Art Therapy

 I have always found that repetitive, stream-of-consciousness type drawing is a great way for me to relax and to turn my brain off. I have been dong this since I was a teenager. I have always had issues with depression and anxiety and while I, in no way, have these issues beaten (hence going AWOL from this blog of late) I do have a few go to tricks to reboot my brain and make it stop the insanity... although sometimes it seems Houdini wouldn't have enough tricks for that... just ask my Lovely Husband...

This kind of drawing also lends itself beautifully to fabric design. SO, I am going to show you the process I use to make a therapeutic-stop-acting-crazy drawing into a beautiful fabric design!!

This is the original raw drawing. Drawn in my sketchbook with whatever coloured pens I had available. While watching CSI New York in bed. Do you think they will just keep making CSI shows in different cities until they run out of Who songs for the opening credits?

After I have scanned the drawing, it's converted  to black and white, then imported into Illustrator. I then Live Trace the drawing, converting it into vector.

 Then I can clean it up and smooth out any lumps and bumps. This is also extremely therapeutic. I love turning my brain off and just getting lost in the lines and points and curves.

I have always loved repetitive tasks. It's my slight OCD coming out it think! When I worked in Visual Merchandising, one of my favourite tasks was sorting out all the nuts and bolts and nails and screws. I should have worked on a production line in a factory. Like Laverne and Shirley. But that was beer, so it was probably smelly. Maybe more like Goldie Hawn in Swing Shift. She had a cuter head scarf...

SO, that is the start of the process. Next, I'll be finishing the clean up, then I will start thinking about how to repeat the pattern, and what colours I will use. Rock n Roll.

X Gillian for Tessie Designs