The Painted Apron

Creations, Building a Design

Posted by the Painted Apron on February 5, 2015 · 13 Comments 

The secret to building a design, or recreating an image that you like, with your own pen or paintbrush, is simple

Deconstruction

If you look carefully at the design above you can see that it’s just a combination of simple shapes and colors, repeated in a particular order to form a pleasing pattern.  It was a practice sketch for the chip and dip set below

Take the design apart by shapes and elements and then rebuild it piece by piece

Let me demonstrate with some designs from the cover of this notebook

Let’s try this “S” border design

Start with 1 backward S, then add another S with the large curves touching at the bottom

Then add width to each S

Add a circle at the top of each pair and fill in the S shapes, adjusting if needed, as you go

Clearly it’s not perfect, this is just a quick attempt, but the overall impact is there.   You are an artist, not a machine, hence the charm comes from the imperfection

Let’s deconstruct the rose

Start with the center of the rose and build out

Now add the petals

keep looking at your photo source

almost done

Objects can be broken down into 4 or 5 tones, lightest,  light, medium,  darker, and darkest

The darkest tones will be found in the parts of the objects that receive the least amount of light, as the rose’s tight bud center

In the rose above, there are 4 tones, easily distinguished, with the lightest areas being the large open leaves

In this case, a very light pink, a medium pink, a dark pink, and red for the darkest tone

Here’s one more demo you can use to add a lacy trim to your Valentine

Going clockwise, start with making a “wave” line

Add another wave line above the first one and then make narrow loops on each wave point

Add a small circle in between loops and then underline the bottom wave line twice

Make vertical lines between the bottom wave line and the top straight line

Add small dots to the tip of each wave along the lower wave line

Add a scalloped line to the bottom of the lower straight line

I used the wave and loop part of this lacy pattern on the gold Doodle bottle, center right, in the photo above.  Even the simplest patterns can be effective with repetition

Juicy Details

Depending on what you’re doodling on, or drawing or painting, you can use colored pencils, colored markers or Sharpies, paint pens, Chalk Ink Pens, or acrylic paint

This shelf was painted with a combination of paint, paint pens and Sharpies

The best part about using paint is that you can mix your own color tones

With red and white, you can mix all the middle tones by adjusting the ratio of red to white

Simple shapes and patterns repeat on these painted pots by my friend Joanne [I use them to hold my small paint jars so forgive the paint splatters I made]  Her simple flower pattern, created with a large dot and 3 quick strokes, is brilliant.  The repetition gives this simple flower impact.  A swirl of dark pink inside the flower and tone on tone yellow background with dots, and green bands,  this is a adorable design anyone can do~

Jazz up your flower pots and painted furniture, you can see more about painting flowerpots here

When you look up close you can easily see the pattern isn’t perfect, but once it’s finished,  you don’t notice the imperfections

Please tell me you are itching to create something now!  You can see more about this cabinet and take a tour of My Studio here

Have fun! Be fearless! Experiment!

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