“Gotta Go,” cont’d.

[Cont’d from here] How did I wind up here, drawing “paper dolls” to add my fabric designs to? Maybe in old age I’m simply circling back to one of my first loves — 1950s paper dolls. Rita Hayworth. The Maguire Sisters. I could lose myself for hours dressing them and having them act out their […]

“Gotta Go” fabric design

I’ve been laboring away in a course called “The Sellable Sketch.” I reached the point where I picked out (1) a style I aspired to (“flowing”), (2) a current trend in fashion (“natural textures”), and (3) an end-user (long-story-short “cosmopolitan”). The challenge now: design a fabric collection — three or more designs that “go together.” […]

Be the wind

Assignment: to design a border in Photoshop (i.e., a horizontally repeated pattern printed along the selvage edge of a bolt of fabric) Result: It should have been easy, but nothing worked till I resurrected a 2007 doodle — five off-balance little pencil figures. I put them on a colorful striped design, but continued to torture […]

Designing for energy

I’m focusing on fabric design this winter as a practice. Like some people play games or do sports, I design because it’s fun and has beneficial social and psychological side effects. I’m in it for the process, not the product. But, as always, I take myself seriously. Stretching does not mean scrambling to the top of […]

“Be the Change”

My design classes and challenges are very immersive. I’m not too swift coming up with new ideas, so I continue to dig into my old image files. This week took me back elements I made for a 1-minute animation back in 2008: “Be the Change.” I had to go look at it again on YouTube. […]

“Desert Wanderer”

My 13th Spoonflower Challenge entry is on the theme of Desert Modernism. The challenge is being held in conjunction with the Modern Phoenix organization. Personally, I was over mid-century modern by 1967, but undoubtedly desert modernism represents a classic era in Arizona architecture and interior design. I thought my best route to success here was […]

Reckoning: a humble start

You hear about artists and entertainers “bursting upon the scene” as if they just picked up a brush or a guitar and their genius gushed out. You want to be that person. You walk on stage unrehearsed because you’re confident the magic will happen. Haha. I started doing Spoonflower challenges because, if I want to […]

Work in progress: motif design

I’m enjoying going through my old drawings and books for design motifs. Coming soon is a Spoonflower challenge on the theme of pysanky, the Ukranian art of egg dyeing. To produce a pysanka, the design is drawn in wax before the egg is painted or dyed, so that the fine lines in the final product […]

Garden party at sunset

Spoonflower challenge: a design limited to four specific colors — Goldenrod (#E0B138), Midnight Blue (#002E54), Coral (#FA7268 – ASE Color of the Year hex code), Gray (#D9D9D6). My reaction: ew. Oh well. I pulled a motif from my library and gave her a mysterious friend: opposite but the same. A bird looks on. Others designers […]

Good old Lucy

When I fell in love with making videos (circa 2003), I was a one-woman production studio — writer, actor, sound engineer, animator. I committed to telling some stories from a youthful point of view, so I learned how to modify my voice recording to make it sound like I was 12. Lucy was born. She […]