Pin it, Sketch it!

Printmaking Patterns (Part 1)

On of the most important things that a design should always do is learn to research for a particular design. It should be an innate habit to create your own personal mood-board for whatever design project that you decide to embark on. This time the adventure was deemed for two things – (1) as a demonstration to students on application of printmaking methods for one of their course topics, and (2) as an exploration into a mass production of greeting cards.

To kick-start my latest attempt, I started off with some simple researching on Pinterest (Click here to view my board). As the initial plan was to collect some samples for my teaching material, this slowly became an inspiration for a new project and the plan…. Let’s make some greeting cards using lino-print and ornamental calligraphy. Now that’s a cool plan.

So after gathering some references…. Let the sketching begin!

(Above) I planning to attempt a repeated pattern/ tile pattern with stencil effect. So based on some of the references, I sketched a rough layout for my stencil design and with the rough. Then I moved on to designing some tile designs. (Bottom) Some that can be transferred directly onto the linoleum and some that required Adobe Illustrator for more precision drawing.

Working with AI is just as fun as drawing it however, for a more precise size and cleaner-look, I’d personally dub this as a cheat-method! As the tools used are the simple drawing tools of lines and shapes, and with the help of mask, pathfinder and the wonderful reflect/rotate tools. (Yes it only took me 15 minutes to create what I did, perhaps even lesser should I have used a mouse. haha…)

Next step is simply to print and transfer it onto the lino that is ready to be cut!

Stay tune for Part 2 to see how I transfer and eventually move into printing it~

#art #fineart #printmaking #designprinciplespattern #designprinciples #chinesenewyear2018 #designinspirations #adobeillustrator #illustratortricks #linocut

#printingstories