A FEW BITS FOR THE PORTFOLIO

IS IT SUMMER YET

It may be cold, wet and rainy outside, but it's summer in here.. 

Grab some old motifs, pick the loudest colour pallet, and make a pattern... 

Hope you like it.. 

Short post, but I'm trying to get my portfolio together... 

Trina x

It's not often!

Hello, hello, hello. How long has it been? - like ages and ages right? - Of course, I want to say that i've been on a gigantic adventure, been to the moon, raised ten thousand for charity... but alas no I haven't. I have however been reading a bit. Since the ending of my lovely e-course Art and Business of Surface Pattern Design.. I'm flummexed. Departed from sane thinking, what am I doing, well, I tell you. I've been finding it really difficult to get going. 

The e-course was just so fab, but there was a plethora of information, just too much to take in in one sitting, let alone the 5 months or so I was taking part. I'm actually still digesting most of it.

At the beginning I did think, ha ha, this is going to be just perfect. Once I've finished the course I will have a boat load of fantastic things to sell to you all. I'd have a mountain of patterns, and loads of exciting people breaking down my door to buy them. But No. It is not yet to be. 

I have't given up hope yet. But life has sort of got in the way. Why?

Well simply because what we think will happen never does. What we assume is the next step, can never be. It's not quite so easy to be creative with a 2 year old at your feet. (and two more at school) So here I am flummoxed..

Of course I've been making the odd pattern. Some of which have received supper feedback from my co- patterners.. and thats fantastic, we all need it. But then I've waisted so much time on things of little creative calorific value and I really wish that the Twitterness, and that blasted FB would just switch off sometimes. It does however confirm my belief that even at school I was easily distracted - I'm still the same.

Anyway - going back to my statement above.  I've read my FB, my Twitter, I've read Pillars of the Earth, The Help, (supper fantastically bloody amazing by the way), and I've read a pattern, making book thing. I took the option like many of my fellow patterners to purchase the new book from Lilla Rogers. I Just like to Make things. 

Here is my review:

Beautifully bound, lovely illustrations, great photos and lots of inspiration. It goes along the lines of 'well after you've made all these lovely things, what are you going to do with them?' 

There are some sub heads - Getting into the process of being creative, being good and how to be great at what you do. Then it moves onto some nice interviews from successful individuals, how they got there, what they do etc etc... after that there is quite a large section on different areas to get your work into. Such as Picture book, home decor, fabric and such. Whilst it may seem easy to make patterns, design stuff, Illustrate happy thoughts, what are you going to do with them afterwards? - There are some exercises to complete to get you moving along and helpful tips on getting your plans written for goals and such. 

So if your just starting out - and want to know more, get yourself a bit of direction and see whats out there, this is for you. 

Downsides, there actually is not a huge amount of information that you might not already know, or can seek out easily on the web. It's not a 'grand plan' more of a 'dip ya toes' if you are just starting out and it looks lovely and happy and the interviews do have depth. The book is sort of fatter than the information, as it's all quite well spread out and loads of blank spaces.. (not entirely sure if you're supposed to be scribbling your new ideas in the margin, or dictating your grand plan to take over the world with your new home made dolls, none, of which you've actually made yet) - but I think if you follow it - do what it says to do, then it could be beneficial.

All in all, a nice read, interesting and colourful. Brilliant if your determined to make money from the market but not quite sure whats next, or how to go about it.

Coffe table envy - 4/5

Value for money - 3/5 (amazon did it for £10 at one point)

Information overload - 3/5

Keep forever to refer to again - 5/5

So that's it - hope it's given you a bit to think about.

See you soon

In the mean time - stay well, eat loads of scrummy food, (actually don't do that save it for Easter) -  be nice and make lovely things. 

And of course if anyone has any bright ideas as to  a)how I'm going to make money from my patterns - because despite reading the book above, I'm just on a merry go round.. my fault..or b) what I should be doing next - or c) what to become my mentor for a year and tell me what to do a bit then let me know.

Trina 

x

Moyo Magazine feature and new name

Yeh - I was featured in the Moyo Magazine 3rd Issue.. something to tell everyone about..

Here is the link if you missed it..

Moyo magazine..

For those of you with beedy eyes, of course I'm not Lilly and Sage, but Surface Hug now.. rebranding necessary for keeping in the swing of things, finding my own identity and not necessarily being mistaken for a lady who takes her clothes off 'a lot' for money..

