Daily Sketch: 41-50 & Design Challenge Submission

***If you are here because of the "Learn Surface Pattern Design from Scratch" Blog Tour by Bonnie Christine, my day is actually Tuesday, September 23rd.  The previous blogger Mayacoa jumped the gun a little bit. :) See you then, I can't wait!! Click on this link for the main page***

So I have completed 10 more days of daily sketching.  This time I really haven't been able to get very detailed with my drawings...but really I've been focusing on ink pen drawings because my new found joy is to bring those pictures into Adobe Illustrator and add color to them.

Day 41: These were mock-up sketches.  They are items I wanted to put my patterns on to see what they would look like in real life.  You will see what I mean if you continue on this post a little ways.

Day 42: We have a frequent visitor on the back porch of our house.  At first I thought he was a hummingbird, but we took a closer look and it's actually a very large moth that sounds and acts like a hummingbird.  So strange, but interesting. :)

Day 46: "Thinking of You" is for a greeting card I made that you can see if you scroll down.

Day 47-50: You may notice I've updated my blog design.  These were sketches for that.  It's a work in progress still...I'm figuring things out little by little.

On the next part of this post, I decided to share with you my design project I have been madly working on for the past month.  This was part of a contest I learned about after taking a Creative Live course called, "Design Surface Patterns From Scratch".  I poured my heart and soul into this, but sadly...it didn't win...I mean that wasn't a surprise, but it didn't even make an honorable mention.  Whew! That was hard.  But the winner, and the honorable mentions certainly deserved it.  You can see them all here!!

After the reality of how awful I did hit me...well it was really hard to swallow.  Being a fabric designer, that's something I've dreamed about for a long time.  I really just lost the joy of making art for a few days.  When I drew that butterfly on Day 49, I think I starting getting it back.   Art does bring me joy, and even if maybe no one thinks it's any good, I'll still do it.  So I'm moving on. :)

Here is my fabric collection I submitted.  It's called "Glean" and basically has little pieces of my life this summer all through it.  It's shown in two color ways.

I realize it's hard to see the detail, so here is a close up.

These are my mock-ups I told you about earlier.

And this is a greeting card I made with the "Summer Rain" pattern, and my umbrella.

I still look at this collection as a work in progress.  I think I might have been caught up with the artwork, and had too much detail going on.  I'm not sure yet.  But I am sure that making patterns is lots of fun!  I'll spend more time on this and post a better collection later!  It's nice to not have a deadline.  One month really goes by so fast.  During that month, I had multiple overnight visitors at the house, I started a new part-time job, my husband was gone for almost two weeks, and I had four kids to take care of.  It was a lot!! But at least I finished it, and learned so very very much in such a short time!

If you have any suggesting for improving my pattern skills, please let me know! I love hearing from you.

Thanks for reading!!