There were lots of lovely, bright entries to last week’s Fishing Lure themed contest on Spoonflower. I noticed that 2 of the designs I voted for made the top 10 this week! This is one of them; 'Alluring Lure' by Olivia Henry. I love the colours and watercolour style of the flies…
You can see all the designs in the top 10 here: http://www.spoonflower.com/contests/254 My entry came 71st (with 89 votes) out of 159 entries. Thank you to everyone who voted! :)
This week’s contest has a Rhinoceroses theme. I’ve drawn rhinos before at Colchester zoo and have several photos to use as reference, so was looking forward to creating a pattern design for this contest. Last week I took a long time drawing the fishing flies and wasn't entirely satisfied with the end design, but work on the rhinos seemed to flow much better (and quicker) and I am happier with the finished repeat pattern!
I started by sketching rhinos and a few ideas of geometric, tribal inspired patterns. Most of my designs have quite light backgrounds so I wanted to try a dark background for this one and decided on using a dark grey. Often I just colour on the computer but the coloured pencils were useful in choosing a colour palette - it’s a really quick and easy way to try different colour combinations, just by holding different pencils. I love how these colours look together too!
I started by sketching rhinos and a few ideas of geometric, tribal inspired patterns. Most of my designs have quite light backgrounds so I wanted to try a dark background for this one and decided on using a dark grey. Often I just colour on the computer but the coloured pencils were useful in choosing a colour palette - it’s a really quick and easy way to try different colour combinations, just by holding different pencils. I love how these colours look together too!
Here’s the finished repeat pattern…
You can see all the other rhinoceros designs here, and vote for your favourites too! http://www.spoonflower.com/contest_voters_temp/new?contest_id=257
No.30 Tiger (I commented that when we go to the zoo the tiger is always hiding up so you can't see him, but soon after that he started walking all around the enclosure so I was able to get lots of photos - they might not be good enough to frame but I can still use them to draw from.)
No.31 Wolf
I was impressed with some of the changes the zoo has made since my last visit. There are more enclosures that you can walk into with the animals now - like the wallabies, and there are more opportunities to take photos of the animals without having to look through glass. The new orang utan house has been opened too - it's a much bigger enclosure, the only downside was that the orang utans seemed so popular this time it was hard to get close enough to see them well. On my last visit I stood drawing one of the orang utans for several minutes and he seemed quite interested in what I was doing. They seem so intelligent I'd love to be able to spend more time drawing them again next time!
You can see more of Sandra's animals in her 
When Edwin Cracknell was asked to make a clockwork animal for Christmas his first thought was a robin. His clockwork birds were held in such high regard that the Clockwork Robin soon became a much sought after item in Hexley.
This illustration was drawn in dip pen and ink then painted in watercolours. A print of this illustration will soon be available in my 
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