Pattern exploration

After coming home from an intense new experience with hot yoga, and being sunburned and not wanting to go outside I had a random creative burst!  :)
While using printed fabrics for my illustrations is fun and all, sometimes I just have a particular design in my mind, and found fabrics just won't cut it. I have toyed with the idea of making my own printed patterns, and today I actually got down to doing it. And it was surprisingly fun.

I forget how flexible adobe illustrator can be, and how much fun I had fooling around in graphic design class. Seeing as most of my finished work is in digital format, it makes sense to have my own collection of digital patterns. One of my main concerns was how to make the pattern symmetrical and repeatable. That was surprisingly way too easily accomplished in illustrator. This is what i did!

I started out with 1 line and created this object. 

 I repeated the object, rotated it, overlapped it, and changed the stroke to create different looks!

Its repeatable! Woot!

After repeating and getting rid of a few green background squares, it looks like this. 

So it was a very simple process, very simple design, and  I hope to try more unique and intricate patterns in the future. This was all done in under 20 minutes, and the exploration on just that one object is endless! 

Problem solved! And its so much fun making these! Seriously, why hadn't I tried this sooner?!
-kicks self in butt for being lazy-

Bun [WIP]

Ive been going through lots of magazines that I had gotten from the library as discards and choosing my favourite pages. Ive been creating a binder full of poses, colours, pretty clothes and awesome hair... and needless to say, I have been drawing lots too! Most of the pictures are in my sketchbook and not yet scanned, but here is one that I started on the computer.
I decided to draw an asian girl this time, and I love profiles. So I'm really looking forward to this one completed! I had originally told myself that the next drawing I do will be using a burnt orange colour and an aquamarine, but I prefer the deep reds and light greyish blues for this one.

(This is how I had been wearing my hair for the past month, minus the bangs, but not anymore! Snazzy new haircut ;D This is a tribute to my bun.. which I will miss!)

This post also proves that I am not dead, and indeed being somewhat productive. XD 

In other news, I have recently become addicted to Pinterest and have been browsing it for hours and pinning different things instead of being productive. I now have tons of pretty images in my head-- and on my pinboards! I plan on collecting more images first hand in toronto for this long weekend! Ill bring my trusty digital camera (which I hope to soon be replacing with that d7000) and I hope to take some pretty sunset shots from the CN tower. Which I have never been on before, despite me living here my whole life. 

Hope everyone has a lovely long weekend! 

Tanya

Blogger frustration

Sooo I had created this lovely list of blogs that I really liked to watch, and now I cant seem to find them anywhere. Where did they go? :( I have looked and refreshed my reading list over and over again, still no luck or any record that I have actually been following these blogs. I am not sure if this is a glitch or if I have to go back through and re-follow all the blogs I was following before? Either way... this is frustrating! Maybe I just dont know how to navigate around the new layout, I dont know.
If anyone has any solutions on how to get my list back, let me know! I miss it :P

Chrysanthemum

Here is the completed picture that I posted about! I used some new patterns this time, and after lots of experimentation with colours I like this one best. Here is what it looked like:

And this is what it looks like completed!

I really enjoyed working with this one, I had so many great colour options so it was fun to experiment with all of them! I had found a bunch of new patterns too, so I had to try every one out.... xD Project save for camera is starting this month, and I have all these awesome discontinued patterns turned pillows at home, so hopefully soon I will have an awesome camera to take photos of them! (ok ok, i know i don't need a great camera to shoot them, its just an excuse that is making me feel better about it)

Now I am going to go read my new book and enjoy the fact that I am NOT outside in this yucky weather. Have a great week!

Chrysanthemum [WIP]

While browsing through some illustrations earlier on today, I was reminded of the direction that I had originally wanted to go in through school, but didn't because I felt pushed in a different direction. The way I have been drawing up until now requires very minimal to no reference at all-- which is nice sometimes, but what I really want to do is use reference! I love just looking at something and drawing it rather than pulling it out of my mind... it is one of the things I have missed in my life for a while now. I feel like through school I relied to heavily on reference so I just stopped all together. I think I need to get over that and accept the fact that maybe reference is good for things I am not particularly strong at! So I am going to try this way-- a more realistic rather than cartoony line drawing. I have been looking at cameras recently (DSLR to be specific!) and I am really excited about how I can pair photography with my illustration! The thought of taking my own reference pictures is really exciting!! What isn't exciting is the price of these things, but I will worry about that when it comes time to purchase one. :P

As for this picture in specific, I kept seeing photos of really pretty Chrysanthemum flowers, and thought it would be lovely to incorporate into an illustration. I plan on doing more to it later, but I thought I would just add this now to prove that I am indeed still here! :P

This is the picture that I first saw while browsing, so I hope it is indeed a Chrysanthemum flower, either way it is a beautiful photo and a beautiful flower~ 

http://ceriaz.deviantart.com/art/Why-is-a-flower-44610659

^That photo belongs to that page :)

Hope to add the completed work soon!

