Making an abstract square pattern

In one of my classes (right now) we are making fake chocolate companies, so I've been thinking of different packaging options and possible patterns. It occurs to me that I kind of promised to post some patterns here sometime, so this seems like the perfect opportunity.



Please forgive that the first step (the actual sketch) is missing. I don't have a scanner. The inspiration for this pattern is city lights and building windows.



I played around with the placement and direction of the squares until I found one that I liked. You don't have to do this digitally. You can do the same thing with tracing paper. I like to start off with black and white because if you begin a pattern using a billion colors it might not work.



I removed the squares because I've found that with some patterns, they aren't necessary.



I think it works.




These are some arbitrary colors just to test the pattern.


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In other news, I'd like to thank Tenaria for sponsoring me in the Walk MS event and helping me reach 5% of my goal. If you are curious there is link below to one of my previous posts on it.

http://whoknowsgracesix.blogspot.com/2009/03/walk-ms.html

Walk MS

Some of you may not know this, but I lost two of my friends last month, one (Adam) died in his sleep and the other (Mrs. Rose) was unable to over come her long-time battle with Multiple Sclerosis. In her honor and to also in support of her son, my friend Bejay, I will be participating in New York City’s Walk MS event on Sunday, April 19. I am raising $100. If anyone would like to donate $5 to the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, just click on the link below. There, you will be given a link to either “Donate to Grace” or “Donate to Participant.”

http://main.nationalmssociety.org/site/TR/Walk/NYNWalkEvents?px=6235449&pg=personal&fr_id=11002

If you don’t have $5 to give (I know what times we live in) just tell some of your friends about it. Thank you in advance,
-Grace

P.S. If you would like to know more information about the National MS Society or Walk MS, just visit the following link:

http://www.nationalmssociety.org/chapters/walk-ms-new-york-city-chapter/index.aspx

and for information about MS see the following link:

http://www.nationalmssociety.org/about-multiple-sclerosis/what-is-ms/index.aspx

I'm supposed to be doing homework right now

http://whoknowsgracesix.blogspot.com/2009/03/findings-of-web-2-deep-sea.html

Remember this little guy from a previous post? Well, I decided to draw him. The scans aren't all that great, but here they are. The light bulb and nerd versions came from my co-worker's brain and out through my hands.

I'm off to finish my homework now.

Aaaarrggggg!

Midterms

Breaking bad habits (sorry for the time between posts)

Things have been super busy lately, so I send my apologies to anyone who (if anyone?) reads this blog on a regular basis.  Here are some things that have been on my mind:

I had to draw this flower fairly quickly and noticed some of my bad habits returning.   One of which is erasing my guidelines.

I drew this girl (above) a few years back and did the same thing.  A year or so later, I started to notice my drawings moving to new heights of wonkiness (I dare not post here.)  When I wanted to go back to older drawings to see what went wrong, it hit me.  I had erased all my actual work!

Flash forward sometime later and I came across these Preston Blair drawing lessons on John K's blog!  I know what some of you (imaginary) are thinking, "aren't these lessons stylistically different from what you're doing, Grace?"  Well, yes and no.  They are only superficially dissimilar.   Everything I learned in Life Drawing class is here in these lessons, construction, proportion, perspective, and drawing hierarchy.  Click on the link below to go to his page.

more on construction 

Above, is my attempt at the first lesson.  I have done more lessons since, but I'm ashamed to say I haven't finished them all yet.  I also need to scan the ones I have tried, I know, bad.


some day

Not a deep sea creature at all (updates)

Remember when I showed you this guy's cousin in a previous post?  Well, it turns out that the Axolotl is a fresh water amphibian from Mexico... still cute though.

more pictures

more info

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OTHER THINGS

The Lamprey

more on the Lamprey

These guys are from "the deep."

the deep website

More Patterns!  These two came from the ASIFA Hollywood Animation Archive site.  I'll link below.  Along with patterns it features pages and concepts fro

m Owen Jones'  The Grammar of Ornament (book.)  There are 4 posts on that blog devoted to just this subject.

ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive: Design: Grammar of Ornament Part Four

Reposting

Don't give me that look!  I finally have larger images from my previous post.

[click to see older enty]

I'll be reposting some pictures

Someone needs to let me know what the deal is with blogger and images.  There are times when it resizes (smaller) pictures and inverts colors in non-photos.  Why?  I'll try to put up some of the pictures from my two last posts  again and hope they open up to scale this time.

Ah ha!

I have good and bad news.  The bad news is, I didn't get to go to the library this weekend.  BUT this State (New York) has many of it's hidden treasures available online for FREE.  That's "fantabulous" to me!  Here are some of my findings:

Flowers or cogs?  Girl or machine?

Let's run through the forest together in fashionable clothes!

I want to hangout with the lady in this pattern (above.)

Look at the color choice of the flowers on the right.  I would have never put those together.  They look great!

Diamond based patterns above.

These sea creatures are fun and cold at the same time.

They need to bring back patterned book covers and binding.

Look at those birds on the upper right!

How happy are these?  (above)

I like the horse in the upper right corner.  If only real horses looked like this.  Maybe I wouldn't fear them, but that's another subject.

Look at how cute these are (above.)

Click on the link below and type in a new search.   There's a half-n-half chance you'll find some cool stuff.

NYPL search

With how beautiful, distinctive, and inspired these old patterns and graphic images are, why do contemporary patterns look like this?

One of my hobbies is making patterns.  Maybe I'll post a couple sometime?   I bought two books over the Summer that teach more on the basis of design.  I've been meaning to try making a diamond or ogee based pattern instead of my usual square.  We'll see!