Lessons

Lesson Info

Block Demo Repeat: Painting

So I'm trying to fill out the page here a little bit, and sometimes I'll you know, a race and rearrange, but right now I'm actually feeling pretty feeling this is pretty good, and I want to make sure that this is going to be interesting on both sides. I'm going to actually bring us around a little bit more so that its full but not I'm still not hitting that edge, and I'm gonna put a geometric and here to, um and inputting variety in the design, you know, to make sure that there's like different things to look at, um, sir, I moves around, but I'm trying to keep cem elements, you know, that are similar moving through, and I'm doing all this in pencil first cause then I'm going to go if I want a race, I can I will either than go on and do it, do the wine work with, um, brush and and gosh, or I will go on and do pen and ink sometimes it just depends on the look that I'm I'm going for in the final piece, but I'd say experiment because you never know, like what material? I mean, I didn't thi...

nk that pen in ink, you know, I love using pen in ink. But I didn't realize it was coming, really, it would come really close to it does come really close to what I do on the surface of clay, and I was trying to keep my brand identity, sir, similar throughout whatever I'm doing, so I wanted to try to figure out howto get a similar line quality in the surface of the two d work that I was making as the three d work, so that was ah, motivation for me. So I love that geometric pattern that's sort of happening with sort of lotus, almost pattern that's happening down the bottom. I'm going toe play around with filling up the space. Yes, sally was asking when you said you're talking about getting to the edge. Are you talking about the corners of that of that eight by eight square? Yeah, I don't wantto so where I've drawn these lines for the starting in the beginning, I don't want to go right up to the edge here, because if I if I have something that goes over this line, then it's not going to repeat when it matches up in a tile. So you want to make sure that you're and and the same goes, if I'm going to repeat this top to bottom is, well, then I want to make sure that this is nothing's going over or dump bumping right into the edge up here so that when I put them all together to repeat as a pattern that the that they are not going tio that it'll work basically so I'm playing around with this sort of leaf this is going to be a little bit more of a challenge this one going right? I am going right up to the edge here pretty much but I don't want to go over so that I know that when these two edges meet it looks like a pretty seamless pattern was a little bit I'm challenging myself a little bit here with us making sure that I'm doing myself enough for him make that last one that goes right up and then I'm gonna, um there was sort of a cool dot tryingto so that when this stacks maybe eventually it's going to look pretty so I mean one of the advantages of doing something like this online is that it's going to really naturally lineup exactly because you're working with super exact measurements in the computer so there is going to be a little bit of cleanup in photo shop for me to make this work seamlessly and we'll talk about that once I've scanned and colored the artwork um inspiration image so I was playing with you know, this floral garland and this sort of area down in here thank you, thanks yeah so um you know I will sometimes like step away and look and see and I feel like there's you know this area here maybe could use something andi I kind of liked the idea of there being a little more in in this area as well um well I just try to see if I can to do a secondary line in there so this is a really great for like a like a tile or linear repeat that goes in a line so almost like a border on ah wallpaper or the edge you know I could totally see this becoming the edge of a skirt or you know, something like a pillow trim or you know, I think you kind of if this were repeated in a stripe that would be also you know, another wave of doing this pattern but it's definitely got its limitations because you're going sort of it's a directional thing so you're kind of going one direction or another but if you're creating something that repeats a siri's of stripes that could be really could be really cool to see this um and I'm gonna from natalie says she's still not clear what the lower section is relative to that main pattern that you're doing yes oh what you're creating their there's almost like two repeats and won so in this case this lower section is going to connect and continue so this is just gonna be like a seamless border almost uh once I put it all together so this image is just going to be able to line up so you could do two different, you know? Or you could do just one like in some ways I've broken this up into two like you don't have you can break this same in eight inch square into as many different sections as you want to as long as you have, like I could have done ate different stripes with eight different sections and or I could have just done one right down the middle and filled up that hold space, but I felt like if I had just on one that I'd have one repeat, that was that, you know, this huge space I mean, you could make this as narrow are as wide as you want, teo and you can divided oppa's many times as you want to I just knew that I wanted to play with those two elements of the space, so I loved that garland and the and the sort of geometric pattern at the bottom, and I thought those two elements would work really nicely together so it might depend on your inspiration too, like I just did a repeat like this that was sort