About the Art

The journey

I love creating art, but found my house overflowing with framed pieces and no more room on my wall.  So I took my art digital.  One thing has led to another . . .

From digital art to patterns

To expand my digital art I took a class in surface pattern design, which taught Adobe Illustrator and how to create in collections. "Happy 'bout singing the Blues" is an example.  I found making patterns quite magical so just kept it up.

It turns out that full collections of 10 to 12 designs were not all that helpful on Spoonflower.  But entering a design into their biweekly challenge was quite helpful in getting designs seen, so my design work pivoted a bit.  

The challenge themes are quite varied and are chosen by Spoonflower staff based on what they think will be trending.  They are a fun mental challenge and stretched me to try things I never would have on my own.  However, the vastly different themes have turned my Spoonflower store into a bit of a hodge-podge of designs.  The store can look a bit chaotic jumping from one design, say a raquetball court, right next to frogs sitting on red mushrooms or an abstract. Sometimes I add a few coordinating designs to round out the challenge entry into a mini-collection.  But since the artist has very little control on how their designs show up in Spoonflower, chaos it is.  (Hint:  Go to an artists "Designed Collections" for a chance of a more orderly presentation.)

What I've learned is that I enjoy designing both ways.  Sometimes the deep dive into a collection with a story, and sometimes the "simpler" challenge of a single design.