Just wanted to say I don’t know when everything I planned to do with here will be finished. I’ve just got out of hospital and I have a portfolio to sort out for an unexpected interview on top of other things so my plan to finish by my birthday this sunday won’t come through. Hopefully it won’t be long though

Something to tide you over whilst I finish working on my new project I haven’t added these to the pattern archive in the usual way since everything will be remodeled very shortly. Feel free to use this particular set in personal or commercial projects but it be very polite to credit me!

See you when I finish my project

It might shock you all to learn this, but I love patterns. Carrying on from my last pattern resource post here’s three great websites offering orginal, creative patterns for your use. Please remember to refer to each individual websites term of service

Everything Changes colourful pattern collection is wonderfully colourful, each pattern working in perfect harmony with its self. They’re great for graphics or, if you’re feeling courageous, making bold backgrounds.

Pink Blossom doesn’t have a large collection of patterns but the few they offer range from beautifully intricate to more sublet stripes. These patterns would work perfectly as backgrounds without overpowering the rest of your website.

The talented staff at Shizoo Design offer a whole range of resources from brushes to textures but I’m particularly fond of their patterns Ranging from cartoon characters to grunge textures you simply have to find something you like here.

It’s very rare that I draw traditionally as I can’t guarantee that I’ll always have access to a scanner. I also prefer working digitally as that gives me more room to experiment, knowing I can always hit undo if it goes wrong. My Hand Drawn wreath icon set is an example of something I created digitally that I deliberately designed to look hand drawn.

My favourite “pencil” brush comes from Stumpy Pencil and goes by the same name. The line it creates is quite bold and chiseled, but that can be combated with strategic blurring. Stumpy Pencil also provide a fantastic water colour brush. Whilst I would recommend taking an afternoon out to create and scan water colour and other paint elements to stock pile for your future work Stumpy Pencil is as close as you can get without water.

A key feature of hand drawn lines is the change in weight – no-one can apply pressure consistently when drawing and thus lines can get a bit wider or lighter at certain points. Whilst not a perfect replica, I would recommend a tablet to simulate pressure. Of course, not everyone has access to a tablet – I own one but find it really inconvenient and prefer using a mouse. When drawing using I mouse I often trace my original lines as closely as possible on the same layer. This thickens the lines at certain points resulting in a more hand drawn feel.

Another feature of hand drawn pencil lines is that they tend to be a lot more blended that digitally created lines. To combat this I would use the smudge tool on a very low strength – I start at around 10% but occasionally go up to 30%.

Due to the changing pressure when drawing with inks your lines will tend to change very so slightly in colour. To simulate this I draw my lines in two colours – the original colour I want the line to be and a slightly more saturated version of the same colour. You do not want the different to be noticeable, you just want to add slight depth. Clever use of a more saturated colour and the smudge tool can easily simulate bleeding ink. Water colour paint also tend to concentrate in certain areas, in particularly around the edge. A more saturated colour teamed with the burn tool used very lightly can help create this.

Finally texture is a huge give away to if your work is digitally created. You could use some of my paper texture patterns or my grunge or painted brushes to create a subtly textured background. You can also use the brushes to slightly wear away your illustration.

I’ve loved these early nineties record sleeves since I first saw them on Tumblr a while ago. The combinations of pattern, colour and type perfectly recreate retro style and someone could be excused for believing these are really 1940s classics.

I haven’t had much time for personal work this week – I’m working on so many projects at once I finally know what it feels like to be a designer After a week or so of looking at web designs my eyes need a break from grids and columns so I decided to work on an illustration. Yeah, you know you’re a graphic designer when you talk breaks from designing for a living by designing for fun. I thought an animation would be a fun way of displaying how I did this! Unforunately it’s a little over sharpened but the final art work doesn’t look like that.

I decided to turn that halo around his head into a pattern (yes his, I used one of my favourite models Andrej Pejic as a reference). Since I already had the animation toolbar open in PhotoShop for some reason I animated this too. Don’t ask.

The (non-animated) pattern has been added to the floral category. As always I’d love to see if you make use of it

(Just a small thing I hate to tack on the end of this post but – I have updated the Terms of Use so that linking back to this website is now a requirement. Why? Well most people where already linking back which is great. However, every now and then I’d stumble across a website that didn’t link back yet stressed people had to link to them. The kicker was that lots of their resources where derived from my work! It rubbed me up the wrong way so I’ve edited the Terms of Use. If you used something of mine prior to this date don’t feel like you have to update and link to here – I don’t expect anyone to go to all that trouble.)

Joanna is a great inspiration of mine. I’ve been lucky enough to follow her work for a few years now and she constantly invokes aw in her fantastic ideas and pure talent.

Polluted Planet - This piece shows Mother Nature disappointed by the pollution we’re causing on her planet. This striking image really hammers home the problem of pollution.

You’re The Only Light, Only If For A Night Everything about this piece is fantastic! Everything works in harmony from the colour scheme to the placement to the perfect little details.

Let Love Grow - I love Jo’s work inspired by song lyrics – they always put a new spin on the song and invade my thoughts when I listen to them from there on after. The placement of the type and the colour choices are genius.

You can find Jo at her portfolio full of more amazing work or at her very inspiring blog. Every image featured in this post is copyright Joanna Hobbs – please respect her work!

This morning I launch my new project, my premium resource shop.

I want to stress this isn’t going to replace my free resources! The shop isn’t a money making project – the plan is to upgrade to a paid hosting plan from my host Misaki because the amount of bandwidth I use for free really isn’t fair. Her plans are really fairly priced so hopefully I’ll be able to make my online projects self sufficient.

Here’s what’s currently in the shop:

Watercolour Forest is a set of ten illustrated patterns in two different sizes. I actually designed these as fabrics but then decided to release them as backgrounds. I know they’re very niche but they’re my first experience in designing a coherent set. The individual drawings and water colours where created by hand then pieced together in PhotoShop. If you look closely you’ll find some of the elements in this blogs current theme!

Hand Drawn Wreath is a 24 icon set in 3 different styles. If you look to my sidebar I’m currently using some of them! The individual elements are hand drawn and thus perfect for arts and craft style blogs or blogs with a vintage theme.

Finally there’s Hand Drawn Lines – a set of patterns consisting of hand drawn lines (aren’t I creative with names?). The set comes in 15 different colour ways and 2 sizes. They could be used as backgrounds or as patterns in your graphics.

I have a few more ideas but next on the agenda are more free resources for this place! If you happen to buy anything from the shop let me know and I’ll add a page of websites using the resources.

Looking through my keywords some-one recently ended up here by searching “not happy with my art”. This made me sad for you, anonymous stranger! If it makes you feel better, I think most artists feel the same the majority of the times. Here’s some of my tips for dealing with it.

• Look at your old work. Have you improved? If so pat yourself on the back for sticking at it! Do you think you’ve worsened? Pin your old work up where you can see it as proof that you can do it!
• Remember why you first got into art.
• Figure out if you being unhappy with your work could be affected by the people your comparing it to. Odds are you’re no Da Vinci so don’t compare yourself to him. Try to stop measuring your art on technical merit and more on the emotion and message it conveys.
• Remember the compliments you have received. If needs be write them down in a notebook that you can carry with you and peek at when you need cheering up. Tape a few photos of your favourite work in there too.
• Browse a few tutorial websites and check off the things you know you can do without a tutorial.
• Work through it. Use this self doubt as motivation to create something brilliant. Personally I think every artist needs a small amount of self doubt or how else would you be motivated to improve?
• Show a kindly friend/family member your work. They’ll rave about it.
• And if all else fails – eat a pint of ice-cream.