Phew.. what a journey.. its been a big one, that's why I've been so quite, but I've now finished my course ABSPD.. yey.. so pleased, but not pleased. I made so many friends and had such a lovely time doing it that it will stay with me forever I think but I miss it. Those little posting every day became my comfort blanket of necessary creativity each day. I was forced to do things outside of my zone, sometimes more successfully than others I might add.

So will post a lot more about it shortly.

I'm sorry but this blog will be changing names back to www.Surfacehug.com soon but I hope you stick with me.. !

Trina

x

WHERE THE MAGIC HAPPENS...

How its all done... 

Well, hello there peeps. So sorry I haven't been blogging lately. It's one of those jobs which you really can only do when your feeling a) inspired - or b) guilty.. 

No its not because I've been glued to Strictly or because Downton has started again... (well perhaps a little of the latter). I really have been lazy and for that I'm sorry.

I'm not going to feel bad about it, because I've recently got a new iphone, (well a cast off from himself) and I know I'm not the only one who wakes up and immediately looks at stuff and then gets distracted, then goes with all good intentions to do blog, then gets distracted again.. it really is very anoying. You see I'm not a very disciplined person, (as he will quite readily point out) but I can get down to some serious work when induced to do so.

(see I'm digressing again... stop it)

Anyway the point of todays post, that sounds like I post daily - well, no people I don't.   I thought it might be interesting to show you a bit about my creative process. 

My disclaimer at this point is that I'm sorry if I do it wrong, but I'm still learning, so all those professionals out there - please don't jump down the computer at me.. 

Well here goes.. 

The pattern at the top is one I made from scratch - and here is how it was done.. 

Take a trip out to National trust property because the kids are bouncing off the sofa and take camera.. I'm fortunate that I have a good camera (Cannon Eos 600D) which never really takes a bad picture - I mean at least in the digital age you don't have to go with your mum to town any longer to Supersnaps and wait 1 week to see them, only to find there really are no heads on folk and you have camera shakes... gosh that was annoying... imagine how much money we've waisted on crap pictures...??

Here are my pictures from the lovely Barrington Court in Somerset.. I'm quite drawn to the dead bits on flowers. - (lets not go there)

So now I've got a couple of good pictures - all I have to do now is draw them.  This bit I find the easiest because, well I've always drawn things.. (I'm not very good at drawing anything with pulse, animals, people etc) Unless they are three miles in the distance..!

As you can see - I've hand drawn the flower based on the photographs. Of course they are not exact, because I've cut the bottom off one and well the other I've adjusted to fit the paper size. But it sort of represents the photo a bit.

The next job - is to scan the picture into Photoshop - I'm not going to explain much about this - because I'm not YET a fan of Photoshop. It never really does what I think it should be doing and sometimes I really do loose the plot and just start all over again. I then saved the image as a jpeg file - after a little clean up. 

Once I'm happy with this its then imported into Illustrator. (please note from this point on I'm on a wing and prayer, because, well, basically these systems are so powerful and complex it will take me another - what - year ? - to become Adobe 'confident' - but I do my best as they say.. 

So I'm thinking about colours, do I want it to be natural or mixed, or seasonal etc... 

I'm using an app called Kuler - it's great for looking at colour combinations etc and often taken from photos from nature - which I always think look best for colours, because I don't think we can replicate them. The best bit is that you can download colour combos and then upload them into Illustrator right there, like 'voila' it's done. 

I also try to be disciplined in them - stick to what you want and keep it simple.

So after all that I'm pretty much done. Not entirely sure what I'm going to do with them yet, possibly stationary although I've yet to find a printer of wrapping paper who doesn't charge you fortune.. 

Hopefully one day I'll have an agent who can help, but in the mean time, I must keep tapping, undoing, drawing, filling, saving, and photographing. 

Good luck to all my fellow ABSPD students.. Module 2 starts soon people... eyes down.. 

Thanks for looking

p.s. I need another few likes on my Facebook page - so be a love and I'll do the same.

Trina 

xx

p.s Went onto my Facebook page and my little boy (2) had not only tweeted on my behalf but it had gone on my Facebook page and Web.. so if you see a thing about a game to feed a horse - its not me, its him.... (how rude is that?)