Creating an illustration for fabric painting

How do you create your images and designs?

I have been asked several times by many customers where I find my illustration images. The answer is that I develop them all from scratch. My attempt is to make my collection look like colourful pages right out of exciting storybooks. I want my paintings to trigger a child’s imagination and excite them enough to build their own stories around it.

I spend the most time in developing concepts. My concepts are developed keeping in mind the painting space available, the overall tailoring design, and the child’s gender.

Crib sheets which have a larger painting surface have more elaborate patterns while rompers and dresses require more compact designs. Collections for girls lean more towards beautiful gardens, fairies, mermaids and for boys I think of action oriented themes like robots, dinosaurs, pirates, sailors. I am not stereotyping here. I believe there can be as much adventure in a beautiful fairy garden as in a dinosaur park. It’s just about representing an environment that is visually appealing to a girl and a boy.

Once the concept is finalised (like the farm scene here), then I get started on the individual elements, their dimensions, overall proportions, colours and so on. Of course, I refer to plenty of children’s books and Internet images to get an idea of facial features and body proportions for different creatures and characters that I illustrate.

The key thing while illustrating is to have the right balance of elements, sizes and colours. It should not be too over-crowded or too plain.

Here is my conceptualization process of the next crib sheet that I am working on. I have already created two crib sheet designs in the past. One was based on the alphabets and the other had a theme on caterpillars. The third one is inspired by life in a green, pristine farm. The images that spring into my mind when I think of a farm are those of a windmill, meadows, flowers, vegetable patches, cows, hens, ducks, tractors, farmer and so on. Once I shortlist the elements, I think of what combinations work better – ‘cows and haystack’ or ‘cows grazing next to a water body of ducks’. Well, the latter will look more colourful, so let’s just go with that. So, colour representation is a huge deciding factor in creating my illustrations.

Here are my final three images that will appear on my farm crib sheet.