Spoonflower’s 12 Days of Design: Day #4: Choose a Medium

Choosing a medium in which to create art isn’t too hard for me. See, I’m not great at painting, and also want a low-barrier method of entry. That pretty much means drawing by hand, or drawing on my tablet, for my first project. Sure, in the future I could definitely give block printing a try, or attempt some fancier methods. I love the tangible experience of doing things by hand and not on a computer. But to make this challenge a success for me, I knew I’d have to go minimalist. I don’t have a lot of time to devote right now, but want to complete my mission.

Fortunately, I’ve been enjoying drawing in my sketchbook of late, and I have been using the heck out of a cool app on my iPad called Tayasui Sketches Pro. (I think I nabbed it when it was a free App of the Week.) Actually being drawn to create this kind of art, more than once a year, is a new concept for me. But this app has really made it easy and fun. I just need a non-snub-nose-end stylus to make it easier. My finger can only do so much.

Farawar Folk on Spoonflower by Cerigwen, done via vector image. Buy it at http://www.spoonflower.com/fabric/3175303-far-away-folk-by-cerigwen

I know that, for future designs, I’ll get more adventurous and try other media (don’t you hate it when people say “mediums”?), such as block printing, but I want to start easy this time*. However I end up starting my images, I’m likely to then get them to be vector images, and edit them from there. A perfect excuse to go through those Inkscape tutorials I recently found, though that might make me pause my Challenge days until I can complete them.

*Though the found objects collage method seems easier—and I do have plenty of interesting items around here—I’m going to leave that for another day.