of a riff on ah provincial pattern and so it had like twelve different stripes in it and I just went with different sections of it with different areas and sometimes even within that I repeated some things, but they were looked different because I did it by hand every time. So instead of just having, you know, one section that I'm repeating using photo shop, I just decided that, you know, I wanted to make the whole block by hand so that when it repeats there's, those quirky little spots that are your hand, so hopefully that answers that question, but yeah, there's no there's, no rhyme or reason for why I just wanted this to be repeated together, so I like the idea of them going together, but I could have just done that one section. So as long as you have where you started with your marks on the left page is private outside of the box and the right side of the box, you're gonna end up with a really nice, um, a really nice repeating pattern. So once once you are done with the drawing or the outline and you're happy with this, how the space is filled up, then you can go ahead and start coloring it in, and I'm going to use, um, gua and some water and and make space for myself, but for my work table. Um and the color I might reference back to that but I'm not gonna worry about color right now I'm only gonna work with black and white so you'll probably be able to see this pattern a little bit better on your screen now that I'm gonna add this black line and for those ofyou work who already have another standing of basics and working in with computers or beyond, you'll understand why working in a black line is really helpful when you're when you're doing work in photoshopped or an illustrator if you have a black line is much easier to vector rise or my understanding I've never really used illustrator, so I don't know why I'm even talking about I don't use it but my in photo shop is easier to colorize a line when it's black and it and white and it's also easier to, um make adjustments to it and then work back from there so often I will just work in black and white um and then work back from that so that I have, um a layer in my photoshopped files that is easily colored so the next so what I'm gonna do during this next chunk is just literally reap go over what I did and erase it and then scan it and then we're going to color it in the next segment of the class but I want it so there's multiple different ways of working from one once this is outlined there's multiple ways of working with it but I think just know that at the outset that this is is in preparation for a being used in photo shop or as as ah photocopy so I can color the photocopies where I can color, which is basically what I'm planning on doing today by hand or you can scan this in and start cholera in coloring it in using photoshopped or illustrator um and have used that line work from there and it you scan this typically before you start coloring it so that you have that has its own layer in photo shop on dh then you khun you can mess this up and do whatever you want later you have that retained that an original line work. The other thing I would say that you know I've become I've gotten more comfortable with brushes that you can use in a photo shop for coloring in and retaining us or the watercolor look but I have not been able tio draw and photo shop and feel like it looks right or paint in photo shop and feel like it looks right even with a welcome tablet so what I've really done to retain that hand painted or hand drawn look is this part is so important this particular part of the process for me is super important because it the line qualities like they're subtleties that I just don't feel like I've been able to achieve without a brush or or a pen in ink and some of you might be really skilled in photo shop and using using the tools until a straighter to make things happen and I think that's really exciting you know it's really exciting but I employ you to try it because I think you might be surprised by the richness of that change in line andi also just it's a really different process just working directly on paper it's kind of nice tactile um and I think that the you could do a lot with the outline of the work um and to retain a hand colored image and I know other artists who will do the sketch in pencil and scan the sketch and do draw over that sketch using ah welcome tablet and a tool andi I think even then you khun still kind of it just looks different but the advantage to that processes that you know you're you're then able to color large areas without having an outline and I and you can still do that with this process and and use this as a guide for coloring in areas or you know using photo shop for using illustrator but I love the way the hand coloring looks and their I could teach a whole another class and like different ways to color so that you can you know, not having outline on on what you're doing, but, um, one of the reasons I've chosen toe work this ways that it's how I was working in ceramics, so I think it's worth noting here that when you adopt a new process or if you're trying what I'm teaching you today, think about what your normal processes in what you do, um, and how can you recreate that on paper and that's that's how I ended up doing this right? It wasn't I was working on licensing my ceramic work in one toe one prototypes was handing the factory my my handmade mugs with the surface design already on them so that they could reproduce those, and then there started to be interested in what I could do on paper, and I had to figure out how to take what I was doing in ceramics and make it work on paper and what I the process I was using and do continue to use to do the