anika mari

I found an awesome little tutorial over at Design*Sponge that finally demystified how to create a tiled repeat pattern that’s not just a simple geometric, but that’s seamlessly intertwined.

I couldn’t wait to try it out, so I made a little pattern of my own. I didn’t want to make a full sized 8.5×11 tile, so I cut out a little square and started from there. The finished tile is about 3″ x 3″ though not exactly square.

This process does the trick! I wasn’t worried about being as carefully exact as mentioned in the tutorial since I wasn’t intending to create a finished product. The final tiled pattern isn’t perfect. In fact it’s rather crooked, but it’s close enough for my first experiment.

I find the results thrilling, at least in the potential they show for this technique.

I went to the rancho with the family and there was a good amount of down time, so I started sketching. I’d been admiring the wrought iron work that serve as bars for a lot of windows in Mexico.

A lot prettier than plain iron bars, so I decided to sketch them. At first I copied the different patterns that I saw, but I started to experiment with the same basic shapes and curves all the designs are composed of, but I switched them up from the basic patterns.

Here are the first few sketches I did while at the ranch:

Here are my own variations inspired by the originals:

I liked what I’d come up with, so I decided to take the idea bit further and work with color on a larger piece of paper.

For this image I used brown and red stabilo markers only:

For the blue version of the following pattern, I liked the blue and green, but the lighter stabilo marker that I used for some of the fine lines tends to get lost.  I decided to do another version. For the second version of this pattern I used black for all the fine lines and tried out a few different colors. I used both stabilo and Prisma Color markers:

With the last version, I was satisfied with the overall result and considered this pattern done, at least in sketch book form.

Here’s the sketch of the original pattern I’m using:

I settled on the shade of white I like–3 coats of the “white wash” I made, but you can still clearly see the wood grain since the white is not opaque. It’s a bit difficult to see the difference in this photo, but I chose the color of the block on the right, which was the lightest version of the 3 test blocks:

I tested out wood burning to create the lines of the pattern. I like the result, but when I first started I wasn’t sure if it was going to work. It took a long time for the wood burner to heat up all the way. I tried to make my first mark with the wood burner after it was plugged in for just a minute or so. It barely made a dent. I gave it another 10 minutes before I tried it again. The results were better, but not great. It seemed that the sharp metal tip was gouging into the soft wood without much actual burning. I fiddled with it for a while, going over the same lines several times and drawing with it very slowly, hoping that I just needed to get the hang of it. After maybe another 10 minutes, the metal tip was finally fully heated and was making nice smooth dark lines. I still had to practice and get the feel of it, but a wood burner definitely works best when it’s fully hot.

Here’s a photo of me waiting for the wood burner to heat up:

I tried out some oil pastels between the wood burned lines. While I like the effect, I’m not sure I love color for this project. Instead, I’m going to keep the color palette neutral. I have a few ideas to try tomorrow involving browns grays and black. Here are the test blocks I did:

**notice the wood burned lines!

Since I settled on the background color and wood burning, the next step was to paint all the blocks and then transfer the pattern.

This image gives you an idea about how I got the pattern on the wood blocks using graphite transfer paper:

Here’s a photo of the whole pattern transferred onto the blocks:

Tomorrow I’ll be burning in all the lines, and hopefully settling on an idea for how to color the positive space.

In the time that I’ve been in Mexico, I have realized that there are at least 4 different types of graffiti or wall art in Mexico City: Sanctioned advertisements on rented walls, traditional style graffiti art utilizing color, shading, depth and skill, stencil style graffiti, and regular scribbled tags of symbols that mean something to drug dealers and gangs. I find the different types of graffiti that decorate the city interesting from an artistic perspective, but I understand that a lot of people really detest it because the walls of houses are constantly tagged with the drug-dealer/gang variety of graffiti. In that respect I can understand why most people don’t really take a look at any kind of graffiti, and instead consider it all vandalism, or at least and eyesore.

But for me, I find it interesting. I haven’t spent a lot of time documenting it, but when ever I see it in the city, it does catch my eye, and I give it a moment of my time and attention. This happened one day when I was driving back to the city from Cuernavaca. Traffic was slow because a truck carrying tile had lost it’s load. We crept by a village that had a wall to between it and the highway, presumably to keep down the road noise. Like on many plain surfaces in the city and surrounding pueblos, they don’t stay that way, and this wall was no exception. It was covered with many styles of graffiti. There was one small part of one tag that particularly caught my eye. The shape of it was so organic and somehow sophisticated. Since we were driving slow, I snatched out my sketch book, and started to draw. I came up with a little motif that was totally different from the shape I’d seen that had inspired me, but I kept going with it.

When I got home, I started a series of patterns based on the shape I’d come up with. The first one I completed within a day:

The colors were easy to choose, and I like the combination, but somehow I wasn’t entirely satisfied with the overall result. I was more intrigued by the negative space (the dark blue shapes) than with the green shapes that were intended to be the focal point of the pattern.

