Meet the Designer – Janice Sheen
It’s come that time again, where we say HELLO! to our latest featured design in The Designer Project. Welcoming Janice Sheen and her textile collection ‘Boho Adventures‘. Join us as we dive into her world of creativity and innovation as we explore her unique design journey. Get ready to be inspired by Janice’s captivating designs and artistic vision. Let’s embark on a journey through the extraordinary work of this talented designer.
Hi Everyone 🙂
My name is Janice. And I love being able to bring colour & texture into folks every day lives. I believe that the things we surround ourselves with are not just a reflection of who we are or want to be, but also have an influence on our moods and outlook. I want to create patterns that affect our lives in positive ways, from bright joy and excitement to quiet calmness and peace.
I am excited to have the opportunely to join Digital Fabrics and be a part of The Designer Project, and am pleased to be able to present my first collection, Boho Adventures. For this set, I started with the colour palette, wanting to explore the beautiful soft desaturated tones that the bohemian style is known for, then played with a wide range of patterns types. I loved discovering how the mutual colour palette drew such different patterns together into a relatively cohesive collection.
I first dabbled in patterns for fabric around 2010/11 before becoming distracted by my ‘day job’ as a senior tour guide. For the last 4 years I have been (& continue to be) a fantasy cartographer, drawing maps for role playing gamers. Late last year, needing an additional creative outlet, I dove back into patterns and have been loving the rediscovery.
As well as surface design & fantasy cartography, I also crochet and occasionally play with photography and abstract art. Ceramics and Photography are the only things I have formal training in. Ceramics in year 11 & 12 and photography as a ‘class on the side’ for 2 years while studying Outdoor Education at Latrobe Uni, Bendigo about 25 years ago. Otherwise I am ‘self-taught’ through books, video tutorials and play.
Colour & texture are the core hubs of interest that all my work spins around …. I tend to lean towards the textural, abstract and geometric, with a preference for the imperfection of hand drawn lines – I love how those imperfections give a pattern a gentler more organic feel.
Currently, I am a ‘digital nomad’, living and working all over the place in Tasmania in my little Hiace camper-van. In-between traveling, I stay with my Mother when she needs me and house sit when I can. Being able to spend time in different environments is incredibly inspiring.
(And that is Eddie, my stuffed Echidna keeping an eye on things)
As a result of the lack of space in my ‘studio’, I mostly work with digital tools (Procreate, Photoshop & photographs). For example, The Rock Garden Block Print pattern is not a traditional block print. For this one, I started out with a bunch of sketch ideas in Procreate, trying for something that felt like abstract rocks made from potato-cut sort of shapes. Mostly, my ‘sketches’ (top left in the image below) stay very rough, incomplete & unformed. From there I dove straight into making a set of Procreate ‘stamp-brushes’ which I then digitally ‘stamped’ all around to make the pattern; infilling with a few dots in-between. I also added splatters and a bit of watercolour texture to the flat-colour shapes, to give them more life.
Occasionally I include ink-on-paper elements. The Beach Diamonds pattern started out life as a series of little doodles drawn about 8 years ago. I scanned had them into the computer at the time and filed them without doing anything with them. More recently, I dug the scan out of my archives and selected a few that made me think of beach shells and rock strata the most. Using Photoshop, I enlarged them a LOT, cleaned them up, arranged them and coloured them, adding a splatter texture over the top to break up the flat colours.
So there we go…. I hope this little snippet of time has given you some inspiration for your own projects and creativity.
Don’t forget to tag me on instagram ( @janice_sheen ) if you post a a photo of something made with any of my designs… I am looking forward to admiring what you create 🙂
About the Collection
Boho Adventures started as a limited set of 15 warm and cool colours inspired by the Bohemian style trend.
Apart from that, I did not have any grand plan apart from wanting it to feel hand drawn and textural. I tend to let creative projects flow and ‘grow themselves’. If I try to plan too much, the result can sometimes feel stagnate and over-worked. I played with & explored a variety of different ideas, including elements inspired by more traditional designs and motifs, as well as the more abstract wilder ones, and then tied them all together with the chosen colour set.
The result is a varied set of patterns that are vaguely rustic and inspired by rocks, water and textures found in nature… But also modern & fresh, and best of all, with a few unexpectedly large scale, bold patterns that I truly looking forward to seeing used.