surface of my ceramic work is mishima, which is a japanese slip in like process really similar two engraving, so you draw into the wet clay, and then you cover the surface with a black color colored clay or another colored clay, and that goes into this drawn line that you've done just like an engraving plate, and then you wiped the whole surface and that leaves behind this line right so it's really similar process for me to go in and color this and I think that's why my brand identity translated so well from ceramic teo the surface of paper so I think it's really worth thinking about like how you work and if in whatever other media you're doing and figure out a way tio translate it so that your your look is consistent across material yeah well we have some folks in the chat rooms I'll just share social sophie quill who says I do a similar thing but instead of paint I carving linoleum and for the same reason as getting that handmade line quality but now she's interested in trying painting as well so it's cool to see how you would combine those things too yeah yeah and I think someone who's already doing printing you know they could do the printing on paper and scan that and then start to use that repeat so you could set up your block the same way so that you can then you know figure out how teo um figure out how to translate that into a pattern that you khun repeat on you know digitally and use for service design on other things and I think a lot of uh I mean she's got a swedish name it was lotte yang's daughter or jan's daughter however you want to um and she's a brooklyn based textile designer who does a really nice job of translating her block printing and her screen printing into surface designed for patterns on all kinds of products, but retaining that same like printing quality. And I think that it's really successful when you can understand the aesthetic of what you're doing elsewhere and carry that over. And so she has a really clear brand identity, I think, was what she does because she's able tto take that from one one process and keep the look in other other places. So painting is the while you're doing that. I want to write off teo, where people are joining us from from all over the world. We have pippa from france. We have calls from tel aviv. We have memphis, colorado, chicago. We have em in india, rhode island, we have hamburg, germany. Topeka accounts is pull in new york city. It's really awesome right late at night. And a lot of these young people stay up all night. Late night painting. I know that anna bond from rifle paper company her best creative time I was reading her instagram feed the other day are an interview about her and she was saying that it she goes, you know, from ten p m toe for am is sort or two a m or whatever is heard of her time um which I totally get because I put my daughter to bed at night and then go back out to the studio and that time for me from like eight to midnight or one and is like no one's calling me or interrupting my process that's the time I'm most creative with what I'm doing our uninterrupted maybe is the diet is the answer that's so exciting yeah, so one of the other nice things about this process that I know and when you generate image an image digitally, you know if you're trying to color it in online or on your computer if you have a break in a line it's really challenging, you have to kind of do a trace around an object and you have to suction out areas and it can be really labor and tons of and with this process of hand coloring, you don't have to do that because you're going over and I'll show you after you know this in the next segment we're going to talk about color, but I I love the break in the line of what I'm doing and I don't always color everything in and so this process lends itself teo being more adventurous is that how you brake line teo so go crazy you don't have to have connect the lines to make coloring easy for yourself you can you can go for it and make a really beautiful hand drawn look even more exaggerated because of those brakes commented looking forward to seeing how you color the loose, non connected line yes, heller shape so people very observant yeah, and I think, you know, I mean, I'm sure there are things that that you know, there are advantages and disadvantages to every single process, but yeah, this is really it's something to retain that look of what I was doing in ceramic like when you wipe the pot when you make when you do the inlay that I was talking about, you end up with a lot of breaks and the line, and that was something that I and the hand coloring is sort of a loose gesture over that on dh, so I really I really wantto emphasize that what I was trying to do in paper was recreated the same process that I was using in clay and and I think that's really worth thinking about, so what I'm giving you today might be a leaping place, what place to leap off of? But I think it's really important that you explore how you work or what what works best for like, what do you like about how you work and how can you take that teo to de, um or something that could become a repeat pattern through a little bit of adjustment in photo shop? We're getting their hair and angela had asked why you doing that kidney shells again? Why gashes instead of just black ink that's your personal style correct yeah squash yet no that's okay, squash I do use ink sometimes it's just a different look so a lot of the, um if I'm doing text sometimes all hand pain it sometimes I'll um sometimes I will use ink it doesn't really matter I think it is it's really just what you're comfortable with and the process you like so I love the the way the painted line goes from thick too thin and can be really