Illustration Friday - 10/08/2013 - Fresh!

Illustration...Saturday? 

So last week the word that was announced for Illustration Friday was 'Fresh'. I've been behind all week due to various happenings, so I'm afraid my attempt wasn't very explored at all. I didn't even manage to do much sketchbook work! Oops! Here's what I ended up with and hopefully I'll work extra hard this week to make up for it.

I'm very interested at the moment in making patterns as I've got a few secret plans for the future which will require some skill in this area, so I took that route.

I didn't start out by looking at the word Fresh this week, I just went with what popped in to my mind first, something which I tackled a while back - Pineapples. 

Here's one I made earlier...

There's something about a big yellow, tropical pineapple that evokes freshness and Summer and they seem to have been quite popular within Internet communities lately. So to start, some very quick, mediocre sketching at the beginning of this week and then not much progress again until Thursday. Thankfully this wasn't due to laziness but because I have had other pieces in the works.

An amalgamation of the sketching I did.

There were a few different concepts that I came up with before this one took hold. Perhaps at this point to enhance the 'fresh' idea I could have added in some  juice spurts and made it a bit more dynamic rather than the very obvious wording I placed on top. I was unsure as to how this would translate to a pattern also. 

First attempt at arranging this idea in to a pattern.

I changed the positioning of the pineapple so that it went sideways which I think was an attractive composition. However, the downfall to this pattern came when I added the dots in the background. I wanted to incorporate a kitsch 1950's look and used some of my sketches outside of the cut-up pineapple to create this cute dotty fill effect but the two ideas just didn't mesh in this instance.

Pineapple chunks.

Pineapple rings.

I guess I managed a bit more exploration of the idea than I let on as I tried out using just parts of the pineapple and not the whole thing. The chunks idea ended up reminding me too much of sweetcorn, it seemed too far away from the original to be recognisable. With the addition of rings, it becomes a bit more readable but it's very dull. A possible use for these would be as the front/back cover pages of a book!

Photoshop - define pattern and fill.

I ended up going back to the original design, but without the wording, and arranged the rings in a dynamic way so that it looked as if the pineapple was slowly splitting apart, one ring at a time. The addition of extra, yet uncoloured pattern brings the coloured parts to the forefront and gave the picture some depth. 

A3 version, allowing more of the pattern to be shown.

Here was where the pattern ended up. I think it would make some lovely gift wrap, perhaps the spacing could be worked out as there does appear to be a lot of it and there is definitely some room for improving/playing with colours but it does have a 'fresh' aesthetic and some of the retro-look, it makes a good starting point. 

The word for next week is - POWER!