Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Why I think of myself as a designer, not an artist - written July 15, 2011

 




Midnight Garden virtual batik - my fabric design at Spoonflower

 

Because one design inspiration gets used many times, in many forms, rather than being a one-of-a-kind artistic piece.

For instance, I did a stylized cat drawing in the '70s as letter paper. Then in the '80s, it became a silver pierced cat pin for my mother, then I did one for myself. Then later a smaller version to have cast, for my sister. Then in about 2002 I drew around it to make a fabric-type design to use in a color-theory class exercise. Just recently I finally scanned that and did a vector drawing, and a couple of different fabric designs at Spoonflower to go with the black-and-white fabric in a previous post. And this week, colored it as a virtual batik as one of several fabrics in a skirt design.

In the fabric above, the flowers are from a batik stamp I bought. It went through a couple of fabric-design versions. Then, for a limited palette contest a few months ago, I did this virtual-batik look with this new repeat. (Not these colors.)

I liked it, but wasn't quite happy with it. Now I know why. The flowers were lonely, They needed butterflies.

(That is, variations in scale, texture, and color. The butterflies, by their orientation, also add an effect of movement to the design.)

The butterflies were inspired by a butterfly picture outline, but I redesigned all the interior lines. I drew them in Photoshop to go with my fabric collection done from antique Japanese fabric stamps. The fine detail goes with the finely carved details in the stamps.

I did this fabric design with butterflies added for another limited-palette contest (although I left out the hot pink and orange and chartreuse). This contest was for butterfly designs. I intended to use several different butterfly drawings, but once I added this one, it was perfect.

And it just got 11th place in the contest!  My record. Lots of other people liked it too.

To see it as fabric, click the link in the title. It should be available for sale soon; I'm ordering a swatch. (2013 - now available.)

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