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Pattern 4/52

Like I said in the snowflake pattern post 3/52 – flowers are great for wallpaper all year round.

living room flower wallpaper

One of the first exercises in Module 2 of The Art and Business of Surface Pattern Design was to simply find an item in your living room and make a sketch of it. I chose this flower on a print my mother had given us when we moved into our house 2,5 years ago.

Cathrin Gressieker_DSC06237-kCathrin Gressieker_DSC06185-2-k

And then I started playing with it in Illustrator. I am forever grateful for learning how to make repeating patterns in Jessica Swift’s Pattern Camp, where she completely demystified the whole process, so you are able to create your own patterns after one weekend. This is a straight repeat here (also called box repeat):

Cathrin Gressieker_Screenshot (10)

For the colour palette I decided to use some of the Pantone spring colours again that I had discovered in Pattern 2/52. This time: Toasted Almond, Strawberry Ice, Custard and for the first time colour of the year 2015 Marsala.

For me the pattern has a retro feel and it says on the Pantone website that the palette evokes “remembrances of retro delights, folkloric and floral art”. I don’t know, whether the 1980s are already considered retro, but this flower patterns reminds me of the wallpaper in my parent’s bedroom when I was child – and I didn’t like it at all then, or maybe it was later as a teenager in my black phase.

Also from the Pantone website:” Many feel compelled to be connected around the clock because we are afraid we’ll miss something important. There is a growing movement to step out and create ‘quiet zones’ to disconnect from technology and unwind, giving ourselves time to stop and be still…() … to create a soothing escape from the everyday hustle and bustle.” I feel, I could relax in a room with such a wallpaper design.

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Pattern 3/52

Cathrin Gressieker wallpaper-mock-up-snowflakes

After the tropical palette of the last pattern 2/52, it is now time to face the reality of German winter again. Even though we have hardly had any snow yet … You might recognize the pattern again, I used Clara’s January calendar page for it. I took a photo of the cut-outs and it image-traced very well in Illustrator.

At the moment I am taking Module 2 of The Art and Business of Surface Pattern Design, a course filled to the brim with information, learning, exercises and assignments and with an amazingly talented and inspiring design community.

Last week we learned (among many, many other things) how to mock up our patterns as wallpaper in a room set. The snowflake pattern might not be a wallpaper for all seasons (floral patterns are more timeless and pleasing throughout the year), but I think it looks very inviting to go on a little skiing holiday.

And I want to show you another mock-up set:

snowflakes collection

For dining in style after skiing.

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Pattern 2/52

My second pattern for the year-long challenge is also based on a gem shape like 1/52, I call it Tropical Crystals:

Cathrin Gressieker_tropische kristalle

This time the crystal shape was hand-drawn.

brooch19And why tropical? Because I used some colours of this colour palette from last year’s trip to Thailand.

Cathrin Gressieker_colourpalettethailand

And how I surprisingly found out today, the colours in the pattern are predicted in Pantone’s Fashion Colour Report for Spring 2015 here.

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Pattern 1/52

I am happy to announce a new year-long project today!

As my three 365-day-projects have ended with the end of last year, I first felt some relieve for a while this month. Carolina has stopped taking her afternoon naps coinciding with the end of the photo-project and I can declutter now only when I feel like it. But I must admit, that I am not able to spend my two-Euro-coins anymore, I am collecting them again this year. Yet this doesn’t challenge me enough on a creative level, of course. Not that I could complain about too little creative projects in my life … I draw, paint and design on a daily basis and I am taking a couple of art and design e-courses this year again. There is A Year of Painting II with Alena Hennessy, Assignment Bootcamp with the Lilla Rogers Studio School and The Art and Business of Surface Pattern Design with Rachael Taylor.

And surface pattern design will be my year-long-project – I will create (at least!) and post one pattern each week of 2015. My pattern-design-passion has started last year in October when I took Jessica Swift’s excellent weekend-intensive-workshop Pattern Camp (she is re-running the course february 7-8) and further developed my new skills with Rachael Taylor’s and Lilla Roger’s classes and hours and hours of burning the midnight oil.

As we are already the fourth week into January, I will be catching up posting patterns over the next days.

Here is my first pattern 1/52 – Flower Crystals:

Cathrin Gressieker_flower crystals mock-up-blog-pattern

Purely created in Illustrator and mocked up on a notebook.

I have recently discovered while designing that I am very much drawn to geometrical patterns and perfectly timed print & pattern’s new book has just been released:

Cathrin Gressieker_DSC06188-k

So much eye candy and inspiring designs!

I must say, I am very excited about my project of 2015 which will be great for experimenting, having fun, staying motivated and further building my pattern portfolio.

PS: Here is another Pattern Camper, Stephanie, who had the idea first.

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15 Minutes

More often than not I get this question – how do you do it all? Having a family with two young children, being a self-employed yoga teacher and then all those paintings and the crafty stuff like sewing and knitting (and blogging about it).

There is no secret. We are all busy. We all have 24 hours in a day. And we all have creative dreams, that often get lost in the net of everyday. But what I often say – you can get a lot done in 15 minutes. 15 minutes a day add up to nearly two hours of creative time a week.

And because long stretches of creative time are usually unrealistic, I was very happy about the first lesson of Alena Hennessy’s painting e-course A Year of Painting II (I took the first year-long-course last year and this is the follow-up where we dig deeper). Painting your word of the year in 15, 10 and 5 minutes. No room for perfectionism in this short period of time. Just play, intuition and fun (even though some frustration might occur). These small imperfect paintings became some kind of meditation for me this week.

Cathrin Gressieker 15 minutes

And I also found out this week that I am not the only one with this little-15-minutes-of-creativity-theory. I listened to an interview with creativity couch Samantha Beckett and she even wrote a whole book about it. Her advice: discover which of your projects matters most to you, spend 15 minutes a day on that project, every single day (before checking your e-mail). Magic will happen. Or in my words:

15 minutes of painting a day keeps the muse from going on a holiday.

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Business Cards

My new art business cards from London were delivered yesterday.

Cathrin Gressieker art & design

I used a floral pattern from the MATS-course for the front of the cards and part of a painting for the back/contact side. They were printed by MOO and I just love that the business cards come in squares and that you can have a “green” option – printed on recycled paper and using wind energy for the production.