I decided to try out a different pattern based on the shape of negative space from the first pattern:

I love the color combination of the Mulberry and Poppy Red Prismacolors. I think this pattern is an example of not knowing when to stop. The blue and the black areas that I filled in are unnecessary and really distract from the bold color combination of the mulberry and poppy red that would really be stunning on its own. I would have been better off leaving the blue and black areas as white space.

Overall I was pretty happy with the result of the last pattern, even if it wasn’t entirely perfect. But the first green and blue pattern I’d completed still bugged me. I wasn’t sure what needed to change, but I had an idea to smooth out the lines, making the shape a bit more simple, so I did this pattern next:

This time I filled in the negative areas with the new simplified motif, making the pattern a little more rapid and repetitive. I was happier with this result, but I still felt like I was missing something. It just kind of gently nagged at me for a few days until one day after my language class. It had be a long class, and I was really tired when I got home. I lay down, fully intending to rest for 20 minutes. My mind was wondering in no particular direction when an idea suddenly popped into my head. What about 8 points in the shape instead of four? I jumped right up, and sketched a bit, quickly working out the new motif. I worked determinedly, but it still took me more than a day to finish this pattern:

I liked the combination of the yellow with the blues, but I wanted to try out a couple of other color combinations, so I switched it up a bit at the bottom of the pattern.  When I was finished, I had the blue stars finished and the negative spaces colored in with yellow, pink and blue, but it still seemed to be missing something.  I added the small dots at the intersections of the lines of the grid paper with a light gray Stabilo pen.  Finally I felt satisfied with the pattern that graffiti had inspired, and so I was free to move onto the next idea if and when it would hit me.

Before I came to Mexico, I bought myself a set of 24 Prisma Color Markers. I’ve long lusted for a set of my own, ever since my oldest brother had some. I would steal them to draw with and then he’d yell at me. I think I was probably about 10 or 12 at the time, so he was either 20 or 22.

I know that when I go on vacation, I always end up buying art supplies, and usually they are kind of sub-par art supplies from the corner store or office depot or a sparsely supplied over-priced school store. I thought that the prisma markers would be perfect since they are compact and colorful, so I splurged and spent the $50 on my set of 24 markers.

The first time I used them, I pulled my most comfortable chair out onto the terrace, prepared a nice cup of tea and settled down for some drawing time. I made this series of patterns because I wanted to try out a variety of colors and combinations:

I was quickly disappointed with the overall performance of the Prisma Color markers. The color is great, but I noticed that the ink bleeds quite a bit, and the edges are always a little fuzzy. For the fine detail of these patterns, I did not get the effect that I was looking for. Some of the little patterns “work” a lot better than others. I really like the two left-most red patterns, the left most bright blue/violet pattern, the second to left yellow pattern, and all the green patterns. Some look very crappy, particularly most of the burgundy/dark purple patterns, and the two middle bright blue/violet patterns.

So for a few days I was kind of stuck. These pens just weren’t doing what I hoped that they would do, and most of my drawings lately have been heavy with detail. I could still use my pigma micron pens, but they are all black, and the using them for details and the color markers to fill in color might be ok some of the time, but I had some specific ideas of what I wanted to do, and I’d need a finer line, color marker to do it.

Luckily I found a set of Stabilo fine point markers (point 88) at the Office Depot Express near my house. When I first got the Stabilo markers, I drew some images using only the new fine line markers to test them out and get a feel for them. The first pattern I drew was of peas, using the 3 greens that came in the set:

I was happy with the color and the detail that I achieved. They don’t noticeably bleed, and they maintain a crisp edge. As you can see in the image, it’s difficult to achieve a uniform color in the solid area, but the Prismacolor markers are good for this. It’s nice to have options at least.

Feeling comfortable with my new markers, I decided to test them out for the reason that I bought them: to use them in conjunction with the Prismacolor markers. First I made a sort of “key” of the colors of the Stabilo markers paired with the Prismacolor markers. There are a few colors in both sets that don’t have a close match, but I was pleased to find that most of the colors matched up quite nicely.

For my first test, I drew these weird wingless bird hearts:

I first drew the detail of the birds with a red Stabilo marker, then I filled in the central heart shaped area with the Poppy Red Prisma Color marker. I was very pleased with the result. The color matches pretty closely, and the solid area from the Prismacolor marker is very rich and smooth. The hearts were the only thing on this piece of paper for a long time.

One day I was coloring with Prismacolor markers when I noticed that if the color dried a bit, and I colored over it with the same marker, I’d end up with a slightly darker hue of the same color. I used Poppy Red to draw these poppies (seemed appropriate both in color and in subject to try out this layering technique). I am pleased with the result. The differences in hues are subtle, but they really contribute to the delicate feeling that I was going for with the blossoms. For the stems I used the same technique that I described above: drew the shape with the Stabilo markers, then colored in the area with a similar Prismacolor marker (both dark green).

I have noticed that the Stabilo markers can bleed, and the color will run, ruining the crisp line if I don’t work quickly and precisely. I still have a lot to get used to with these markers, but it’s been a good start.