Summer school with surface patterns and design, intermediate track

I am again taking summer school with Rachael Taylor's Make it in Design (I took the course last year as well and blogged about it here and here). Since it's only a couple assignments, I enrolled for both the intermediate and the advanced tracks this time.

For the first intermediate assignment, we worked with an "organic decay" theme. I love rusty and chipped textures, and I use them in most of my collages, but I'd never really considered creating printed textiles with them.

I tried a few different styles, but I submitted this rusty orange one on top. Although I'd be more inclined to wear the black-splash texture below it, I felt the orange would stand out more as a thumbnail in the online gallery. I've attached a few more ideas as well.

I'd love to hear what you think. Comments are always welcome.

Crabs, Lace and Mashups

In Lilla Rogers' Make Art That Sells Bootcamp this month, our mini assignment began with drawing two seemingly unrelated subjects: black & white crustaceans and colorful patterns. After spending a week drawing various crabs and lobsters, as well as creating several floral motifs, we were given our main assignment: to "mashup" the two on a plate.

For many of these assignments, drawing helps me understand the proportions of the subject, but for final art, I tend to want to work in collage. With a photo of a rusty Brooklyn manhole and and a scanned watercolor, I created a chunky crab collage. For my pattern, I went with this lace, which also reminds me of a fishing net and a bubbly shoreline. 

In the end, it's not a very successful mashup for me. I love the crab, but it clashes with this one-color lace, and it's visually confusing. I will be trying a version with texture in the lace, and also one with less texture in the crab.

As always, your comments and suggestions are welcome!