Road Trip: The Beautiful California Coast

I know you've all been waiting to hear about the actual road trip part of our trip. Well here is, as promised, part 2.
We left San Diego and made our way to Santa Barbara. We had grand ideas of taking US 1 all the way up, but when we realized that meant it was going to take 6 hours as opposed to the 2.5 we had planned on, we went back to the shorter route. Some day I will drive that stretch of US 1, but we hadn't budgeted 6 hours of time to do it.
The architecture in Santa Barbara was beyond gorgeous. It was a beautiful day to just walk up and down the Main Street and soak in the sights. That was pretty much all we could afford to do! Santa Barbara is not a cheap town. However, in honor of one of our favorite shows, psych, we did go find the police station. We stopped at the beach for a bit, but then we had to hit the road again because the hotel we were staying at was an hour and a half away.

The view from where we ate lunch in Santa Barbara

Pysch! Alas, we could not find a pineaplle to include in the picture

The next day, we woke up really early to start driving up US 1. This day was amazing . The views were gorgeous everywhere! We couldn't get enough of how beautiful everything was! I don't think words can describe this part of the trip so I'm going to just let the beautiful pictures taken by Elizabeth speak for themselves. (these are probably not in order but I tried to at least arrange them by place)

The photographer with the beautiful scenery

One of our stops was the Hearst Castle. What a gorgeous place!

First views of Hearst Castle!

Hearst Castle

Me at one of the many beautiful views from the castle

Elizabeth with the castle

Me with a view of the castle

After the castle, we went to view some elephant seals!

Just chilling

And then we just stopped many many places along the way

By the end of the day, we were exhausted and just ready to crash. However, I felt so inspired by the beauty we had soaked in all day. It was definitely my favorite day by far of the entire trip.
The next day we spent in Carmel by the Sea. What a cute little town! We took the somewhat hard to follow walking tour, and happened upon a gallery showing prints of Dr. Seuss' art. It was cool because there were a lot of pieces I hadn't seen before that he hadn't done for children's books. And I found a couple of books that I want to save up to get!
We stopped at the beach for a while because it was supposedly one of the most beautiful beaches in the USA. Well, it definitely was! I could have been perfectly happy sitting there all day, but we got hungry. We spent some time at the mission there which was definitely an interesting piece of our country's history. Then we found a cool state park and took a hike!
Again the day would be better served by showing you pictures so here they are:

Elizabeth in a really cool tree right by the beach

The beautiful beach at Carmel by the Sea

Us at the beautiful beach

And some views from our hike that we took in Point Lobos State Park:

This was probably my second most favorite day.

Then...off to San Francisco! Which you will hear all about in my next California post. Now it is time to stop procrastinating and get to work on my art challenge!

Textile Design Class: Black and White

One of the things I decided to do to keep myself busy this fall is take a class. I chose an online textile design class and so far it's been really good. Our first set of assignments dealt with creating black and white designs. First we had to come up with a concept page. This was basically a page of images that inspired our design process. We were also allowed to make a Pinterest board. So, of course, being me, I did both.
Pinterest board

my concept page

As you can see, my main inspiration was wrought iron. I liked how this combined both a delicate and graphic look often achieved in black and white designs. I also used nature inspired images, and lace. From this concept page, we had to come up with at least 5 motifs. For some reason in my head, I thought these had to be square, so this is what I came up with.

my motifs

Of course, I had to edit these when it came to designing the prints. There is only so much you can do with squares. We had to submit as the final project five different layouts: a basic set design ( think tiles) a half drop design ( tiles that are offset instead of perfectly lined up)  a tossed design (basically exactly what it sounds like, you, "toss" your motifs somewhat randomly on the page), a border with a field ( design that has a border) and a stripe layout.

basic set design

half drop design

tossed non-directional design

border with a field design

stripe layout

I was actually pretty pleased with the result. Designing patterns is so much fun! I'm also learning a lot about Photoshop that will come in handy for my own work.

I definitely would recommend taking a textile design class. I find taking classes outside my field really inspires my work within my own field, and helps get the creative juices flowing. You come up with more ideas just because you are learning to think differently!

I've been working slowly but surely on calendar 2014 (updates and calendars following soon!), and some other commissioned projects that I can't post now, but will as soon as they are in the hands of the rightful owner. I'm also trying to start participating in Illustration Friday again, so be on the lookout for those posts too!