Artist Inspiration – Heidi Vilkman

I recently came across the work of Heidi Vilkman, who is a UK based illustrator and designer. Her work often depicts nature and the wider world, which resonated with me. She creates beautiful patterns, illustrations for books, logos and custom projects. She also creates graphics for websites and icons.

She uses amazing contrasting colours, some that evoke realism and others that make for a more surreal experience, She uses her patterns on a whole load of different objects like fabrics, paper goods, packaging, wallpaper, home decor and more. Her patterns are digitally created to replicate organic patterns that can be repeated.

Image source: Heidi Vilkman at https://www.heidivilkman.com/

I wanted to follow in her footsteps by creating a pattern inspired by one of my favourite places, the beach. I have loved being by the water since I was little, so I took a trip to the beach to get some images. I used images of the sand that had its own pattern as my base for this design.

After taking photos I took the opportunity to use Procreate in order to draw out my pattern, I wanted the looser style. After marking out the divets in the sand I chose an appealing colour palette that mixed sea colours together and created my pattern. I also played with effects and also liked the outcome of using the hue changer to create the darker pink variation of my pattern. From there I played with usages like whether it would be a framed print or a wallpaper. Taking Unsplash images I added in the patterns to test it out.

My thoughts

This was a really fun short term project, built on my inspiration from Ms Vilkman. I can completely see myself continuing to explore this avenue of design. I think it’s a great creative outlet that can help me build skills and exercise my creative brain.