kind of, um inconsistent and um it activates I think it activates your eye when you're seeing something with a lot of different um things going on so the ink will be more consistent and easier a little bit easier to control and this paper that I suggested that you consider buying the borden and riley paris paper for pens it's the number two three four s I believe it's bleed proof. So when I use in a pen in ink like I use a classic old you know fountain pen dip it in I think it will not bleed in the paper so I have the versatility of this one paper for bull squash and, um for wash and for the ink so I'd say try both you know, whatever you people love micron pens I can't stand them I have never been able teo I think it's because it's like a pet it looks like a pen and so it feels like I kind of feel like I should just do a funny photo you know, like I don't it doesn't feel different to me than using the welcome tablet so it doesn't I don't end up with a um I don't end up with, um look that yeah just doesn't my hand doesn't come through the same way but again experience that's lisa condon swears by micron pen so you know, whatever floats your boat I would say all right, get in there you're all going to be painting in the break and same thing we mel had asked, can we achieve the same thing the same effect if we're use markers for graphics? Yeah, and I think you know, I think really just again be true to yourself and the processes that you excite you and that's where your voice is going to come through rather than you know, this is what I do so you know, I mean, it might might be that you love stand rubber stamping or you love you mean, it just goes on and on I mean there's no reason why you can't try this with anything and like I said before acrylic or I mean, you could do this on canvas, you could scan a canvas, you can still have that look of a painted, you know, oil painted canvas or um, yeah, I just I think really being true to what it is that you enjoy the most and what what gets you excited to get into the studio and what you're good at? I think those are all going to keep you coming back for more and your clients probably coming back for more d'oh okay, so I'm almost done, and then I'll erase thiss get that pencil line away. And while you're doing that, laurean davey had asked if you could explain again why you made the marks two inches at the top in the bottom of your eight inch square. Yeah, so in this case, I just knew that I wanted to break it up, and the reason I chose two inches is because I mean, it could've chosen one inch, okay, you know, you can choose any distance you want, but you just want to make sure that on the left and on the right there is exactly the same place so that you're not like if you repeat it next to each other is not gonna work so we can bring up the slides on step three, um, of the and you can see that you're going to test your repeat next once we scan it side by side so you can see that that block is going to repeat next to itself and that's going tio be what creates the repeat? So if you didn't measure it to the same distance on either side, then you're not it's not going to repeat so that's the you can break it up as many different ways as you want as long as what you are matching up on the left and the right are the same let us know in the audience of you guys have questions as well. Yeah, go ahead yeah, so the wash that dries immediately pretty much immediately. Yeah, and it's it's got a little bit of a tooth to it it's kind of ah texture on the surface, which is also yeah, an advantage, right like you don't you're not going to be smearing it like, whereas a pen in ink or if I'm dipping and nib into ink, that can be really I've definitely had issues with problems with smudging and things, although I have to say again like sometimes those kinds of mistakes are happy accidents and I'll keep wth um, like I did this recipe tea towel for anthropology a couple years ago where I did a ton of hand lettering with pen in ink and I made like big blobs and actually crossed out some words because they weren't quite right and we kept them exactly the way they were because it looked like a sketchbook kind of um and it was really it was really great to be able teo, to be ableto I sort of know that companies are so interested in the hand that they're interested in the mess ups that you make tio mean anthropology I'd say is a unique client that way and a risk taker, but, you know, I think you'd be surprised that's what separates you from someone generating the artwork, you know, without any mistakes online, I say online, but I mean, on your computer when I say that so a few dots and we're going to be done notice that I'm not doing the outline don't trace your outline of your box, andi, I'll probably erase when we get back after the segment's over so that this has a chance to dry the last couple of, um dots have a plant a chance to dry. Did we have another question in the studio? Yeah, I was just what you want, what do you tips to have for products that aren't that air say, uh, unusual shapes? Do you kind of do the whole shape of the product versus trying to be the book pattern? Yeah, so usually when it's a product design I'm designing for the shape or a template of the shape of the piece so I will look, I just finished doing I'm working on some table where for for a client and I made templates on paper out of the three dimensional shapes so I'd wrap a piece of paper around and then fold it out so I had a template of the sides and then I would design for side a side b or you know sometimes it's a repeat that I want to fit into that and usually those are and what's called an engineered project product so they makes decals or imagery that