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!!

Great Barrier Reef

The challenge of the week was designed to honor Australia Day on January 26th. Designers were asked to produce a pattern based on the hundreds of species of animals, plants, and coral that make the reef their home.

Our family was traveling this weekend, so I approached this assignment a little differently. While waiting at airports and during any downtime, I pulled out my iPad. Almost all of this project was done with my finger and sometimes a stylus on my iPad using the Adobe Ideas App, this app allowed me to draw and edit my drawings in a multi layer program and then send them to my home computer where I applied the color and arranged the images when I got home. 

I wanted to keep the color choices simple because the drawings had a reasonable amount of detail. (The turtle is my favorite!)

'The Reef'
©2014 Patty Rybolt Designs

Previews: fat quarter fabric size (21" x 18"). Voting starts later today and goes through early Thursday, January 30th 2014. Please Vote!!

Nantucket Regatta!

Usually I post my entries for the Spoonflower challenges each week by Wednesday, but last week I had two daughters to ready for their prom. There were hair appointments, nails, shoes to find and of course the dresses! They looked beautiful!  

But now... back to the challenge.  Last weeks challenge was Sailing! Designers were to create a fabric design with  the theme of sailing using no more than five colors and using a restricted palette. Previews were shown at the fat quarter size (21" x 18"). Deadline for entry was Tuesday, April 23, 2013. Voting began on Thursday, April 25th and continues through May 2nd.

When I thought of sailing, the first place that came to mind was the beautiful island of Nantucket! I was inspired to create a simple skiff and loosely illustrate the race around the island. 

First step is always research... I've only been to Nantucket a few times and I knew it had been a historic whaling community, and I wanted to include a whale in my design somewhere, but other than that it was important to get the facts. What does the island look like? What kind of sailboats would be found there? What are some defining features of the island? 

I started with a simple line drawing of the sailboat, whale, seagulls, a map of the island, and the unique lighthouses from Nantucket, then scanned my illustrations. The next step was to use photoshop to add color from the restricted palette and come up with a composition that would work for fabric repeats, wallpaper and gift wrap. I added the type and finally the lifesaver as a focal point to connect the images!

The Nantucket Regatta is one of the Nantucket Race Week events where, every summer, spectators and artists enjoy watching sailors race around the historic island! This wonderful tradition highlights the beauty and charm of Nantucket, MA, USA!

Nantucket Regatta
©2013 Patty Rybolt Designs