illustrator – mamasbrush

Surface pattern design with whimsical mushrooms, turtles, leaves, flowers, and snails. | mamasbrush

Mushrooms, turtles, and snails combine with leaves, berries and flowers to highlight some of the flora and fauna of the forest floor. This weeks Spoonflower Design Challenge is “Forest Biome” and I had fun bringing a touch of whimsy to my design.

Whimsical mushroom with a face. | mamasbrush

It all started with the mushrooms. Once I had 4-5 drawn out and colored, I decided that a couple of them needed faces. I’m pleased to introduce you to Lady Mushroom (see my first animation of her over on Instagram).

The leaves were next. I wanted a variety. Those little heart branches were last and they are my favorite!

Then I needed berries… but I wanted a variety of berries for interest.

I added the turtles in honor of my 8 year old son. He loves turtles. I’m not big on realistic turtle drawing, though. My turtles often have those super unrealistically high shells. He has vaulted ceilings. 🙂

Cute snail illustration, whimsical snail with brown shell and a smile. | mamasbrush

I thought I was done, and I was really happy with the design, when my husband decided I needed to add snails. He does that sort of thing all the time.

“But I don’t want to add snails! Snails sound hard!”

Nonetheless, I added snails. And I love them. He was right. It definitely needed snails. And one of them definitely needed a face, however unscientific it may be. 🙂

Spoonflower is showcasing these in their contest as wallpaper, but how would you use it? Fabric? Wallpaper? Would you turn it into a little girls dress? Or dress the walls of the kids playroom? Let me know in the comments!

Gathering here.

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Blueberry Branch in Illustrator | mamasbrush #practice #learning #sharing #artwork #graphicdesign #blueberries #branch #art

This is my first official completed project in Adobe Illustrator.

In my journey as a budding artist, one of the walls I keep running up against in sharing my work digitally is Adobe Illustrator. I learned how to use Photoshop years ago (though numerous new editions leave me still figuring things out), but I’ve never had any training in Illustrator. I just sort of fake it to do what I need. Watch a YouTube video for this or that and make it work well enough. But it is a frustration when I want to do something and don’t know how.

I’d like to be able to use it to further my artistic endeavors, not be hindered by it. So I’ve decided to learn. As there is nothing in the budget for this sort of thing, I’ve turned to the internet as my teacher. This is hit or miss as I’m sure you know, but I’ve already learned several things I didn’t know before and, therefore, can now do several things I could never have done before. I’ve been working through other peoples project tutorials, but I keep getting stuck before finishing anything all the way. So I took what I’ve learned so far and I made my own project.

Blueberry Branch Sketch | mamasbrush #imperfect #quicksketch #practice #learning #sharing #artwork #graphicdesign #blueberries #branch #art

I started with this quick sketch on regular paper. It isn’t perfect and I didn’t bother fixing the mistakes. I took a picture of it with my phone, uploaded it and brought it into Illustrator. The main skill I was trying to work on was using the pen tool, so I created a new layer over top the one with the photo and began using the pen tool to trace over my lines and leaves. It’s going to take some further practice, but already I can see a difference over the last couple days. Mostly it’s just fun to see something I created in Illustrator.

It’s not perfect, but the project served it’s purpose. I’ve gotten some practice and I’ve learned where I need some further instruction.

Gathering here.

Tag: illustrator

Mushroom Surface Pattern Design

Blueberry Branch – Illustrator Project