MATS Bootcamp – Cuckoo Clocks

I am so very glad that I signed up for the Make Art That Sells Bootcamp, from the awesome and inspirational Lilla Rogers. It’s a long-term (runs over a number of months) portfolio-building session – not quite a course, but there are lots of course-like aspects. You get a mini the first week of a month, then an assignment, then a little something special (could be some tips, an interview, some other tidbit) and then you get to share your completed assignment on the class gallery, which is public and promoted widely.

As with the ABSPD modules I’ve taken, one of the best aspects is being part of a group of creative people (in this case, a Facebook group). There is a really wide range of experience in the group, with a fair number of established and successful designers as well as quite a few beginners – and the full gamut in between. People share what they’re doing for the minis and assignments (you don’t have to, but it’s really useful to do so) in the Facebook group and get feedback. Because there are so many very experienced designers in the group, the feedback is often really useful (e.g. suggesting a tweak to a design, a different direction to explore, a colour change, etc. etc.), but always very supportive. The last few days we’ve all been sharing our finished assignments (or close to finished) as the deadline for submission to the gallery is tomorrow. The gallery should go live next week and it will be really exciting to see all the designs collected together. What we’ve seen on Facebook has been truly awesome!

I went round and round in circles doing my assignment (cuckoo clock inspired design for phone covers), but had great fun doing it.

This is what I submitted in the end:

And here’s how I got there:

Sketches…

Colour and pattern…

Different colours:

Cuckoo clocks and mock ups…

Patterns on mock-ups…

I decided on the layered pattern in the end because I feel it shows me the most and it’s the one I felt ‘right’ doing. I enjoyed the whole three weeks of this, but the cuckoo clocks themselves were more me trying to do what I thought I should be doing, rather than what I wanted to be doing. The fact that I was making patterns in the mini week before finding out what the assignment was I think shows that pattern is definitely where I’m happiest. I do love the hand-drawn cuckoo clock a lot, too, and I’m even fairly pleased with the vector one (which, again, was me trying to go for something clean and neat – vector rather than handdrawn).

One of the things Lilla seems to say a lot (it’s in her book and I’ve read it quoted all over the place; she may well have also said it at some point during this month’s assignment) is ‘People buy your joy’. Well, my joy definitely comes through in the patterns. And in the detailed doodly handdrawing. I would definitely be happy making patterns all day every day – well, as long as got to look at a few patterns by other people, too!

So, yes… my pattern:

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