Way back when... when I started this blog, I promised to share with you a little of my working progress, which I realise to my shame I have never done! So I shall hopefully remedy that a bit by sharing with you a little something that I am currently working on.
I have always loved vintage wallpaper, infact I have a bit of a 'thing' for it. I take a lot of inspiration colourwise from glorious 70s wallpaper, and my recent
Home Sweet Home print was based entirely upon
this beautiful print. I discovered it had come from this amazing shop,
Retro Villa, in Copenhagen. The
story behind the shop is great and you must read about it and its wonderful owner,
Mette Helena Rasmussen! There I found several more amazing
floral prints and they have inspired a whole host of ideas in my head. Following on from my
Ampersand print, I am now exploring how to form letters from the elements that make up the wallpaper pattern... this is what I'm doing!
Image: Retro Villa
[Step 1] I find a print I like. I really like the shapes and different sizes of this particular pattern... I know it will work well for what I have in mind!
[Step 2] I then start re-drawing each separate element of the pattern in Illustrator.
[Step 3] I lay out the elements to see what I have and give them a hierarchy in my layers palette. The very smallest flowers I arrange into groups. Then I set about re-colouring the artwork until I find a colourway I like. Sometimes this will just work by accident, other times I will turn to images I've saved on my computer or
Pinterest for a bit of inspiration.
[Step 4] I choose a font... for this kind of detailed work, simple bold fonts are best. My favourite is
Franklin Gothic Heavy.
[Step 5] I outline the font and make guides.
[Step 6] Then comes the fun bit! I start filling the guides in with the flower shapes. I add a few of the large flowers first to each letter... I'll show you an 'S' as an example.
[Step 7] Then I add some of the second layer flowers...
[Step 8] I continue adding the second and third layer of flowers and finish filling in the gaps with the small filler flower groups. Voila!
I'm going to continue working on the entire alphabet... and then I shall have a good old tweak of each letter! Let's see what I do with it!
