Playing With My Designs...

Stationery Set Tonight  have been playing!  In my Surface Pattern Class by Rachel Taylor we were given an assignment to create a line of stationery from a brief.  The brief specified the elements desired in the line, and that it is to be aimed at a contemporary audience, trendy with a touch of sophistication.  Do you think I hit the target audience?  I hope so! The class is comprised of many wonderful and talented aspiring designers.  Most of them design digitally on their computers.  While I am fascinated by what they create, I am too "hands on" (or maybe that should be "hands messy) to design that way.  So I have taken my mixed media designs and manipulated  them to finish this assignment.  It's much more my style...and much more fun for me! I started with this background that I painted.  I scanned it before adding the words or picture. [caption id="attachment_575" align="aligncenter" width="692" caption="Believe In Your Beauty
Click Here To Purchase"][/caption] Then I manipulated it to create this pattern board - taking snippets of it that I thought were visually interesting. [caption id="attachment_576" align="aligncenter" width="692" caption="Wild Garden Pattern"][/caption] From there I took the pieces of this pattern and repurposed them into the pieces of the stationery set according to the size specs from our brief.  This was really fun for me to do.  I am imagining seeing it on the shelves of Barnes & Noble and wanting to write on these with a fresh sharpened pencil!!

Mixed Media Pattern Design - Just Mary Style!

Oooh I am having fun with this!!!  I have been working on a class called the Art and Business of Surface Pattern Design put on by the very lovely Rachel Taylor and Beth Nichols.  I was really struggling with the class - most of the designs are done or heavily manipulated on the computer.  I am simply NOT a digital designer.  My heart sings when my hands get messy.  I am called to play with paint and canvas, not a mousepad or illustrator wand.  BUT, the content and the way pattern is used really does speak to me. So I looked for an out of the box way to marry traditional surface pattern design with my mixed media love affair.  And I think I found it!  When I do a painting, I always start with a background.  The finished work will normally have some type of central image or theme to it.  But the background is pure texture and pattern.  So why not carve a "Surface Pattern" out of my "Mixed Media" background? With this in mind I pulled out sections from some of my finished work, and from some backgrounds that don't have completed central images yet.  In the class we have been taught how to make pattern boards.  So here are my out of the box Pattern Boards - Just Mary style!!