PHASE 3: Designing the Pages

It took me the entire class to get this done, but here is the digital version of my Portfolio
https://issuu.com/madebymoonpuff/docs/moonpuffportfolio

I like the idea of scrapbook paper as an industry focus. This is why I decided to make my Portfolio sized 12x12. My idea is to give it the look of a scrapbook. Glossy photos layered against matte patterns will really complete the look for the hard copy version. My patterns for this collection are rather loud so figuring out how to use them as a focal point while keeping everything looking clean and refined was easier said than done and I think I still have work to do on that front. I made the card in the mockups myself (not my best work, but you get the idea) and think this would be a cool way to show off my patterns, even including real ones in the hard copy.

I am leaning toward Made by Moonpuff as my design name. My real name doesn't really fit the brand I'm going for and Moonpuff has been my screen name for the last 20 years, so I thought I'd just stick with that. It's cute and silly so I thought that seemed appropriate and the "made by" makes it seem personal while also being versatile (I hope, lol).

For various reasons I was very resistant to working on my portfolio. I spent a lot of time just staring and the screen and dragging my feet. However, I will now admit I'm really glad that I signed up for this workshop and forced myself to do this. While I'm not convinced this is my perfect portfolio and I think I still have a lot of work to do before I will have one ready to send out, working on it now was a valuable learning experience!

Bonnie: These workshops have been an wonderful experience, so THANK YOU!! Finding something that I enjoy working on and actually setting goals has made a huge difference in my life. All the knowledge you have shared, your uplifting attitude, and your feedback has helped me so much on my path toward my dreams :)

PHASE 2 : Planning your Portfolio

I'm really struggling with wrapping my mind around creating a Portfolio for a couple reasons:

I'm just not "there" yet. I might have been a little overly optimistic when I signed up for these workshops. I've made progress, but I things are developing slower than I'd hoped.
I'm still trying to decide the direction I want to go and how to consistently define my brand. I can't even seem to settle on a name, let alone a logo, and everything else that needs to follow from there.

I'm going to do my best to follow along with the workshop though so I can at least have some direction once I am ready. I'm just doing some digital pages for now, but eventually will be creating a hard copy as well.

Pages I will be working on now:

Intro Page - Honestly, I will be super excited if I can just decide on a name and a logo at this point.
Bio - Photo, short bio, and maybe some other fun facts like a list of my favorite things. Since I want to go the quirky/nerdy route I think this might help me to be more relatable to my target audience.
Collection - I only have one collection right now, and I'm not sure if it's going to be right for my portfolio, but I'm going to go ahead with it and see what happens.
Mock-Ups - One area I'm still working on is deciding on my target industry. I originally was zeroing in on fabric. I particularly enjoy sewing home decor fabric myself (pillow cases, organizers, baskets, etc), so I liked that direction. However, the more I thought about it the more I like the idea of scrapbook papers, stationary, office supplies, etc. I am not a scrapbooker per se, but I use scrapbooking paper a lot for a variety of craft projects. I'm still trying to wrap my mind around this as an option and figure out how I would need to change my thinking if I want to primarily pursue that industry. That said, I think there is a LOT I could do for mock-ups for this industry. I would actually love to go the route of creating actual projects with my work (cards, banners, party decor, etc) that I could incorporate into the hard copy and maybe just photograph for the digital copy.
Process - I think I could have fun with sketches, photos, ideas, etc. I am thinking maybe some sort of flow chart.

Pages I would like to have but won't be adding until later:
- Table of Contents - There isn't enough to need this at the moment
- Following - I know I need to get the social media ball rolling and intend on making that a priority. I want to become active on Instagram and create a blog. I just haven't quite gotten there yet.
- Contact - I will wait until I have more to add.
- Collections - I definitely will need to add more collections at a later date.

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WORKSHOP #4: THE ART OF DESIGNING IN COLLECTIONS: FRUITASTIC!

