How to use this Page

It's been incredibly busy around here lately - getting ready for some huge personal changes, and enjoying the company of visiting family and friends - so busy in fact that I missed posting something here on Saturday. ooops. Have barely had time to breathe never mind draw, so I dug around for something I did a couple of months back, just for fun.

Here is my proliferation of peculiarly painted pets. Not sure whether to continue with these and turn them into a pattern or not ... what do you think?

Have a pleasant day packed with potty peculiarities! Cheers.

Did a bit of doodling. Not quite sure what this is meant to be but I like it and may carry on and explore further to see what it decides to turn into ...

Here are doodled gift boxes. Why gift boxes? No idea. They just tumbled out, all wobbly and imperfectly cute, onto the blank page. I'll have to consider turning them into a pattern or something ...

All proof that I do occasionally take a break just to have a bit of fun. Back to work now. Have a fantastic day. Cheers.

I'm finally back in France after a wonderful two week holiday, and it's taking me ages to get back into the 'routine' and catch up on stuff, and e-courses. I'm working on the text design for next month's newsletter at the moment, but apart from that haven't had the chance to do any new art really, though I'm full of ideas after the trip to Istanbul, that I hope will eventually make it out into the light of day.

Meanwhile however, remember the Cat Blobs that I drew last month? I did get around to creating a pattern out of them, though it still needs a bit of further re-fine-tuning. And I have some doodles that were hidden in the moleskine sketchbook that might not mind being shown off ...

I'd really like to create some patterns from those bees, and I'm not quite sure what I'll do with the Sharing is Caring bear and owl, or the sleepy cats, but as I'm quite fond of them I'm sure they'll get improved on and worked into something in the near future.

Now it's time to start catching up on two weeks worth of my e-course! Wishing you wonderful learning experiences. Cheers.

Yes, I'm in London. Which is wonderful, especially as I'm with family, about to go on an amazing trip to celebrate my dad's 80th birthday ... yet a wee bit frustrating as well, as I'm missing two whole weeks of the e-course that I've been so thoroughly enjoying ... But yes, I am definitely counting my blessings.

I did manage to take some time off and doodle. We're having a few internet connectivity problems so I'll keep this short and sweet, and post it before I get cut off. Here's the black and white sketch:

I'm not sure if I'll be able to carry on blogging much till I get back home, but I'll be posting photos and updates over at the Floating Lemons Facebook page so pop by there if you'd like to accompany me to Istanbul ...

Have a wonderful day. Cheers.

Still working on sketches for my e-course, The Art & Business of Surface Pattern Design Module 4 ... I did some doodles and sketches with geometric, floral, and typography themes in mind.

I'm not sure if the final results below would be considered strictly geometric but hey, I drew grids and shapes and then got carried away filling them up. There are florals there too, so perhaps I managed to work on two of the themes at one go. Oh, and some typography too ...

The second one is still unfinished. I 'work' on it whenever I have time, i.e. when I'm uploading designs onto stores. I used to have a dodopad in high school, and used to colour it in with magic markers, does anyone remember those? These grid doodles reminded me of that, and the whole exercise is teaching me tons about colour, and is fun to boot.

I did some typographical sketches with a holiday theme:

I love playing with text design. And some of you may know that this year I've decided to do a monthly design based on "I Choose ..." as a positive affirmation, that I make available as a free printable to the subscribers of the Floating Lemons Newsletter. It's a hugely wonderful experiment in typography for myself, and these are the ones I've come up with so far, for January till April:

They count as typographical exercises, wouldn't you say? Next month I'll be doing "I Choose Courage", as I'm going through huge changes in my life that require a large amount of deep breathing, and I'll be plunging into a different life and lifestyle. Scary, but also very exciting. I'm thoroughly enjoying the text designs and the affirmations that are emerging, and hope to do a calendar with them at the end of the year.

Meanwhile, I'll be away for two weeks as of next week. I shall try to blog as much as possible, but as it's my dad's 80th birthday that we're celebrating, I may not be able to do that, so forgive me in advance. I'll be posting up at the facebook page, so follow me there if you want a peek at my updates, and to see photographs of whatever inspiring bits I pick up from the United Kingdom and Istanbul (yay).

Meanwhile, have a fantastic week and don't forget to experiment joyfully. Cheers.

Just another quick, messy, doodle ... flowers in a square-ish sized box. A bit too rigid in style to be made into patterns, perhaps. Will just leave it be as it is, in the Moleskine journal.

I doodled a few 'softly falling' leaves (I have leaves on my mind recently, for some odd reason!) into my small moleskine journal recently, so I scanned them into the computer - and couldn't help but experiment with the whole sketch a bit. Here are the step-by-step results:

Above is the original doodle sketch, a bit messy and very rough. Into photoshop it went for a cleanup:

Much better, no? Sat back to examine and try to figure out what I could do with it, as I'm thoroughly enjoying this whole process of creating patterns from anything and everything. As I'm also extremely indecisive when it comes to picking colours, I limited myself to a monochrome palette of blues and ended up with a couple of ideas:

They're both quite pleasing, I might create a pattern collection out of them, and include a wider selection of colours, what do you think? Cheers.

I tend to doodle whenever I have a bit of free time (rare I know, but not highly unusual), so I have bits and pieces scribbled everywhere and I've been going through them in search of inspiration for patterns and art.

Here's one that I drew, with marker pens (or felt tip pens), in one of my little moleskines and that I'm seriously considering turning into a pattern collection ...

I do like the colours I picked for this. What do you think? A viable pattern source? I shall work on it and let you know how it goes. Cheers.

Original doodle art © Mariana Musa for Floating Lemons