Another Page from my Sketchbook

Another page from my sketchbook. I have used very heavy water colour paper to make this sketchbook myself and I am happy to make good use of it now. The paper can handle a good deal of water, but the texture does show up over heavily in the scans!

Page From my Sketchbook

At the moment I am busy designing patterns mostly on the computer, but I really need to break away so now and then from the computer screen and work with paint, pencil, brushes and paper.
This is one of the sketches that I made from the rose hips that stand next to my house.

Every morning I have to get outside to open up the shutters and this rosebush stands between the two windows. It does not look pretty at all, the roses and leaves are gone, the branches are dark and bare, but if you look closely, the whimsical dried leaves from the rose hips make beautiful wirly shapes.

Too bad though, it does not matter how many sketches I make, whether in pencil, with a marker or in water colour, I just don't seem to be able to capture the whimsical beauty of these pretty swirly things. I need to sketch them more often untill I will get it right. :-) But that is the purpose of sketching: practise, practise, practise....

Pattern Design Published on the Print&Pattern Blog

Just found out that one of my pattern designs have been published on the famous Print&Pattern blog:
http://printpattern.blogspot.com/2012/01/surface-design-students.html

It is a simple pattern, made from a sketch of a leaf from my garden. Thanks to Laura Coyle's class about Adobe Illustrator (on reneepearson.com) I started using vector software again in my digital design work and rediscovered my love for designing patterns - I used to do textile design and web design in the past - and have now enrolled in a surface pattern design class. That keeps me so busy that I neglected this blog - sorry about that!

It is fun to see that one of my designs was good enough to be published on this blog that is all about surface pattern design! :-)