PHASE 5: LOGO

I added the logo to the updated collection which includes a reworked "Sweet" pattern. I liked the rainbow stripes, but I just couldn't get them to work without bugging out my eyes, so I tried a rainbow scattered approach. I also included a second colorway and wrote a story for that as well. The palettes are very different but believe it or not, they actually share 5 colors.

Design your Perfect Portfolio - image 1 - student project

Design your Perfect Portfolio - image 2 - student project

Wording for second colorway, in case you can't read it on the image:
It is generally accepted that strawberries are bright red, blueberries are rich blue, and lemons are sunny yellow, but what if that wasn't the case? Imagine a world where fruit came in hues of vibrant pinks, purples and teals. What do luminous green strawberries taste like? Pixy Stix? Gummy Bears? Are they sweet or are they sour? Maybe oranges grow in the clouds, taking on the blue tint of the sky? Though I'd never give up fruit as it is, imagining what fruit could be in a magical candyland isn't just fantastic - It's Fruitastic!

Below is the reworked cupcake pattern in larger scale. It's not my favorite, but I tried a lot of different approaches and this is the best I could come up with for these motifs and color combinations.

Design your Perfect Portfolio - image 3 - student project

And the logo by itself:

Design your Perfect Portfolio - image 4 - student project

PHASE 4: BIO

Design your Perfect Portfolio - image 5 - student project

Melissa Gray is a child at heart who views the world through unicorn-colored glasses. She is smiles and silliness with a dash of nerdy. Her imagination runs wild and she strives to express this creatively through her colorful designs. At first she may appear to be all glitter and fluff, but don't underestimate her powers. She also is a fighter (a cancer survivor), a hard worker (with a BA in Art), and someone you can always rely on (a proud Hufflepuff).

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PHASE 3: COLLECTION

SooOooOo designing a collection is hard. However, I'm kinda happy with how these turned out. Then again, I'm still not sure about some of these and I have a feeling I'll still be working on this one for a while yet trying to get it just right. So, if anyone has suggestions for improvement, I'd love to hear them. I think the real question is if I will ever have a project I can actually call done?!

I feel like I really made my life difficult with the colors here. I wanted to stay true(ish) to reality, which gave me a nice rainbow color palette, but also made it hard to keep things from getting too crazy and made achieving a cohesive look difficult. I think I'm going to call this palette Bold. I didn't have time yet, but I want to do a second color palette, Candyland, where I just give in and let things get completely out of hand (Purple Strawberries? Sure! Blue Limes? Why not!).

Design your Perfect Portfolio - image 6 - student project

Closeups for ones that I felt needed more detail and I have not already shown in this workspace for previous workshops below:

Design your Perfect Portfolio - image 7 - student project

Design your Perfect Portfolio - image 8 - student project

Design your Perfect Portfolio - image 9 - student project

Design your Perfect Portfolio - image 10 - student project

Design your Perfect Portfolio - image 11 - student project

Design your Perfect Portfolio - image 12 - student project

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For this workshop I've decided to expand on the first patterns I created for this workshop series, Fruitastic. I strayed a little during the workshops into other themes, so I have been working on creating more designs to fill in the gaps as well as refining and recoloring the patterns I did create.

PHASE 2: SHORT STORY

FRUITASTIC!

Fruit makes me smile! Fruit is so bright and energetic, inside and out. It's nature's candy, a party for the senses. This collection is a celebration of fruit that strives to capture its vibrant playfulness. It's that feeling you get when you bite into a juicy, perfectly ripe strawberry. It's sipping sweet, tangy lemonade on a hot summer day. It's a fresh fruit salad enjoyed by all at the family barbecue. It's children gleefully plucking a healthy snack of fresh raspberries from their Grandmother's garden. It's the myriad of ways that fruit can bring cheer. It's not just fantastic - it's Fruitastic!

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WORKSHOP #3: DESIGNING FOCAL POINT PRINTS: WINDY SHORES

FINAL PATTERNS: WINDY SHORES - This ended up in a very different place than I had imagined it. I really struggled with making these motifs into patterns. I definitely still have some work to do on this collection to get it where I want it to be.