IF- Shades

I was not satisfied with my first edit/linework that I did a few weeks back of this girl. I felt that when I created the lines over the pencil in photoshop, I lost lots of the details that I had. So I decided to work on it from a different technique and kept the original pencil. And added a cool pair of shades, of course. :P I am much more happy with it now, and I will stop working on this picture and move on. 

Original: 

Verge

A random personal logo project. I just picked a random name and went with it. I wanted something eye catching, bold but still matching the marketing field. I experimented with various shapes/fonts/colours, but these were my favourite.

Things I lost

So in my 4th year of school, very very last day of the 1st semester, I lost my usb key... which had a large portion of my graphic design from that semester on it! I unfortunately didn't back up most of it... but luckily, I still have some printouts! Rather than scanning them in, I am just going to recreate them, as I wasn't completely happy with them before. 

This is from a project where we had to create a book cover based on a short story.

"Angie left Virgil -- left the baby too. For the past five months Virgil's been planning for today's homecoming.

Angie says in her fidgety bird voice, "Lo, Virg. Ain't too gooda day is it? Waddyathink, Virg, waddyathink?

"Not so good. She's in the other room."

A tear in the window shade angles light into a cardboard box where the baby lies, dreamless. She is in her best clothes, as if dressed for a tea party. Virgil strokes her soft-hair and pale cheek. He ties the lid closed with white string.

Then his mind explodes into a pile of loose hay."

Lilac

I liked the way my previous random portrait came out, so I decided to do another one! I still like the first one a lot better, but this one was okay too. It took a long time for me to find a colour combination that I actually liked... although it is quite monotone now.

(What it looked like before.. i kinda like it better :P)

Aside from the drawing, I just finished the series of The Maze Runner by James Dashner. It was such a good series! It was a very quick read, but excellent nonetheless! It is a teen book about a boy who wakes up in an elevator, unable to recall many of the details of his life. He finds himself in a place called The glade, surrounded by a maze and filled with other teenage boys. He begins asking questions, soon to find out that none of the other boys know why they are there, but they try to solve the maze every day in hopes of getting out. Everything changes when a girl is sent to them through the elevator, as a "trigger". It is a really intriguing series, after finishing all 3 books I really thought about it and it stuck with me! Apparently they are making a movie out of it too.... that is something to look forward to :D
Anyways I just had to share about this series because I enjoyed it that much!
Byebye for now!

Poster of a girl

I haven't posted anything in a long time, I got pretty busy for a while there! I hope everyone has had a wonderful start to the new year! I feel like it is going too fast already. But I do have a lot of free time now so that is promising! I have been doing a lot of reading lately... so drawing has been pushed back a tad, but I am getting back into it again ;) Oh and I am also doubly distracted by video games now as well.... we just got a ps3 so yeah.... more of that than ever.... XD
But back to the drawing! I decided to draw this girl last night when I got bored. I do draw sometimes in my sketchbook with pencil, but lately I have been finding that I just love the tablet so much more. Eventually I will scan my pencil drawings to the computer and work on linework... but for now, my computer is my favorite sketch pad :) I just love the flexibility of digital work, how I can lay on colours, change the colour of my lines and just plain experiment for hours!

New Year

1st blog post of the new year! I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday, and a great start to 2012 :)

Recently I did some wall paintings for 2 wonderful kids.
Football themed room :

There are footballs painted all around this room! The number 12 is Devon's football number!

Music themed room:

(not the best photo, there is a cord running from the microphone that was cut out) 

Both really liked their rooms, so I am happy about that!  It was nice to actually paint something again, it had been so long! Hopefully I get to do more like this in the new year :)

Colours

I found some cool fashion magazines on the discard shelf at the library on Friday. After looking through them, this is what I got. Its an old character of mine, drawn a bit differently.
I like the look of a gradient on a sketch. Dunno if I will go much further than experimentation in photoshop with this one.