How I design / draw

Sometimes it is just work. I always wanted to make a darker pattern but I had no idea what do draw yet. One night (I dream very lucid) I had a dream that resembled much a scene from Indiana Jones with the snakes crawling on the floor. The next day I came up with the idea to draw a snake. Now I am a chaotic person in my mind. I wanted more then a snake so I added a skull. I made my outline:

I started with a black background and white outline but that did not work, so I inversed the co colours. It looked already better but still.. nah... no wow effect. I started playing with the layout in Gimp and I finally found out what I did not like about this setup. The snake was way too small.

I drew a larger snake head:

I was so happy with my new snake head that I fitted it directly on the grit (a grit that fits Interlocking filet and overlay mosaic crochet) but I still was not happy with the composition. Now the snake body was wrong. Back to Gimp and my faithful Wacom drawing board and I lay out a new path of the snake around the skull composition:

I started to add details to the skull and went way too far but I did not see that yet :)

I finished detailing the skull's jaw but now what to do with the snake body, realistic scales or more fantasy? I chose the latter and tried different scale patterns on the snake. I was stuck. Then I played around with some shapes and found a scale that made me happy, a simple cross with a filled in center should do, I started drawing snake's belly and more texture:

I was happy with the snake but the contrast between the textures of the snake and skull were too big. I had to make a choice, making the snake skin more realistic? Or take details out of the skull? I choose the latter. I started deleting details from the skull molding it in a more clear outline and texture. I continued filling in the scales of the snake and added a very simple background and voila... a new blanket was born :)

I imported the drawing in excel, to calculate the X chart and written pattern and now it is with the testers.

Let me know if you want to see more blogs like this about my designs, I am still planning to capture a video of a creation :)

Anneke