You Never Know Where Inspiration Will Come From: Indian Textiles, Japanese Souvenirs and...Food!6/12/2019 This is the beginning of a brand new pattern design collection featuring gorgeous birds and flowers in luscious, warm colours. My inspirations for this collection were: Indian textiles, a bird figurine souvenir I picked up in Japan, and food (yup, photos of limes, red peppers and mushrooms posted in The Colour Gang for this month’s food styling inspiration theme started off the colour palette!) You never know where inspiration will come from... These first designs are now available to license (more from this new collection coming soon!)  
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Remember Black Velvet Paintings? This Week's Spoonflower Design Challenge is "Paint By Numbers"!5/30/2019 I decided to enter my "Pink Flamingos" pattern design in this week's Spoonflower "Paint By Numbers" Design Challenge because it reminds me of all those black velvet paintings...remember those? You can link to the Voting Page here to see all the entries!  I just started a brand new pattern design course from Victoria Johnson Create Explore called "Create Collections" and have been developing colour palettes and drawing new motifs (butterflies, moths and florals so far!) and thinking about how different types of patterns co-ordinate to make a larger pattern collection. Sometimes it really helps to have someone guide you through their process which really makes you think more deeply about your own design process. So, I started with these two placement prints. I might adjust the colours a bit as I get more into the collection, so stay tuned for more to come! Repeats!
I have a SMALL and QUICK request! I have happily been shortlisted (with 11 other artists) for the WALLSAUCE Wall Mural Design Contest and now I need your VOTE! The brief was to design 2 related “Nature” murals, so I submitted my “Butterfly Garden” and “Rainbow Floral” designs, with the idea of turning a child’s room into a magical fantasy landscape. The prize is a licensed wallpaper collection with Wallsauce (eeee!) The final stage of the contest is by Public Vote—all you need to vote is go to the Wallsauce Blog and comment with my name Jackie Tahara at the bottom of the blog post, and remember to “Send Comment”. Very quick and easy! It would mean a lot to me to win! With gratitude…   Big THANK YOU to everyone who voted in last week's Spoonflower "Australian Flora" Design Challenge! The RESULTS are just in and my "Eucalyptus" pattern design in this Orange colour palette (check out my Portfolio-Flora page to see two other palettes) squeaked into the Top Ten (I'm listed at #11, but thankfully there was a tie for #9) out of 602 eligible entries! So this design is now available for purchase at Spoonflower on many different fabrics, wallpaper and giftwrap. And see below...you can now buy it on wonderful home decor products at Roostery as well! Again, thank you for your votes! On to the next Design Challenge... 
This month's MATS Bootcamp assignment was to illustrate a magazine article about the Japanese concept of wabi sabi which celebrates transience and the beauty of imperfection. I decided to show the Japanese maple leaf in a changing cycle of seasons, Summer to Fall to finally, blowing away in the wind. I also tried to keep the colours a bit subdued (it started out way brighter!), to give it a more quiet and calm feel, and maybe with a bit of Japanese kimono colour too. BTW: I decided to try out the spot gradient tool in Adobe Illustrator for the first time, and boy, is it fun! In a way, it felt very wabi sabi to me (even though digital) because you can add these spots of colour here and there and the resulting gradations and interactions of the spot colours resulted in some surprising colour gradations which I thought were kinda beautiful, so in a way using this tool felt a bit wabi sabi because you never knew quite what was going to result!  This week's Spoonflower Design Challenge is "Australian Flora". Being Canadian, I wasn't that familiar with Aussie flowers (although I did visit there and stayed for quite awhile many years ago), but when I did some research of Aussie plants, I just loved the flowers of the eucalyptus. So I designed my stylized "Eucalyptus" pattern and tried it out in several different colour ways. I love all the colours, but finally decided to enter the orange/pink/green one into the challenge. Did I choose the right one? What do you think? Check out the Voting Page to see all the other designs and vote your faves! Voting ends April 23 at 3:00 EDT.
One of the things we talk alot about in The Colour Gang is, obviously, COLOUR: where and how to get inspiration for colour palettes, what colours are on-trend (or will be) and why, what colour palettes do we like to work with and are characteristic of our unique styles, and how different colour palettes can change the look of a design completely. So one of the things we love to do is try our pattern designs with different colours, for example (which do you like best?!)...
OH and I thought you might like to see some of the photos of flowers from my garden that inspired this collection!
Wallsauce is an online wall mural and photo wallpaper company and they have a new comp in association with Rise Design & Shine! The brief is to design 2 wall murals based on the theme of Nature. The designs must relate to each other and may form part of a new collection! I chose to design for kids rooms. Wallsauce will shortlist designs, and then it will be put to a public vote! Wish me luck! Here are sneak peeks of the folk-inspired designs I submitted!
I just entered my "Butterfly Breeze" design in this week's Spoonflower "Pollinators" Design Challenge...Although not as effective as bees, butterflies are still very good pollinators! Check out the Voting Page to see all the amazing entries!  |
AuthorJackie Tahara of UnBlink Studio Archives
June 2019
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All images on this website are Copyright © Jackie Tahara. All rights reserved.
If sharing, pinning or blogging my images, please always credit me and link back to my website. Supporting artists is a good thing to do! Thank you!
If sharing, pinning or blogging my images, please always credit me and link back to my website. Supporting artists is a good thing to do! Thank you!