Well, hello.
Wow – first post of the year. I know you’ve been wondering where I’ve been. I’ve been here, thinking and contemplating. There’s been so much to contemplate lately.
I made these little mushroom motifs because I thought it would be fun to practice my drawing skills in Illustrator after being away from it for so long.
I was surprised at how quick it all came back to me. But the drawing part is easy. What is difficult is working with a limited color palette and then taking those same exact designs and creating them in different color ways. There’s a real trick to it. So the focus of this exercise was to get more thoughtful and organized with my pallet. I ended up with 18 colors and my ultimat goal is to limit myself to 5. Obviously, I need more practice.
For the second colorway, I created a palette with brighter colors, then very mindfully used the recolor artwork tool to make the adjustments, rather than just my usual way of toggling the random selection button. I also added some textures and made a texture for the background to use as an overlay ontop of the solid background color.
After the two colorways were decided, I then created different patterns with each of the separate elements. I’ll be uploading those to my Spoonflower and RedBubble shops very soon. In fact, they may already be posted before this post comes out. But, I’ll make another post about that. I will eventually work on another colorway, but this is all I have for now.
Overall, I am pretty happy with the designs, but I am proud of myself for working in a slower, more methodical way. It does take patience. This exercise was also helpful in keeping me focused on the importance of organization and having a plan. I tend to jump in and draw and just see what happens, which often ends up taking me in several different directions, and then nothing gets finished. And randomly choosing colors willy-nilly often results in a palette of more than 30 colors where many of those colors are so close that one could easily replace 2, 3, or even 4 colors.
So, that’s what I’ve been up to so far this year. I am trying to spend less time fussing and stressing about all of this and starting to embrace the phrase “good enough.” It’s something I’ve spent a lot of time contemplating this year – developing a different mindset and doing more for myself rather than trying to gain followers or grow my social media. I just want to relax and enjoy other things in my life.
Thanks for reading – hard to make such a topic interesting or entertaining.
Have an wonderful week!
Marie Friddle 