Illustration: First attempt at Pattern Illustration.

As you are aware I am setting up my freelance Illustration company, it has been a little while in the making but fingers crossed I am almost ready to become official. In a bid to increase my work/ portfolio I have entered a couple of illustration competitions from Tigerprint who supply card/ wrap/ stationary to M&S. These competitions have been quite good at allowing me to tackle a different brief, the anxiety/ development of which is something I quite miss from my previous job. The brief last month was to design a female surface pattern. I was going to give it a miss, I was a bit snowed under with work at the time and decided to focus on their greeting card competitions, but then I gave myself a little slap across the face and pondered what I was thinking. I have been interested in pattern illustration for some time, have been wanting to have a go, so what was stopping me? I decided to give it a whirl, though with only a few days to spare before the deadline. Now lets make this clear from the offset, I did not win. Boo. Did not even come close in fact. Double boo. However I really enjoyed creating a pattern and having to work out how it repeats together, so that is what was important. I chose the subject of make up as I thought it covered females through a big old expanse of age groups. If I had more time I would not have gone with the make up, it is not really me, but at the time it seemed like a good solution for a female theme. 

        Pattern:

This is the segment of pattern I designed and illustrated. Make up tastic. Above is how it repeats together.

Thumbs up:

Alas this was before I found out I did not make the finals. To be fair, I was not expecting to and am rather chuffed to even be in the top 100.

        Alternative colours:

From looking at the finalists I think I need to possibly tone down my colours for any future entries. This was a quick mock up of possible alternative colours for my design. I think I prefer it.

So I hope you liked my very first attempt at surface pattern illustration, I am definitely going to give it another go when I have a chance. A little beg here... If anyone could please point the way to further illustration competitions I would be ever so thankful, I would not mind entering some from time to time. And if anyone is aware of any templates for creating pattern and could lead the way to them for me, I would be even more ever so grateful. I am normally quite proud that I can track down anything on the web, but can I find templates? No I cant. Do they even exist? Can anyone possibly shed some light over here? Thank you lots!!

Artwork copyright of Queen Kwak.