PATTERN 1 - I ran out of time, but I think I need to remove the outline on these kites. I wasn't originally envisioning these to be so small and the outline looks odd at this size.

Design your Perfect Portfolio - image 13 - student project

PATTERN 2

Design your Perfect Portfolio - image 14 - student project

PATTERN 3 - I'm particularly meh on how this one turned out and hoping to rework it at some point.

Design your Perfect Portfolio - image 15 - student project

PHASE 4 - ILLUSTRATED MOTIFS

I have so much going on with this one and a lot that needs more work, but here is what I have so far. I think my biggest challenge going forward is going to be editing things down. Some of these I may use in other pieces of the collection instead of the focal prints.

Pattern 1 Motifs: Swirling Rainbows

Design your Perfect Portfolio - image 16 - student project

Pattern 2 Motifs: Flying High - I'm not great a drawing birds so I image traced these from some pictures I snapped when I was taking my dog for a walk at the Marina this week :)

Design your Perfect Portfolio - image 17 - student project

Pattern 3 Motifs: Patchwork

Design your Perfect Portfolio - image 18 - student project

Random extra bits that I may incorporate or use elsewhere:

Design your Perfect Portfolio - image 19 - student project

I tried out my image trace idea here, but I'm not sure how I feel about it or if I'm going to use it for anything after all. Did I mention I'm all over the place with this one? :P

Design your Perfect Portfolio - image 20 - student project

PHASE 3 - SKETCHES & PRELIMINARY DESIGNS

I'm still not entirely sure where I'm going with this one so I suspect a lot will be changed/added as I continue to work on it, but here is what I have so far sketch-wise.

Design your Perfect Portfolio - image 21 - student project

I think I will be doing a majority of my work directly in Illustrator using photographs, so here are some beginning ideas for these motifs. I suspect the colors will change to something less pastel. I'm considering using image trace to create some ocean scenes to add kites into for one of the prints (a very rough example is in the upper right). The end result will not be square, but rather have some sort of clipping mask and be combined with other scenes for a cohesive pattern.

Design your Perfect Portfolio - image 22 - student project

PHASE 2 - INSPIRATION BOARD

When we were young my dad picked up a new hobby, stunt kites. As a result, we spent most of our free time as a family at the beach flying kites. Living in the Pacific Northwest, the beach of my youth was not a tropical paradise for sunbathing. While it was often too cold for swimsuits, the ever present wind allowed the sky to become a truly magical playground. I want to capture these windy shores of my youth, focusing on the beauty of a kite as it dances across the sky, while also bringing in elements of the beach to complete the scene.

I envision a palette of sandy browns, greenish blue waves, and sky blue, splashed with colorful kites. However, I am looking forward to experimenting with the color as I think this theme will allow me more room try out different color options than my theme choices for previous workshops.

These are scans of old pictures from my childhood. My dad even made some of these kites himself! I'm planning on making my design from a combination of sketches and pictures.

Design your Perfect Portfolio - image 23 - student project

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WORKSHOP #2: ILLUSTRATE FROM PHOTOS: FRUITASTICALLY SWEET

FINAL PATTERNS:

Design your Perfect Portfolio - image 24 - student project

Design your Perfect Portfolio - image 25 - student project

Design your Perfect Portfolio - image 26 - student project

Design your Perfect Portfolio - image 27 - student project

WATERCOLOR MOTIFS:

I actually found vectorizing and colorizing the watercolor paintings kinda fun. I hadn't originally realized how much using gradients would limit my color palette. I think I made it work, but I also have a better understanding of how important it is to keep this process in mind when creating the original paintings.

ICE CREAM: I'm hoping yellow ice cream cones isn't too weird because brown didn't seem to fit with the colors I wanted for these patterns.

