Working as a freelancer can at times become very isolated and downright depressing. Even though I enjoy working on pattern design with Adobe Illustrator and it is almost my favorite work to do. I have to be very proactive to not fall into a downward spiral and have created systems to keep me in an upbeat mood and to continue my onward movement following an upward spiral.
During the past years, I've decided to keep a little notebook where I write down little miracles ????that happen. Depending on your belief system, you might refer to them as God (Higher Power/ Goddess) -shots, invisible hands, the creative muse appearing, or sheer coincidences. I am going to start sharing them and hope to hear about your little miracles as well.
Here are a couple of examples of how the peacock showed up during the duration of this project.
Example No 1: I live in Pasadena, and my dentist is located in Arcadia. So on the day of my dentist appointment, a real-life peacock just sat right next to my parked car. Kind enough to wait and pose for me to take a picture. Example No 2: That made me remember and realize that the peacock is the official symbol for the city of Arcadia. So I stopped and took a picture of the city symbol too.
It gave me such a happy feeling that the real life bird was patient enough to let me come close enough to take detailed photos. My cell phone's camera was good enough and I really think this creature quite enjoyed giving me a show.
More...
I drew all the feathers in Illustrator and put a lot of love into the design. Honoring my encounters. The project was in its final stages of deciding the colorways and the type of layout we were going to use, diamond, mirrored or drop set, while I was heading over to the creativity conference by Adobe called Adobe Max. And this amazing species appeared again in a different form.
Click the image above & grab the peacock vector file now. Always available in the Free Resource Vault
If you decide to download the Illustrator file, you will see that I took the time to separate the artwork by color so that you can really see how the entire artwork of the motif was assembled. Feel free to let me know how you would have drawn this beautiful creature.
To the right above you see my colorways of the drop set pattern repeat and to the left you see the mirrored and flipped pattern repeat in a couple more colorways. These files are all Illustrator files and you can try and create them from the peacock motif that you'll find in the vault.
Tip #1: The vector peacock file ended up having 17630 anchor points. Quite a big and detailed bird. You can check this info inside of Illustrator by going to: Object > Path > Simplify
There you can play around with the options and see the information of the selected original artwork. Try it out and see if you would have liked a simplified Illustrator rendering for the pattern repeat?
Tip #2: Press ctrl/cmd + Y to see your artwork in Illustrator in outline mode. Just don't forget to press it again to exit this view and see the preview mode.
The Adobe Max creativity conference is one of my favorite places to be. This (2017) one was held in San Diego. There in San Diego, trying to catch a break from work and getting recharged with inspiration, was a mural... and what was on it? Example No 3: A peacock twice my height and size! I couldn't believe it and had pictures taken capturing me freaking out. Freaking out in a good way.
I remember the fun short text conversation that I had with my freelance client. I texted her the photos of the peacock, and in short, all that she was worried about was that I, please give her bird more feathers than the one in the photos,
I would love to know if you started noticing your surroundings responding to your creative work and helping you along the way. Let me know in the comments or email me.
