20 Patterns in 7 Days: A Self-Imposed Challenge

I’m taking a bit of a break in my 100 days of art to create some surface pattern designs for Immersion, an 8-week class held each spring by Bonnie Christine. During the 8 week course, we have two different Implementation Weeks, where we take a week off from learning new content to put into practice the things we’ve already learned. For our second Implementation Week, I have decided to challenge myself to create 20 pattern ideas in 7 days.

I want to focus solely on composition and color — without getting bogged down in the seamless repeat. Creating a seamless repeat, for me, is a rather technical process and seems to dampen down my sense of freedom and creativity. By taking the seamless repeat out of the equation, I hope to be able to be free to study design elements without worrying about what the repeat looks like. I can always come back and create a seamless repeat later.

This feels so freeing to me because I feel like the elements of composition are really important and should be allowed to bloom and grow in their own way.

Before I started creating patterns, I spent time making marks and illustrations on paper and scanning them in to a master document in Adobe Illustrator:

My master document full of scanned drawings and doodles to arrange into patterns.

Most of the drawings and doodles have to do with animals, nature, the outdoors, and topographic maps. I’m inspired by my surroundings growing up in and living in the Rocky Mountain West, so you’ll see American Bison, my bird dogs, snow geese, cattle, and lots of organic shapes.

Stay tuned for tomorrow’s post where I’ll show you how I created a simple color palette from a painting I made.