Pattern Design Workshop 2016

Hello, I’m Alex!

I’m from London and am currently living in San Francisco.

I’ve always loved drawing and painting, and am obsessed with unusual and colourful prints and patterns. So I’ve decided I want to be a fabric designer when I ‘grow up’! I started learning Illustrator and Photoshop about six months ago using Skillshare.

Pattern collection 1

I love wearing fruity prints and would like to create something a bit more sophisticated than the kitsch and cute prints I usually go for.

Pattern collection 2 - Everyday beauty

I can’t help taking photos of bouquets in vases wherever I see them. They really cheer up any ordinary environment and bring so much happiness. I thought I could add interest with the vases - I might experiment with making the vases themselves patterned.

Pattern collection 3 - Bangles and beads

I love accessories and jewellery, especially bold necklaces. I enjoy seeing all my colourful jewellery together on my dressing table, and thought it would be interesting to create a pattern with beads trailing and tangled all over it.

I've been tracing away in Illustrator and finally have my sketches ready to start working with. I really enjoyed doing this - I love using the blob brush and am hooked on the smoothing tool! Have to stop myself smoothing things away into oblivion...

The fruit and flowers were especially enjoyable to trace, less so the beads - think I made life hard for myself tracing over so many circles!

However I can't wait to start working with these and building them into patterns.

So my final patterns are now ready...

I really enjoyed putting these together. It's funny how the pattern I thought would be easiest gave me the most trouble and vice versa!

I found putting the colour palettes together trickier than I thought which surprised me - it's made me realise how much skill goes into creating well balanced palettes that also have striking or unusual colour combinations.

I'd really like to take some time to develop this - going forward I'm going to make it a little project to look for inspiration around me and take lots of photos I can use for reference. I might then go back to these patterns and tinker around with the palettes a bit...

I've also created a small collection around each pattern.

TUTTI FRUTTI