From Sketchbook to Finish Fabric Design

Sunday is my truly my funday where I get a chance most weeks to have a full day to spend on personal work, which is heaven when it’s busy with commissions & orders during the week. The last couple of Sundays I’ve been working on a bolt fabric assignment for a Make Art That Sells course I currently taking.

I often share work in progress pics in my Instagram stories over the days that I’m working on something, but I thought it would be fun to show everything here together in one go. Here’s an assignment for kitchenware bolt fabric design, from research / sketchbook studies to the finished digital artwork for ‘Pasta Party’ mini collection.

Starting with pencil & paper where most of my work begins.

Adding watercolour & coloured pencil for usable icons. I use Schmincke Horadam watercolour and Caran D’ache Luminance pencils. I invested in both at the start of the year and their quality has made a noticeable difference to my sketchbook work.

Any chance I get to work outside in the sunshine is my absolute favourite way to work.

The last stage was to take everything into Procreate and finish up digitally. I say ‘finish up’ but in reality, it’s only about 50% of the work/time by the point I’m ready to rework everything digitally.

I could play with colour combinations and variations all day, but here’s the final piece – ‘Pasta Party’ bolt fabric mini collection.

I’d love to see these printed up for a collection of fabrics so these are available for licensing. I’m dreaming of seeing the designs on aprons, tea-towels, oven gloves, potholders & kitchen blinds!