ink and a '0' round brush on copy paper. I like the painterly feel the marks give to the finished design. When the ink was dry I scanned the marks and colored them in photoshop as well.
Why the pigeons?
They just felt right!
Some of my favorite old album covers… (from Pinterest)!
Previews designed as a fat quarter fabric size (21" x 18"). Voting starts Thursday, February 13th, 2014 and continues until Thursday, February 20th, 2014. Please Vote!
I got started by researching on Pinterest. I have a 'vintage graphics + ads' board that has a ton of old Jazz record covers from all of the greats like Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie and Duke Ellington.
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| 'Jazz Groove' ©2014 Patty Rybolt Designs fabric, wallpaper, wall decals and gift wrap available soon at Spoonflower.com |
The instruments were all drawn on my iPad with the Adobe Ideas App. All of the images were done in black and white, sent to 'the cloud' and then colored in Photoshop on my desktop computer. The details like the pigeons, starbursts, dots, stripes and details on the instruments were done with india ink and a '0' round brush on copy paper. I like the painterly feel the marks give to the finished design. When the ink was dry I scanned the marks and colored them in photoshop as well.
Why the pigeons?
They just felt right!
Some of my favorite old album covers… (from Pinterest)!
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| Miles Davis, Newport Jazz Festival, 1958 |
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| Miles Davis |
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| Dizzy Gillespie… Fab illustrations on this one! |
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| "Cal Tjader Quintet" 1956 Fantasy Records |
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| Dizzy Gillespie |
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| Roy Eldridge, Collates, Cover by David Stone Martin |
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| Abner Graboff design, 1955, Pete Jolly Sextet. From Mid-centuria blog. |
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| Paul Bacon design Blue Note 10 'Mellow The Mood' |
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| Hans Michel + Günther Kieser, 1957 |
Wednesday, February 5, 2014
The Anti-Valentine!
Spoonflower design of the week had a different theme… the Anti-Valentine! They posted… "Sometimes we wish Cupid would pack up his arrows and go home. Hearts, flowers, and chocolate make us a little queasy. If you're sick of romantic comedies and love letters, we have the challenge for you! Create a design styled after a traditional cross stitch that expresses some Anti-Valentine's Day sentiments."
Research on the internet proved to be mostly skulls and dead roses and I thought this theme could be a bit too negative for me. I decided that I would take more of a comedic approach. Time was short for this assignment so I took to looking over my sketchbooks for inspiration. I zeroed inn on my snail, bunny and owl sketches and tried to come up with a way to twist them into the 'anti' theme.
My happy snail needed to stay happy, so I put her in control of her situation. Just added her purse and she was good to go. Owl's illustration was ready except she was happy in my sketch so I flipped her eyes to change her expression.
Bunny was recovered from some 'spring' sketches and transformed into a voodoo doll with some simple pins and a broken heart! The 'love is for suckers' idea came first then I simply drew a 'sucker'! Next I drew embroidery hoops as a frame for my designs.
All of my illustrations were done in india ink marker, scanned and colored in photoshop. The textures used on the embroidery hoops are simply a burlap photo and pen marks that I made and adjusted in Photoshop then colored and layered. (In Photoshop go to --- 'filter' - 'adjustments' - 'threshold').
My design above is shown at 1/4 size of the preview (preview is a fat quarter 21" x 18"). Voting starts on Thursday, February 6th, 2014 and continues to Thursday, February 13th, 2014. Please Vote!!
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| 'No Thanks Mr. Valentine!' ©2014 Patty Rybolt Designs |
My happy snail needed to stay happy, so I put her in control of her situation. Just added her purse and she was good to go. Owl's illustration was ready except she was happy in my sketch so I flipped her eyes to change her expression.
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| original owl drawing ©2014 Patty Rybolt Designs |
All of my illustrations were done in india ink marker, scanned and colored in photoshop. The textures used on the embroidery hoops are simply a burlap photo and pen marks that I made and adjusted in Photoshop then colored and layered. (In Photoshop go to --- 'filter' - 'adjustments' - 'threshold').
