What’s on my desk Wednesday

INSPIRATION GATHERING

From inspiration to design

Anyone who’s ever taken a walk with me will know I usually come home with a few ‘finds’ in my pocket which I use either as inspiration for a drawing, digital sketch or just to photograph and scan into Illustrator. These were my finds from last week, a collection of seeds, nuts and berries gathered during a long walk in the forest with my dog.

I love this time of year especially for the seed heads which are everywhere. I find them just as fascinating as the flowers they started out as. Sometimes they’re even better and more interesting. This collection made a perfect study for drawings and photos.

By the middle of the week I had a few images ready to work on in Illustrator.

After a bit more work plus finding a suitable colour palette to work from I came up with a few designs I really love. I’ve turned these into greetings cards which are now in my Etsy shop.

I’m super happy with how they turned out and so glad I walk everywhere with my eyes on the ground and a little net bag in my pocket.

Have a great week and I’ll be back soon

Jaine x

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ALL NEW ADVENTURES IN SURFACE DESIGN

Wow such a lot has happened since I last updated the blog. If you wondered whether I’d left the country or perhaps decided to take a rest, you’d be wrong. These past few months (almost half the year in fact) I’ve been busy teaching myself surface design and pattern design. It’s been a long old process and at times I’ve wondered if I’d ever get it at all. With a computer full of images, drawings and paintings waiting to be digitized and ideas coming out of my ears, I made a few steps towards fulfilling an ambition to see my designs on actual products. With my background in papercrafts naturally I’m gravitating towards prints, cards, journal covers and wrapping papers but of course there’s nothing stopping me from seeing my prints on fabrics, wallpaper or mugs. Just about anything is possible so I’ve learned.

After taking many workshops and courses over the past few months to learn properly how to create patterns in Illustrator, I enrolled into Summer School with Make It In Design. It turned out this was just the push I needed to put all my theory into practice. We were given real briefs from trend experts and encouraged to source our own inspiration, come up with images and designs then try them out on mock up’s.

My first few patterns were a bit dodgy until I found my feet but once I started to think like a pattern designer it became much easier. I’m beyond thrilled with myself. I joined their intermediate track as I didn’t think I had the skills to go advanced but I’ve definitely surprised myself with what I’ve achieved. I think Summer School has really given me the push I needed to take all of the theory I’ve learned over the past few months and put it into practice. I’m not sure if it’s all totally cohesive to be a collection but I like it.

Most of these designs started out as hand drawn sketches, painted, or in the case of the doily’s gel printed and I love it. It’s been an amazing experience and I’ve learned a lot for sure.

Here’s a little look at what I have so far.

Onwards and upwards I think.

Jaine

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WATERCOLOUR FLORAL PAINTING

If someone was to ask me what my style of painting was, I’d be a bit stumped to be honest. I tend to flit about a lot but I do become a little bit obsessive when it comes to trying new things.

For example, I like to draw and paint from nature as near to realistic as possible and love to add the smallest details. Pen and ink, watercolour pencils and paints all add their bit to create something which I think looks fairly decent. However, this takes time and I don’t always have that much time to create. Right now I’m diving deeper into surface design and my goal is to paint first, scan then work on my designs on the computer with the aim of printing them onto cards for example. These detailed paintings don’t lend themselves that well to surface design anyway so I need to come up with something which does!

By contrast to the super detailed sketches I love abstract painting and design and admire the artists who effortlessly produce abstract floral designs in minutes. Recently I’ve been busy practicing loosening up my paintings and I love it. It’s nowhere near perfect yet but I’ve become a bit obsessed by this style. To some people it might look sloppy and a bit of a cop out compared to the detailed drawings I’ve done in the past but believe me it’s far harder than it looks to stop it from looking a bit cartoony.

These need quite a bit of work but that’s just what I intend to do. So it’s back to the desk and on with the practice.

See you soon,

Jaine x

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interactive albums

Imagine for a minute a friend comes over for a chat (it’s life after Covid!) and you want to show off the latest photos of your grandchild. You’re trying to find the pictures on your phone, then when you have found them it’s difficult to show and tell with them turning like some whirling dervish on the screen and anyway the images are too small to look at without glasses on. Now picture the same friend, same scenario but this time you reach for the beautiful album filled with lovely memories which you had commissioned from Basement Studio!

That’s my vision anyway because I am that person with fingers which do what they want and a challenged phone which somewhere holds a collection of wonderful photos of my grandson.

I’ve been spending as much time as possible in the studio experimenting with interactive albums. Finding different ways to put them together and how to make room for as many photos as possible in a small space.

I think I’ve at last found my perfect place and settled on four sizes to sell in the shop. These will be made to order but I’ll also have a few ready made too.