I’m planning to create a series of laser cut wood blocks that I can make multiple prints from. I’m basing my designs on a series of original watercolours I painted last year As I’ve said before I’m not done with my series of Jacobean patterns, the strong floral designs are ideal for creating lino or wood print blocks that I … Read More
I’m planning to create a series of acrylic paintings on wood panels. I normally paint on canvas, but have been recently painting watercolours onto prepared wood frame panels and really enjoyed it, and thought I would now use acrylics. I’m not done with my series of Jacobean patterns, I really like to explore a theme thoroughly, and constantly seem to … Read More
Patterns from the 16th Century. This weeks drawing board is full of 16th Century Jacobean patterns featuring flowers and leaves (of course!). Top row: Top sketch book with colour swatch samples for leaves, mainly yellows, blues and greens, lower sketchbook with gum leaf pattern in watercolours using tonal shades mixed up from Payne’s Grey, Ultramarine and Crimson. Square 6″ … Read More
If you have bought one of my press out, self assembly laser cut boxes, chances are you have followed this link for a detailed and illustrated tutorial on how to assemble your box. The boxes, in their component form are laser cut out onto 3mm thick plywood sheets, approx A4 in size, they have assembly instructions written onto the press … Read More
I splashed out on some fancy art pencils recently, and designed a bespoke pencil box to keep them in. I made the box out of 3mm birch plywood using our laser cutter.Rather than buying something off the shelf, I wanted to make a lidded box that would be an exact fit for my pencils, so that when all 12 pencils … Read More
I used one of my own fabric designs – Gum Doodle Teal, in a lightweight cotton fabric to make a simple tablet cover. I selected cotton wadding for the padding and white cotton fabric for the lining, then I simply laid out the layers of fabric in order on a flat surface, placed the tablet on top, drew around it … Read More
I took a recent watercolour sketch and turned it into a wood block ready for printing within an hour.This was an exercise in using technology to retain creative spontaneity – I usually use the computer to neaten and ‘vectorise’ my initial artwork, creating digital image files that I can use for pattern making, but in this case, I made a … Read More
I’ve added a new design to my Gum shadows range of fabrics. For this pattern I used a half drop pattern repeat. This is a really useful pattern repeat technique if your initial design appears too regimented in a regular linear design repeat format. This particular design is based upon gum tree leaf silhouettes. I began the design process with … Read More
Continuing with my botanic pattern designs, I have recently been designing some patterns specifically for printing on fabric. Designing for large scale printing: fabric, wallpaper, wrapping paper etc. usually involves creating a pattern repeat. In this post I’ll detail the process I followed to turn my original field sketches of gum trees into an abstract print pattern series I call … Read More
I’ve been developing a collection of surface pattern designs with a botanic theme. My process begins with watercolour sketches and observations in the field. From these sketches I create a set of patterns that would work well in a variety of mediums, including lino relief print. When considering designing for lino printing, I often find myself looking at the outlines … Read More