everbloom

Hi everyone!

I found inspiration for my pattern work at Allan Gardens, a public greenhouse in downtown Toronto that features beautiful tropical and local flowers blooming all year round. I took tons of photographs on-site and later pruned that collection down to 8 images for use as reference materials.

For my mood board, I included artwork with muted colours and modern botanical illustrations that I found around the web. The colour palette draws from my photographs as well as the mood board.

Having developed a clear sense of direction, I started creating design elements in Illustrator through scanned sketches, live traced and traced photos using the Wacom tablet. 

I also handlettered the name for my pattern, ‘everbloom’, inspired by the greenhouse flowers that seem to be in perpetual bloom, even in the midst of a cold Canadian winter.

The motifs were more difficult to accomplish than I had anticipated! Due to the amount of line-work I had incorporated in my sketches, my first few tries ended up feeling very busy. I pared each motif down to just 3 or 4 elements and am much happier with the results.

Similar to my experience in making the motifs, my first attempts at creating a complex pattern felt cluttered and lacked flow. So for my final pattern I tried to keep more space between the motifs.

Recolouring the pattern was so much fun. My chosen colour palette made the process a bit challenging, but this new tool has become one of my favourite parts of Illustrator.

Just for fun, I made two more patterns with just the small flower clusters and the palm leaf. 

Thank you so much, Bonnie, for making this class available. I’ve learned some new tools and have gained confidence working with my tablet and Illustrator, which feels great!