I’d like to to share one of my latest projects, something I never thought I would do since I’ve never really drawn animals other than cats and birds before: custom portraits of my friend April’s Shiba Inus! When she first asked me I wasn’t sure if I could do it so I made this colored pencil sketch of her two Shibas sitting side by side. For practice.

Obviously I got the proportions all wrong. 😳 Anyway, working on the sketch allowed me to familiarize myself with their features and markings so I eventually felt more at ease drawing them. I think it also helped that Shiba dogs look somewhat “feline”¹ with their upright ears and almond-shaped upward-slanting eyes.

And then I made individual portraits, taking into account each of their distinct attributes — for instance a slightly crooked ear for one of them which was from an operation, etc — for a more personal touch. I was confident enough to use watercolor this time. I don’t typically use blacks for coloring but the black and tan Shiba variety called for it and I was quite happy with how they turned out and thankfully, so was their mom. 🙂

These were so fun to do and once I get more dog-drawing practice under my belt, I’ll likely add animal portraits to my custom artwork repertoire. (I will have to draw the line at pet reptiles though… 😯 )
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Meanwhile.. it’s no secret that I love our cat. In fact he’s right there in my blog logo illustration which I haven’t changed for years. He’s also in my still-non-existent handmade store’s logo (see watermark) and in a lot of drawings I’ve done and even in some of Arnold‘s comics as an Easter egg to friends who know us well.

There was one day last week when my mind hit a blank and I couldn’t start working. He was lying on his play mat in front of me and, as if sensing my anxiety, started rolling around playfully. I could never resist when he does that so I went over and gave him a chin and back rub. He looked so content and carefree that I felt like preserving that moment. Without thinking I started sketching him. He kept moving around while I tried capturing all his poses and that was the birth of the series of illustrations below (right) which I ended up turning into a pattern (left).

It’s still being proofed over at Spoonflower but if you like cats too, my orange tabbies pattern is now available on phone covers, iPad sleeves, and more at Zazzle and RedBubble.

Orange Tabby Cats Barely There iPhone 6 Plus Case

Orange Tabby Cats Sleeve For MacBooks

1. for me at least[ back]

I first published this tutorial of sorts in my blog for Poptastic Tees¹ but I accidentally deleted that entire site a couple of years ago. Too depressed to attempt reconstructing 5 years worth of blog posts, I dismissed it as fate and let it be.  Last night I found a set of graphics illustrating my work process step-by-step and thought of rewriting just that one post since it might be helpful and worth sharing.

So this is one of my patterns — “Retro Robots” — as seen on a Macbook sleeve c/o Zazzle.

Retro Robots (Cream) Flap Sleeve Sleeve For MacBooks by funkypatterns
View more laptop accessories at zazzle.com.

I will now describe how I make almost all of my digital graphics. Sorry about the ugly watermarks.

1. This step you already know: make doodles! Here are my robots.

2. Next step: scanning and making vector versions using Adobe Illustrator.

The bottom row shows my robots in their “cleaned up” vector state but still raw and outlined. You’ll see that they’re simply made up of basic shapes like circles and squares with rounded corners that I just tweaked, duplicated, and assembled together to make robot-like forms based on my doodles. On hindsight, I should have just vectorized the drawings instead of constructing clean versions since the actual doodles look sillier and funnier!

3. Here’s where the fun starts — adding color to the finished graphics. I like to use a palette of 4 or 5 colors only to give the design a cohesive and somewhat retro look. For color scheme formulating help, you can turn to a tool like Adobe Color CC‘s color wheel where you can make combos to your hearts’ content. (This blog post has a list of free tools for choosing a color scheme.)

This nautical inspired colorway was my initial try. #meh

My second attempt was more successful, imho. I liked how the subdued colors made the robots look vintagey.

4. Time to play!

Now my vector robots can be imported into Photoshop and arranged in several ways to make images for kiddie t-shirts or patterns for surface designing. 🙂

* See these robots in action in my shop Funky Patterns and on fabric / wallpaper in Spoonflower.

1.  the old t-shirt store a.k.a. our first foray into online selling [ back]

A custom couple illustration + wedding invite design for my friend Nyel and her hubby Val. (Photo by First Comes Rock.)

Last year I took the plunge and started accepting custom couple illustration requests for save the dates and wedding invitations over at my wedding blog. It was something I’ve been thinking of offering on the site for a few years now but I kept getting cold feet. Partly because I hear horror stories about custom work from my other designer friends, and also because I know how it is to be a bride-sometimes-zilla myself. I decided to go for it anyway and now, 6 months and more than a dozen couple portraits later, I’m actually glad that I did. Not only have I met such wonderful non-‘zilla-at-all clients (um, #blessed), I’m also able to flex my vector-crafting muscles and of course make some Christmas money on the side. 😉

I just updated the other blog so if you like you can now see some of the cartoon couples I’ve done. (GO)

Eventually I will accept hand-drawn couple portrait commissions for weddings too but right now I’d like to focus on these cartoons. 🙂