Swirling Doodles Make Great Patterns

Ruth Weal — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 20:15:06 +0000

I’ve been busy doodling again and my current doodling obsession has been back with curves and swirls. I haven’t stopped at just the doodling though, I’ve been making use of my new Adobe Illustrator CS5 skills to make my original doodles into some funky patterns that make saleable artwork. However, the process from a wandering doodle to a vector pattern is not an easy one.

I always work best with pen and paper and rarely doodle in any other way, but transferring those designs to a computer and retaining their detail and textures always has some drawbacks. I scan all my doodles in as bitmap files using my scanner, but this creates a lot of noise and a large file size. I also often use unusual inks, especially bright vibrant gel inks like metallics, glitter gel inks and Zebra Super-Marble Gel Rollerball pens, which give you three different colour inks in each pen. The ink looks great on paper, but some of the detail gets lost in the scanning process. You can buy a pack of 6 Zebra Super-Marble Gel Rollerball pens from Amazon for only £4.69, which I used to create many of the original doodles shown below.

In Photoshop CS5 I do my best to clean up the noise and bring up the contrast so the design is more visible, but to make a pattern that can be blown up and/or reduced in size without losing quality and retaining smooth edges requires converting the image into vectors. To do this I use Illustrator CS5 where I have to painstakingly draw round each of the individuals curves and swirls of a doodle and then colour the shapes. Then I’m able to play around and make my patterns. It probably sounds like a painstaking and time consuming affair and you’d be right, but it is also a labour of love.

For your viewing pleasure below are my original doodles scanned and tidied up in Photoshop together with the vector patterns that I created in Illustrator.

Happy doodle trails!

Wealie x

Swirlycules - Copyright R.Weal 2011

Swirlycule Pattern - Copyright R.Weal 2011

Curlicues - Copyright R.Weal 2011

Firery Curlicues Pattern - Copyright R.Weal 2011

Green Curlicues Pattern - Copyright R.Weal 2011

Swirl Dance - Copyright R.Weal 2011

Swirly Frame Pattern - Copyright R.Weal 2011

Coloured Swirl Dance Pattern - Copyright R.Weal 2011

Swirly Emblem - Copyright R.Weal 2011

Swirly Emblem Pattern - Copyright R.Weal 2011

Octoswirl - Copyright R.Weal 2011

Firery Swirls Pattern - Copyright R.Weal 2011

Swirlpool - Copyright R.Weal 2011

Swirlpool Pattern - Copyright R.Weal 2011

Primeval Swirls - Copyright R.Weal 2011

Popping my Illustrator Cherry!

Ruth Weal — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 00:58:01 +0000

Sorry for the long absence, but with the less than ideal internet connection in the hotel on the Isle of Man and being really tired when I got back, I’ve just not had the will to turn on the laptop until today. Anyway, I’m back to normal now, so thought I’d better update the blog!

Last week I finally stumped up the cash and indulged myself by buying the Adobe CS5 Master Suite. I spent most of today installing the software and getting rid of old versions of Photoshop and Dreamweaver and a selection of other software that does the same thing as the Master Suite. Then there was the fun of ensuring that all my Photoshop presets were copied over and setting up my preferred workspace view. Well once I’d gotten that out of the way it was about 10 pm and I started at 2 pm!

After all that I felt like I needed to have a little play around, so opened up Adobe Illustrator, which I’ve never used before. It took a little getting used to, but with the help of the lovely Ben who’s a bit of an expert in Illustrator I came up with this:

I’ve called her Irene the Illustration and she was created without a graphics tablet I might add. It was good fun and she does look similar to the face doodles that I occasionally draw in notebooks and on scraps of paper. I can thoroughly recommend having a play with Illustrator if you haven’t done so already.

Happy electronic doodling!

Wealie x

Wealie's World » illustrator

Swirling Doodles Make Great Patterns

Popping my Illustrator Cherry!