Drawing a Cornish Meadow

A month or so ago, I was asked by CollectivEdge on Twitter if I'd like to enter an illustration competition that they were holding for bloggers. The task was to draw or design a pattern that could be used for a children's window blind, with the winning design being produced and sold on the Order Blinds website!

I love coming up with little scribbles and designs inspired by my surroundings here in Cornwall (if you haven't checked it out already, have a look at my Etsy shop), so when I saw that the task was to draw something fit for a child's room, I knew that my design should have a fun and fresh countryside feel to it.

As you can see from my notebook above, I was keen to stick with my hand-drawn watercolour style for this design. I wanted to blend a classically pretty 'Laura Ashley' or 'Cath Kidston' sprig design with my own slightly 'sketchy' and handmade artistic style. I love fresh and delicate patterns on plain white backgrounds- and I think these little sprigs would look so sweet hung up against a nursery or playroom window!

So, this is the scan of my watercolour scribbles. You can see the sort of colour scheme I was going for from the little swatches at the bottom of the page. I wanted to use fresh and natural-looking pinks, greens and yellows in order to represent the sort of 'wild Cornish meadow' look that I was after. I always try and make quick swatches when I'm painting, as I find this helps me to get a good idea of the overall colour scheme.

'Cornish Meadow'

This is my first design, which I edited together on Photoshop! For this one, I brought all of my sprig sketches together in a row to create the 'meadow' look that I wanted. I'm really pleased with how it came out and I particularly like how subtle and pretty the colours are.

'Springtime Sprigs'

This is a slightly simpler version (just in case the first design is too over-complicated in style!) that uses one sprig, repeated over and over in a traditional 'sprig pattern'. I really like the classic look of this design but it is quite overwhelming in a large block!


So those are my designs for the competition! What do you think? I'd love some feedback in the comments below! I really enjoyed having a go at designing my own blinds- it was good fun and I can't wait to see the results of the competition. 


In the meantime,
All the love,

Sian x