My Sunshine Collection - click image to view larger.
Happy Friday Creative Souls! Today I am answering the question submitted: How do you work up your designs?
If you listen to Tara Reed's Ask Calls - I am going to steal her line - "It depends." So, I thought I would pick a collection and give you an idea of how I did it, CliffsNotes style :-)
I like putting pencil to paper. I would bet that 98% of my art starts this way. In the past I have inked it first and then watercolor it. *You might like this post: A Peek into Watercolor and Ink Process - read the comments, there are some good tips! For this collection I drew the line art in my trusty sketchbook, one of those nice ones with the fabulous paper! Then, I scanned in the line art. For example the potted flower above is 3" wide by 8.5" tall, 1600 dpi. That is probably a bit of over kill for most products (It is 44" high at 300dpi...)
Next, with the image all cleaned up and no background in Photoshop, I made a new layer (or two) below the line art layer and filled the shapes with color and pattern. I expanded the selection for the fill just a few pixels so that the black line of the line art traps the color.
I am guessing that tablet owners can do this more quickly! If you use a tablet - let me know how you like it - thanks! (Christmas is coming :-)
You might also like: Creating Art for Licensing - Make it easier on Yourself
Peek into Palette Knife Pumpkin Painting
Thank you for stopping by! Looking forward to hearing from you :-)
Thanks, Annie! I love to see how others work. Very cute drawings!
ReplyDeleteHi Leslie! Thanks so much for stopping by the blog and commenting!
DeleteHi Anne,
ReplyDeleteHow did you make the back ground patterns on your shapes? Did you draw them with photo shop?? I love your art work its very whimsical!!
The sun is shining and its a beautiful day!!!!!
Deb
Hi Anne,
ReplyDeleteHow did you make the back ground patterns on your shapes? Did you draw them with photo shop?? I love your art work its very whimsical!!
The sun is shining and its a beautiful day!!!!!
Deb
Hi Deborah :-)
DeleteMost of the background textures/patterns I drew the shapes. The Rays of the sun have the little hearts I drew.
In photoshop I create a little repeat pattern say 2"x2" or 4"x4" depending on the scale and repeat I want. The clouds that are a background on the blog are the same and a much easier example to see :-) There is a link on my Useful Stuff Blog page to creating repeat patterns http://annietroe.blogspot.com/p/useful-stuff.html Thanks so much for stopping by the blog! <3
Anne,
ReplyDeleteYet another question. when you do your sketch your images, do you draw them a certain size? Or don't you worry about that too much, knowing you can enlarge them in photo shop?
Is there a good image size to try to stick with that enlarges well?
Thanks deb
Hey you, I tend to sketch smaller than 8.5 x 11 because I grab my cheap computer printer paper :-)
DeleteI scan them in around 1,600dpi or what every will work out so that I can print a 300 dpi image around 3 feet (36 inches) in size. I don't know that you need to go THAT large, but I am assuming down the road decorative flag companies etc. will be printing at 300 dpi. If you photograph your work. choose the largest image size (biggest file size) you can on your camera. --Hope that helps a bit.