This is a print that I loosely included in the Halloween Collection of my RedBubble shop, but I think it would be pretty great all year round. Grilling at your backyard barbecue in the summer with this apron? Totally works.
This design turned in to a pattern for most of the prints on RedBubble, and got a little bit of a background for my TeePublic shop (click to see that variation). I like to give each design a little bit of a different feel depending on what shop it is on, and RedBubble is by far the best at turning designs into all over print patterns.
So one day I was working at my day job, and the next thing I knew I was obsessing over the idea of Carolina Reaper Peppers dressed up as grims. I am not sure if I had seen some cute grim art on twitter or if it just popped up out of the blue as my brain likes to do. But however it happened, I logged it on my notes app that has about 40 different ideas that may or may not ever make it to design stage, and finished my workday.
So when the work day was done, my mind was still really fixated on these peppers. I went hope, opened up Vectornator, and got to work. The newest update for Vectornator is awesome, let me just say, and it has really made it easier for me to bring things to life in the exact way I want them to be. I was doing pretty good with the other versions, but was sad that I could not product a brush looking line effect like I would have been able to with other programs. Vectornator is free, and has always been really robust in my opinion for a free program. The newest additions are only making it better, and now little guys like this can happen in my art portfolio.
If I give you no other advice for those just starting out and teaching themselves how to do things, PLEASE note that layer management is sacred to design if you want to avoid having a breakdown because something is not working correctly. I always do my line work first, in its own layer, and as soon as I have it how I want it, I lock it. Then I put other layers under it and color in like a coloring book, essentially. Once everything is complete, I can unlock that line layer and select everything to resize, copy, or move (do not group things, it will mess up your managed layers). And, if I just have one layer that needs to become a different color, I can lock all of the layers except that one, highlight everything that needs to be recolored, and live a happy, simple life.
So for this, I did the line layer, and for the most part each other color becomes it's own layer. This kind of helps for building the base colors, but from time to time you may have to have two color layers for the same one. For instance, I did a bottom color layer in red so that I could fill in the pepper, but had to do a second red layer later that was above many of the others to get the fingers on top of the scythe. So the order looked somewhat like this in my screen:
Red Fingers Linework (locked, added after everything as a final touch)
Red Fingers Color Layer
Linework (locked)
Scythe Colors/Stem Details
Grey robe
Stem base colors
Face/Darker Red pepper details
Red Base
And basically that just gives me a lot of flexibility if I want to go highlight something from a layer. I can really easily lock everything else, and use a highlight select for just what I need.
This is just a very quick tip and video that I wanted to post, but look for more in the future!
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