Design your Perfect Portfolio - image 28 - student project

MACARONS:

Design your Perfect Portfolio - image 29 - student project

WATERCOLOR PHOTOS:

This is my first time ever using watercolor paint and I found it incredibly frustrating. I couldn't seem to get it to do what I wanted it to do! Whenever I tried to give it more contrast it became overworked and muddled. I was hoping to be able to take some watercolor painting classes before we got to this part of the class, but I didn't have the time, and apparently watercolor can't be learned in one weekend! I do want to learn more so I will have to take more classes in the future, but as it is this is what I came up with. Many of these are unusable so I'm going to have to pick out the best ones and just go with it!

Design your Perfect Portfolio - image 30 - student project

Design your Perfect Portfolio - image 31 - student project

CUPCAKE ILLUSTRATIONS:

Design your Perfect Portfolio - image 32 - student project

LEMONADE ILLUSTRATIONS:

Design your Perfect Portfolio - image 33 - student project

PHOTOGRAPHS:

For this second workshop I'm doing a spin-off of my first workshop series, Fruistastic. My idea is to have these patterns feature fruity foods. I have a batch of cupcake images but I wasn't sure that'd be enough for two prints so I also have some lemonade images. I'm hoping that they would still be similar enough in color and style to make sense together. Or I might just stick with the cupcakes and use some individual fruit pictures to supplement. We will see what happens. I also plan on changing a lot of the colors in these images when I illustrate them as I kinda just had to work with what I had available. In other news, I clearly need to take some photography lessons. However, I think that these will work well enough to get what I need from them! :)

CUPCAKES:

Design your Perfect Portfolio - image 34 - student project

LEMONADE:

Design your Perfect Portfolio - image 35 - student project

COLOR PALETTE? I don't know, it's still a work in progress. I was thinking I'd make this one pinker and more candy-ish (pretend that's a word), but maybe I should use the same palette as my original fruitastic collection so they play nice together? Hmmm...Hopefully it comes together better as I work on it more...

Design your Perfect Portfolio - image 36 - student project

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WORKSHOP #1: ILLUSTRATE FROM SKETCHES: FRUITASTIC! FINAL PATTERNS:

1) FRUITASTIC PIZZA - Inspired by one of my favorite desserts, fruit pizza!

Design your Perfect Portfolio - image 37 - student project

2) FRUITASTIC CITRUS BERRY BURST

Design your Perfect Portfolio - image 38 - student project

3) FRUITASTIC SPLASH

Design your Perfect Portfolio - image 39 - student project

AND a random extra ...cuz why not?

Design your Perfect Portfolio - image 40 - student project

FRUITASTIC ILLUSTRATED MOTIFS

It turns out that I made things rather hard on myself with all those details, but I learned a lot about Illustrator in the process! There still some things I would like to refine. Every time I look at them I see more stuff to smooth! :P

Design your Perfect Portfolio - image 41 - student project

Design your Perfect Portfolio - image 42 - student project

FRUITASTIC! SKETCHES

Design your Perfect Portfolio - image 43 - student project

Design your Perfect Portfolio - image 44 - student project

Design your Perfect Portfolio - image 45 - student project

FRUITASTIC! MOOD BOARD

Words: Fresh! Energetic! Splashy! Vibrant! Cheerful! Friendly! Juicy! Playful! Zesty! Enthusiastic!

I decided to go with a fairly simple theme for this workshop, fruit. I want to explore boldly bright colors, the intricacies of fruit textures, and designs you can make with fruit. I know there are a lot of fruit prints already out there, but I'm hoping I can explore this theme in a way that is uniquely me. As you can probably tell, all images for this mood board are my own (I'm still working on my photography skills!).

Design your Perfect Portfolio - image 46 - student project

Illustrate from Sketches: Design 3 Patterns in 3 Weeks (2)

24. Jan. - 14. Feb.

Illustrate from Sketches: Design 3 Patterns in 3 Weeks (2)

24. Jan. - 14. Feb.

Join This Workshop