Developing Digital Patterns & Designs

Inspired by Architecture, Flora, Food & Landscape


Symbols - Found and imagined symbols

Symbols


Welcome! If you're curious about what inspires creation and just how patterns take shape, then you've come to the right place. My name is Michèle and I love to create stuff. Over the past number of years, I've been exploring the art of visual communication.

It began when I was determined to create visuals to accompany my poetry, way back at the turn of the century. Surrounded by cheap watercolours and paintbrushes, pencil crayons and a stack of paper, I felt the blank page staring back at me. I had lost my confidence, my creativity, my ability to fill that page. It was time to conquer that fear.

I went from shooting still life with a tiny web cam to picking up a digital camera. My macro button gets most of my love on flowers when I capture their portraits inside and outside in nature. I graduated to experimenting with digital painting and design. When I learned how to do a repeat pattern, I knew that I had found my niche.

You'll find some of my work here, mostly visual work. While I sometimes begin from a sketch, photos remain a large inspiration for my work. GIMP and Inkscape are the tools I use to produce my designs. I took my time exploring these programs, delighting in learning the effects of different filters and how to wrangle vector images, during a 100-Day Project in the spring/summer of 2015.

My 365-day project, from December 2016 through December 2017, can be found on Twitter at #YearOfCreating or #AnneeDeCreation.

In terms of canvas, my preferred one these days is a 120-by-120-cm scarf, where I can choose a repeat pattern design or create a custom one using different elements from my collections.

In 2018, I joined the Inkscape project community as a user and a member of the Vectors Team, which manages communications about this professional, open-source graphics editor. Collaborating with developers, entrepreneurs, artists and others from around the world enriches my work and is my way of concretely supporting the project.

Since then I have been designing and printing micro-productions of my work in addition to completing custom design work for individual and business clients.

Enjoy your visit.

Michèle