Animating drawings in Procreate

Posted on March 19, 2021March 19, 2021 Posted in Blog, Illustration, Running your own art business, surface pattern design, UncategorizedTagged animation, create gifs, digital art, digital illustration, how to animate, how to animate in Procreate, Illustration, iPad drawing, learn to draw, procreate, procreate designLeave a comment

I made my artwork ‘twinkle’ with the the animation tool in Procreate.

Here’s how

Turn on animations assist in the canvas menu. Have your artwork on one layer.

Click on the artwork frame and check the background option to make this the background layer. (Super important).

Add a frame and layer. Draw over the elements you want to move, free hand, to give them some movement. The more frames you draw. The more movement you get.

I exported mine as an MP4 in order to play on Instagram.

A bit of fun for a Friday! 🙂

panda art

Posted on March 14, 2021March 11, 2021 Posted in Blog, Illustration, surface pattern designTagged animal conservation, animal protection, Apple Pencil drawing, Illustration, illustration art, Michelle Tasker, panda, pattern design, procreate drawing, procreate for design, raising awareness, save the planet, sketching, surface pattern design, surface pattern designer, world wildlife fundLeave a comment

In between pattern designing, I am drawing animals on the World Wildlife Fund’s endangered list. It’s my way of being involved and maintaining my awareness of issues bigger than me 🙂

I am really drawn to the colours in this drawing. Pinks, oranges and green/blue mash ups keep appearing in my drawings and designs.

pattern design – circles

Posted on March 12, 2021March 11, 2021 Posted in Blog, Illustration, surface pattern designTagged 70's, 70's colour, Apple Pencil drawing, ciricles, designing in photoshop, Illustration, illustration art, learn surface pattern design, make it in design, Michelle Tasker, pattern design, photoshop for iPad, photoshop for pattern making, procreate for design, sketching, small business, surface pattern design, surface pattern designerLeave a comment

Circles are my favourite shape!

I love the roundedness and the sweeping curves. Orange is one of my favourite colours (I have lots of favourites!)

I love the 70’s vibe oozing out from this design and how the circles look like colour pops popping everywhere!

I designed this in Illustrator on the iPad 🙂

ADOBE ILLUSTRATOR FOR IPAD

Posted on March 8, 2021March 6, 2021 Posted in Blog, Illustration, surface pattern designTagged Apple Pencil drawing, designing in illustrator, draw flowers, floral designs, Illustration, illustration art, illustrator for iPad, illustrator for pattern making, learn surface pattern design, make it in design, Michelle Tasker, pattern design, procreate for design, sketching, small business, surface pattern design, surface pattern designerLeave a comment

I’ve been learning Illustrator for 3 weeks. It feels like longer!

It’s a massive program, which I doubt I will have scratched the surface of, even after a year of study.

After beginning on my laptop, I quickly moved onto the iPad in order to draw more easily with the Apple Pencil. It was learning all over again at first!

There are no where near as many visual windows or options as the desktop version. It was like treasure hunting without a map: There is no ‘place’ option, I couldn’t find the eye dropper, where was the keyboard?

I had a hairy few days of frustration as workflow slowed. I didn’t want to go between laptop and iPad all time, I knew it shouldn’t be this time consuming.

And it isn’t. A bit of google and play time and I’m finding my feet with the iPad version. As someone who hand draws much of what I design, I love it.

I’m no way qualified to give any sort of tutorial, but there are some great YouTube tutorials which are really helpful with getting started.

WHY SURFACE PATTERN DESIGN?

Posted on March 4, 2021February 26, 2021 Posted in UncategorizedLeave a comment

The past years has been difficult for everybody. The entire world has faced challenges it could never have predicted.

For me, these changes, plus the changes in my family ( we are a foursome now:), and my health (being diagnosed with an autoimmune disease) made me rethink where I was going with my Art and Photography. I took up drawing again and began creating digital art. I stumbled upon surface pattern design, which I didn’t even know was a thing, and fell in love with it.

The endless possibilities for pattern, colour combinations, motifs and illustrations makes me giddy with excitement. I no see colours and patterns everywhere!

I still have my day job, so I am in a very lucky position that I have given myself the rest of the year to play, experiment, find my style and grow my portfolio. There is a lot to learn, and just the fun aspects of design and technical creation. This is a completely new industry which I know nothing about and I know nothing about business or running it.

Everything is figureoutable, so I’ gunna figure it out! C’os I really wanna do this! 🙂

PHOTOSHOP FOR DESKTOP AND IPAD

Posted on March 1, 2021February 26, 2021 Posted in Illustration, surface pattern designTagged Apple Pencil drawing, designing in photoshop, draw flowers, floral designs, Illustration, illustration art, learn surface pattern design, make it in design, Michelle Tasker, pattern design, photoshop for iPad, photoshop for pattern making, procreate for design, sketching, small business, surface pattern design, surface pattern designerLeave a comment

OMG! Photoshop on my laptop and iPad is amazing! I’ve been practising pattern making in Photoshop today, and jumping between the two programmes is awesome. I prefer to draw with my apple pencil on the iPad but the iPad version doesn’t have all the features of the desktop version.

Saving to the Cloud allows me to jump from one to the other when I wanted to add some hand drawn elements to my designs.

This is no doubt old news for many, but when you first discover it – mind blown! lol

TRAINEE SURFACE PATTERN DESIGNER!

Posted on February 26, 2021 Posted in Blog, Illustration, surface pattern designTagged becoming a designer, floral design, freelance designer, Illustration, learn to design, Michelle Tasker, pattern design, Rachel Taylor, repeat pattern, surface pattern, surface pattern designLeave a comment

After 6 months of procrastination, self depreciation and future tripping, I joined a course in Surface Pattern Design.

Before clicking ‘pay now’, I read Marie Forleo’s ‘Everything is figureoutable’ from cover to cover. It gave me the kick up the arse I needed to follow my dreams. Every time I get the ‘I’m not good enough, I can’t do this’ jitters, I remind myself that EVERYTHING IS FIGUREOUTABLE.

I have joined Rachel Taylor‘s ‘Make It In Design’ course, and I’ll be blogging about my progress, ups, and now doubt downs!

Plus keeping myself accountable!

Here is my first go at pattern making.

I drew the motif in paper and then in procreate. Then I created the pattern in Photoshop.

The scratchy textures were created with a dry paintbrush and poster paint (literally out of my 7 years old’s art box), scanned and added into Photoshop. I experimented with blending modes until I found something I liked. 🙂

Cute pinks and pastels design

Posted on November 11, 2020 Posted in Blog, IllustrationTagged botanical design, digital art, digital illustration, floral illustration, graphic design, iPad art, pastel colours, pattern designer, procreate, surface pattern, surface pattern design1 Comment

I’ve been creating on my iPad this week, using Procreate.

I find creating surface patterns quite therapeutic.

What do you do to switch off?

Take care,

Michelle