Birth of Sea Creatures

I am fueled by tangents. I offshoot so much I think I may have ADHD. As I try to write this post, it is becoming more difficult to organize my process. But I'm trying. Please bear with me while I get my bearings.

This doodle was created with Spoonflower fabric in mind to become a mirror repeat. Then a Spoonflower contest came about for Ditsy Sea Creatures. While doing my research, I found these little 'spores' also appeared similar to some microscopic jellyfish. So I created a new drawing in ink.

 

Since I am more familiar with Illustrator, I auto traced the scan & created my repeat. Below is the final entry for that Ditsy Sea Creatures contest at Spoonflower.

SeaCreatures ended up placing 29th out of 214 entries with 310 votes.

The next contest after Sea Creatures was one for Jellyfish so, I created a pink version of the ditsy to make a coordinate. I used Illustrator to create a sort of 'mod' jelly.

GeoJelly4 came in 70th out of 226 entries with 156 votes. It uses rounded square elements from another previous design shown below.  As a design, I like the GeoJelly but as a fabric pattern, I think it's a big fail. The details of the tentacally-goo are too fine. So, the Jelly has to be quite large to appreciate them, thus making it impractical for fabric application. I'm willing to be wrong. Maybe it would work well on a dress?

These mod squares were created years ago as a concept that never got used for some business card ideas. Here I duped them & arranged them in a repeat for fabric which I hope to someday make into pillows. I like to re-purpose & reuse ideas all the time. Constant reinvention. And I can be a bit lazy. So I use my creativity to make my processes more simple & pick up elements here & there to create new. But only from my own work, of course.

So, what's my point?
Well, years ago, I made some retro square design that I later used to make a repeat for some future 'mod' pillows, which led me to make a square-y mod jellyfish that ties in with a more recent random hand drawn thing that I felt sorta looked like microscopic sea creatures and made it all work in an effort to enter a contest or 2. All done in the hopes of someday establishing myself as a 'real' artist. Good thing I hung onto that old file & old idea.