New work, New Shop, New Year!

It certainly has been a while since I wrote any updates on my blog so I’d like to thank you for coming to take a look.

I’m committed to making 2024 all about a year of creativity and I’m very excited by the various plans I’m currently hatching up. I’m signed up to whole series of amazing courses over the year, which will definitely get my mojo back on, so watch this space for new work to come. If you’d like to follow along and see a bit more behind the scenes of what I’m doing and how, then don’t forget to come and find me over on Instagram I’d love to see you there.

In the meantime, I’ve been going through old work and giving it a new lease of life mostly in the form of surface pattern designs. And, I have a new Spoonflower shop in the pipeline for any makers, quilters or interior designers among you. I’ll make an announcement here when it’s up and running.

I’ve also finally got around to opening a print on demand shop at Society6 where I’ve listed a few of my current illustrations and designs for sale on products, from homewares and stationary to mobile phone cases. You can see a few of the designs I’ve listed below, if you click on the image you should find it takes you directly to my Society6 shop.

For now though, I hope you are having a wonderful New Year and are managing to achieve some of the goals that you’ve set yourself for the year ahead.

Woodland Birds surface pattern design by artist and illustrator Susie Batsford

Into the Wild surface pattern design by artist and illustrator Susie Batsford

Mermaids Beneath The Waves surface pattern design by artist and illustrator Susie Batsford

Fleur De Lys - Rococo Inspired Design

I realised that although I’ve shared the visualisation boards I created for my last BA submission, I haven’t actually shared many of the designs here. This one was inspired by a popular highly ornamental trend of the 18th and 19th centuries; Rococo. I adore all those swirls and elaborate embellishments and I imagine I’ll be creating more inspired by the same theme. You can view this one in the ‘Pattern’ gallery on my homepage.

I experimented with this design using various processes in the textile print room at college. I’ll share more of those in a future post.

Fleur De Lys Handpainted Watercolour Rococo Baroque inspired Design by Susie Batsford

Mats Bootcamp February Mini - Magnolia's

I have always adored Chinoiserie, so much so that I would love to create my own. Imagine how utterly elated I was then, when I discovered that for this months mini exercise in Bootcamp my mission was to paint magnolia’s.

I decided for that reason that I’d like to keep my flowers for this assignment relatively representational and I thoroughly enjoyed getting back into my watercolour paints, after several months of learning new processes in the textile print room at college. I also decided to try two new colours that have been sitting in my palette all this time and yet I never use them!

Admittedly, I probably don’t have time to develop this into a Chinese style wallpaper design just yet, but most certainly have visions of coming back to it in future months.

Magnolias Watercolour Painting by Susie Batsford

BA Textiles - Preparing for Year 3 Submission

I haven’t posted much for a few months and that’s quite simply because I’ve been absolutely snowed under with work. Switching from Illustration to Textiles and Surface Design for the Final Year of my degree has been such a massive learning curve, it’s utterly wonderful to learn something new, but at times it has also felt overwhelming. I’m now in my last week before having to submit the entire body of work I’ve created in the last few months. Our module has been all about Innovation and Experimentation. Quite honestly, each and every new process I’ve learnt… and there have been quite a number of them, has for me been experimental in itself. There are so many new skills to learn and get up to speed with, from seemingly simple things such as how to make a collection cohesive to different dye techniques and fabric surfaces and a huge variety of different technical processes. Gradually, very gradually I am getting there, although I still have a huge amount to learn.

For now though, I thought I would leave you with a development on my New Year design which has sparked so many new creative ideas of its own.

Hand Painted Daisy Design Pattern by Susie Batsford

MATS Children's Book Illustration - Ada Lovelace

Over the past few weeks, I've been completely absorbed in the latest https://makeartthatsells.com class: Illustrating Children's Books.

The course is utterly jam-packed with fantastic content to work through and each week there is a deadline for submitting your assignment.  It's taught by the magical Lilla Rogers and Children's Book Art Director, Zoe Tucker.  I must admit, I've found it very hard to keep up with the pace, partly due to my own time restrictions and the talent in the group is quite extraordinary.  It's wonderful having my news feed full of such utterly inspiring art everyday.

At the beginning, we had a choice of 3 texts and to start with, I have chosen Ada Lovelace, the daughter of Lord Byron and a most inspiration woman, attributed to developing the first ever computer in 1842.  I was excited to research Ada, partly because I simply love history and partly because I know I need to work on developing my people drawing skills.

The first few weeks have been all about character design and development, I have discovered a new-found respect for children's book illustrators, my goodness it's so hard!

Young Ada Lovelace