My year of making a pattern every week - Summer update

Wow - I can’t believe I’m now three-quarters of the way through my year of making a pattern every week (#52patternsayear challenge)! I managed to sustain the good roll that I was on from January to March and successfully created a pattern every week from April to June, too! I’m definitely moving towards a more consistent style for my motif illustration and creation - unfortunately this continues to be detailed and time-consuming, but never mind - I do like a lot of the results!

April

The prompts for April were all food related, including:

Egg
Pasta
Veg
Cheese

I really enjoy food illustration but I also decided to mix it up a bit this month, with a variety of approaches to my motif creation, from vector- to hand-drawn motifs and I even experimented with a slightly more complex damask pattern, as well as the easier ‘tossed’ repeats. I also got to practice my modern calligraphy by incorporating name labels into the pasta and veg patterns. For this month I love both the Breakfast Damask and my Vegetable Alphabet patterns - difficult to choose a favourite as they’re very different!

Breakfast Damask Pattern - Egg Yolk on White

Breakfast Damask - Perennial Blue on Skylight - Kitchen Wallpaper mock up

Pasta Italia on red and green stripes - pattern design

A Vegetable Alphabet on pale aubergine - repeat pattern

A Vegetable Alphabet - wallpaper, art and bedding mock up

A collection of stationery mock-ups on food-themed patterns

May

May’s pattern prompts were a mix of natural elements, which it which did lend themselves to a more simple linework style (although you’ll see I got more complex as the month went on!)

Cactus
Tropical Flower
Orchard
Grass
Daisy

I actually really enjoyed responding to all of these prompts and the initial motifs really pushed me to use quite different colour palettes to those I’d normally be drawn to. I loved all of these patterns, but particularly the Daisy Chain one, which was fiendishly complicated to put together! I actually planned my layout first in Affinity Designer and then printed it out to use as a guide for hand-drawing first my daisy stalks and then another sheet for my flower heads. I then brought everything together in Affinity Designer and made some tweaks to match up the repeat, before colouring.

The illustrations I created for my English Meadow Grasses design were so nice, that I’ve made them available as an A6 note card in my shop.

Simple Rows of Cacti in hot pink - pattern

Simple Rows of Cacti in hot pink pattern on a bag mock-up

Heavenly Hibiscus - Hot Pink on Orange Sherbet pattern

Heavenly Hibiscus Hot Pink on Orange Sherbet pattern - skirt mock up

Espaliered Fruit Trees - pinks - pattern

English Meadow Grasses - Mid Teal on Dusty Blue - pattern

English Meadow Grasses - Grey on Deepest Teal - Paper Gift Bag mock up

June

The prompts for June mostly moved from flora to fauna and featured:

Bee
Caterpillar
Dragonfly
River

For the first three prompts, I used a mix of watercolour and pen illustration for the main insect motifs, paired with a simple linework decoration (primarily flowers and leaves). For the final prompt, I was inspired by my regular walks along the tidal estuary of the River Tweed to feature a range of waterfowl, including herons, white egrets, eider ducks, mute swans, dippers, sandpipers and curlew. I’d be hard-pressed to pick a favourite, again, but I did really like how the dragonfly pattern came out (particularly mocked-up on a yoga mat, as releasing it coincided with the International Day of Yoga!) That said, I did love my Tweed Estuary birds so much that you can now purchase the illustrations as a print in my shop!

Bees on Hydrangea - pen and watercolour illustration

Bees on Hydrangeas - Seamless Pattern and Illustration

Crawling Caterpillars - seamless pattern

Crawling Caterpillars pattern - child sweatshirt mock up

Watercolour Dragonflies on gold leaves - pattern

Watercolour Dragonflies and Gold Leaves - yoga mat mock up

Tweed Estuary Birds - brown on pale greens - pattern

Tweed Estuary Birds - Teals - wallpaper mock up

What have I learnt in this third quarter?

I’m still enjoying participating in this challenge and have been lucky with some of the prompts that they featured the types of illustrations/motifs I’m naturally drawn to (like food and things in nature). Quite a few of the illustrations for patterns in this quarter have made their way on to Art Prints and Cards in my shop, which is a great way to get additional benefit from participating in the challenge!

Follow along (or join in!) with the #52PatternsAYear challenge on Instagram

Interested in purchasing?

I’m making a range of the designs from this challenge available in my Spoonflower shop if you’d like to purchase any of these patterns as fabric, wallpaper or as an item of home decor. All of these designs are also available for licensing - please just get in touch if you’d like to discuss terms.