Blue leaves

I sketched one leaf, scanned it and copied it, flipping the leaf horizontally and vertically. Then I offset it x/2, y/2 in Gimp, filled in the empty space with more leaves, then colored them and exported. The spoonflower upload repeats seamlessly. I will try other color variations.

Colored, tiled sketch

This is more like it! I sketched some flowers, scanned the image and colored it in Gimp, then did the x/2, y/2 offset of the layer, then filled in the gaps with more flowers and dots. I love the result. And it reminded me of one of my mottos: When in doubt, use ALL the colors! This repeats seamlessly in Spoonflower. Next I am going to figure out how to make an offset that will tile diagonally.

Sketch in Gimp

I sketched a flower in Gimp, duplicated the layer, did a x/2, y/2 offset to one of the layers, then did a horizontal flip and recolored the other layer, then added some colored dots and a background layer, merged the layers and exported. This is getting to be a little bit more like something I actually like, with the colors and shapes. I'm excited to learn more about this and begin producing the things that are in my head. I ordered a few books from Amazon, including A Field Guide to Fabric Design by Kim Kight and Mastering the Art of Fabric Printing and Design by Laurie Wisbrun; as well as Making an Impression: Designing & Creating Artful Stamps by Geninne Zlatkis because I've always loved her artwork!

I uploaded this to Spoonflower and I really like how it looks. This might just be my favorite upload yet!

Repeat for Spoonflower using GIMP

I sketched these floral motifs, then scanned them and imported them to GIMP. I applied a limited color palette based on a Spoonflower challenge. When I merged the layers using the blue layer as the background, I can see blue pixels at the level of the yellow/white and I haven't found a way to eliminate them except for painting them out at the pixel level. I assume I could use a mask of some kind and I'm starting to explore those. I started cleaning it up a bit on the white leafy branch, in the middle to the right. You can't REALLY see it unless you're zoomed in, but because I know it's there, it bothers me... I offset the image vertically by about 500 pixels (the original image was ~ 4000x3000 pixels, more than sufficient to make a good resolution at the minimum 150 dpi required for Spoonflower). For now this is what I have:

Marble bust and flag: sketch > GIMP

I'm particularly excited about having created digital graph paper!