Evolution of a Surface Pattern - Calculating the Moon

The finished pattern, "Calculating the Moon"

Back in December I created a pattern, as I do almost weekly, for one of Spoonflower’s design challenges. In this posting, I’m not going to go into the technical how-to aspects of how I created the repeat for this surface pattern but instead I will explore how I came up with the idea for my design and how it evolved.

For those of you who might be unfamiliar with it, Spoonflower is a company that prints designs on fabric, wallpaper and gift wrap. Their online website allows designers to upload their own designs for printing on these surfaces and then to sell the designs in their own shops. Each time a purchase is made, the designer receives a 10% royalty of the total purchase. Spoonflower handles the printing and shipping of all the products ordered. To encourage designers to upload to the site, they host a weekly challenge where they provide a theme to inspire creativity for designers.

For the design I’m writing about in this posting, the challenge was to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the 1st Moon landing. Normally Spoonflower gives the winner of the weekly challenge a $200 credit in Spoondollars which can be used to make purchases on the site. Once in a while though they have a corporate sponsor who offers up additional prizes or licensing deals. For this challenge the sponsor was the company Princess Awesome who makes a clothing line for young girls. According to the Princess Awesome website, they believe “it is crucial that girls have access to clothes that tell them that they can be and do anything…Princess Awesome is a company founded by women - mothers - who want girls to be able to express themselves through their clothing. We are committed to making clothes that girls want to wear, and that parents want to see on their daughters.” Their emphasis is on the sciences and topics (dinosaurs, rockets, robots) that in the past have been thought of as more geared for boys. For this challenge, Princess Awesome was offering a licensing deal worth $500 to the first place winner.

1961 Life magazine image that inspired my design

I’ll tell you right off the bat, I didn’t win this contest, but I did come in second place. It was a close race, if I had received just 7 or 8 more votes I would have won the prize, but with so many wonderful entries, I was honored to be in second place.

Before I began designing, I did a Google search of the 1st moon landing. My search results came up with loads of imagery of astronauts on the moon, the moon lander, the rockets that carried the lunar module, etc. None of what I was finding really sparked my imagination, until I came upon an unusual image from Life magazine that showed a group of male NASA mathematicians standing on ladders writing calculations on a gigantic blackboard. I knew from all of the publicity around the film, “Hidden Figures,” that there were a number of unsung women who worked on the moon landing, including some who helped calculate the trajectory the lunar module would need to make the landing. Using the Life magazine photo as inspiration, I decided to replace the men with the women who were until recently, hidden from view.

My original sketch

This is before I decided to have the blackboard fill the background

In this step I added another woman and filled the background with the green of the blackboard

Since this challenge was supposed to celebrate the Moon landing, I knew I wanted to have the Moon somewhere in my design. My first idea was to have the blackboard floating against a dark blue sky, but after roughing out a sketch and trying it as a repeat, the rectangle of the blackboard seemed to interrupt the flow of the pattern so instead I decided to eliminate the sky and make the entire background be a giant blackboard (or in the case of my design, a greenboard). I decided I would make the Moon look like a chalk drawing on the board.

I created my drawing using Corel Painter 12. Painter has wonderful brushes that emulate all sorts of natural media, including chalks which were perfect for creating the elements drawn on the board. For the drawings of the women, I used some of Painter’s pen brushes, mainly the flat color pen and the scratchboard pen. Before I began drawing on the computer, I made a quick pencil sketch of my design.

Using illustrations of the rocket that carried the lunar module for reference, I drew a simplified version of the rocket that I superimposed over the blackboard. Originally, I had the rocket placed at an angle, but I didn't like how it looked in the repeat so I ended up placing it upright, giving it a ready for launch look. I used a photo of the lunar module I found on Wikipedia as a reference for my chalk drawing of the module on the blackboard. For the formulas on the blackboard, I used some of the actual formulas shown in the Life magazine photo, re-drawing them using one of Painter’s chalk pens.

Finally, I added some curved dashed lines to represent the orbit and trajectory of the lunar module and added some scuffed out marks on the blackboard to make it appear as if certain parts of the board had been erased.

I named my pattern "Calculating the Moon," and I've been very happy with the wonderful response it has received. If you click on the link above, it will take you to my Spoonflower shop where you can purchase the design on fabric, wallpaper or gift wrap.

Pinterest images of the Apollo landing sites on the Moon

Google search results for Saturn V rocket