My design above is shown at 1/4 size of the preview (preview is a fat quarter 21" x 18"). Voting starts on Thursday, February 6th, 2014 and continues to Thursday, February 13th, 2014. Please Vote!!
Thursday, January 30, 2014
Chinese Paper Cutting!
The challenge this week at Spoonflower was designed to help celebrate the Chinese New Year! Designers were asked to submit patterns styled 'like a traditional Chinese paper cutting, using red and white only.'
#2. A tea tray with flowers… I thought adding a series of trays would be a natural way of having boarders that could be intricate or simple to cut. Elements such as a vase with flowers could add an organic element, and include a tea pot, tea cup, tea, sugar cubes, lemon and a honey pot. Other organic or geometric elements could be added as well to the tea pots and cups.
The first concept seemed like it would work well for a fabric pattern, so I decided on the terrarium idea. I started drawing with black marker on copy paper then folded the paper in half and cut away. When the design was all cut out I opened the paper carefully and it produced a mirror image. (I removed the cut pieces so the negative space could be used as well).
In traditional paper cutting the whole design would be cut out of one piece of paper, but for my purposes my design only had to look that way in the finished pattern. I did hand cut all of the pieces that were necessary for the pattern then I scanned them in to photoshop.
When I had a pattern that was suitable I added the organic elements to the containers. Some of the jars left odd spaces so I added my birds and some flowers, the cut squares were the final element. When coming up with a pattern I tend to place large elements, then medium and save the small for last. With the pattern complete I converted my black and white composition to red and white. Fin!
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| #1 'terrarium' sketchbook page ©2014 Patty Rybolt Designs |
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| #2 'tea tray' sketchbook page ©2014 Patty Rybolt Designs |
Traditionally a paper cutting is used for decoration during important celebrations, it can also bring good luck, prosperity, and good health in the new year.
Here is the process I used to come up with this design!
My approach to this design was to come up with images that could naturally be framed by some kind of container like a fish bowl or something so the images could be used in a pattern or could stand alone for other projects. I started with online research which lead me to a few ideas and then concept sketches.
#1. Terrarium - My sketchbook page of a terrarium or group of terrariums using bottles, jars, and various other containers. I thought the floral and plant stems would add a soft, organic feel to the project. I also intended to add other interesting features like mushrooms, bugs and possibly a gnome as another design element.
Here is the process I used to come up with this design!
My approach to this design was to come up with images that could naturally be framed by some kind of container like a fish bowl or something so the images could be used in a pattern or could stand alone for other projects. I started with online research which lead me to a few ideas and then concept sketches.
#1. Terrarium - My sketchbook page of a terrarium or group of terrariums using bottles, jars, and various other containers. I thought the floral and plant stems would add a soft, organic feel to the project. I also intended to add other interesting features like mushrooms, bugs and possibly a gnome as another design element.
#2. A tea tray with flowers… I thought adding a series of trays would be a natural way of having boarders that could be intricate or simple to cut. Elements such as a vase with flowers could add an organic element, and include a tea pot, tea cup, tea, sugar cubes, lemon and a honey pot. Other organic or geometric elements could be added as well to the tea pots and cups.
The first concept seemed like it would work well for a fabric pattern, so I decided on the terrarium idea. I started drawing with black marker on copy paper then folded the paper in half and cut away. When the design was all cut out I opened the paper carefully and it produced a mirror image. (I removed the cut pieces so the negative space could be used as well).
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| Stage 1 - folded design being cut |
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| paper cut terrarium |
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| stage 2 - still cutting.. |
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| 'paper cut' lily of the valley + leafy plant |
When I had a pattern that was suitable I added the organic elements to the containers. Some of the jars left odd spaces so I added my birds and some flowers, the cut squares were the final element. When coming up with a pattern I tend to place large elements, then medium and save the small for last. With the pattern complete I converted my black and white composition to red and white. Fin!
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| positive + negative Previews are shown at the fat quarter fabric size (21" x 18"). Voting begins today January 30th, 2014, and continues until February 6th, 2014! Please Vote!! |
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