goes on that specific surface for that specific shape whereas in repeats for fabric or you can make a repeat de cow that just is like a continuous pattern but for something that's aah you know like a quilting fabric you want something that's just going to go infinitely right? So yeah it's like a just a totally different approach um for that surface do you ever use tissue paper are tracing papers and kind of work your designs and get them going move things around or cut him up? Yes, you can see through it yeah that's when I do the process of transferring onto the surface something that I've designed on paper like a motif for something onto the surface of clay and I'm able to do that yeah, I actually do work with tissue paper and tracing paper and have it be see through whereas in that process I knew exactly what the shape waas so because I had made like a three dimensional, like a paper version of the three dimensional object and sort of flattened it out and then I'll play with sketching in there and, you know, even though I am in a product designer and I'm used to working in three dimensions that first round of the that dinner service came back and I was like, oh my god, we need to, like forgot this that I didn't do that and like, there are all these things that I had forgotten because I wasn't seeing that and products that sometimes I'll print out the patterns and put them on the physical I always ask for a physical sample so that I have a one to one understanding of what it's gonna look if if the form is available and the best products that I've ever done has always been um when I hand someone a physical one toe, one prototype so something that I've physically made and the factory can make it reproduce it exactly and even then things come back and they need to be you know, what you see and what they see is sometimes totally different it's amazing that even with a like copy this object, it still can come up can come off wrong? Um, yeah, so I think, um, you know, I think when you're working in different ways of working, well, I pushed you to work differently and how you do the surface design, but I think, yeah, like asking for the even asking for samples of the fabric printed so that you can see, like, how some thing gets translated to the surface, like I find that my fabric patterns will often come back lighter, or or a little less it's, like a different look, because it's being screen printed, and the more you could know about the processes that are being used for the patterns that you're developing them, the better you're going to do. I mean, we can't be all things yeah, paper tends to be different, you know, different papers print differently. So going through the proof process on my book, it was like, oh, wow, I love the note cards in the book paper was a little different, it was like, a slightly different feeling, and it was interesting because it was the same imagery, just a different different paper can change it, all right? Yeah, any final questions from our studio audience, we have way have a lot coming in from online, but before and so we'll take a couple before we're in the yeah, we're a few minutes. Ok, fantastic. So this one came from cathy? Can you make corrections in the outline, or will that show up too much on the scan? Yeah, so once you're committing to paper, right, like painting on the paper, you're not it'll show up on scan, so basically that's why I started with a pencil sketch and I will race and try to make corrections then, but one of the advantages and I can talk about this when I scan it and do some correcting in the next segment you can read, you can move things around a little bit, and this is where the sort of beauty of combining the hand with the digital as is so important, like you can save yourself a lot of time like it. If you decide you don't want that flower, you khun take it away and not have to go back to the drawing board, so I think, yeah, this in the next segment, we'll talk a little bit about some of the things that you could do to save yourself time, but like, sometimes I do have to go back of drawing board because I figured out that it just doesn't quite, but I'll show you when we match it up, there will be problems with this pattern, and we'll we'll see them and fix them perfect that is what we're here to learn solving problems okay one more from lorien davey and again kind of wrapping up what it is that we're doing here perhaps can you again explain the difference between block design and repeating design yes oh a block block pattern is a is a repeat and that is something that's going to repeat in a tile format so like the slide three that was on the way we can bring that up show people again that is what a double like that step three and this process is to take what we've done here today and then repeat that next to itself right so in a linear repeat and then the pattern we're going to do this afternoon is is a repeat that's sort of more all over like this pattern that's on my my computer skin that is a repeat that is generated so that it can repeat top bottom left right and that's an overall over repeat and you know there are half drops and like I mean we can keep going on you know I mean there's a million different but one place you can look in the interim and the downtime is go to sea spoon flower dot com and that's a fabric printing website that you can upload your own imagery to and you can play around with uploading an image and it'll tile it or it'll drop him and that'll tell you about the different block repeats and things like that, where you can start to understand how things work. If you put in an image and play around with how it's going to repeat in the yardage that they will print for you.