From Rock to Silk

The Process of Creating Rock Climbing Line Art

It started at a rock climbing gym. First I took a photo of a wall I pass by every single time I am there. They don’t change this wall very often (unlike the rest of the routes there, which do change often). This is a very familiar sight to me.

When I started to draw I knew that I wanted it to be true to the gym that inspired it so the layout was very close to what was in the photo. I moved just a few of the holds around just to make sure it would fit within a square canvas. Keeping to a square canvas would ensure that it would fit the final product I wanted to make it for, square scarves.

The fun part was in the detailing and line art. I love doing line art, I can get into the zone pretty easily doing it. This was drawn in stages, just a few holds a day, day by day until it was done.

After this, I made a seamless pattern, which involves moving pieces around until there are no gaps. I use a program called Affinity Designer (an alternative to Adobe Illustrator) where I can use their Symbols feature, this allows me to have a main canvas that shows the pattern pieces and beside it a live-action preview of the completed pattern. But it just boils down to moving the individual holds around until the pattern is complete.

I knew right from the beginning that I wanted this to be light line art on a black background. So when it came to the colours it was a pretty quick decision-making process. I did take a look at the Pantone Color of the Year, and I took inspiration from some of their palettes. I took some of the colours they used and tweaked them to work well with the black background.

There were three colour schemes in the end, simple black and white, black and warm tones, black and cool tones.

I wanted to create a subtle, elegant design inspired by my favourite sport and I feel like it was a success. Check it out, I would love to know what you think. You can find this in my Etsy Store and in my Spoonflower Store.