Patterns Watercolor Digital Character Design
Skillshare FREE SURFACE DESIGN WORKSHOP
illustration and pattern design

allow yourself to fail before you succeed

 
 
 
 
a little about me@2x-8.png
 
 

Hi! My name's Melissa Lee, and I'm an illustrator and surface pattern designer living in the hilly forests of Northern California. Alongside doing freelance and art licensing work (I’m a proud Riley Blake Designs fabric designer!), I've spent much of my time cultivating my love of sharing what I know and encouraging others to nourish their creative side through teaching online art courses on Skillshare. I love making patterns, character art, and watercolor paintings. I'm endlessly inspired by animals and nature (whether living today or extinct), science fiction and fantasy, space and astrology, witchy things, and bees.

Always bees. 

 
 
 
 

 Sign up for my newsletter below to receive a free 10 minute video tutorial + Adobe Illustrator Keyboard Shortcuts guide!

DOWNLOAD YOUR FREE E-COURSE + KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS GUIDE

My mini course, Constructing the Face, is part of my series on Skillshare, Faced With Fear: Conquering Your Fears of Illustrating Faces, where I guide you through the fundamentals of drawing and coloring feminine and masculine character portraits. In this bite-sized lesson, however, I focus on how to construct a proportionate face, as well as share some helpful tips on exploring the possibilities of how to exaggerate the features for cartooning. Despite only being a little over ten minutes long, it’s one of my most popular and highly rated courses on Skillshare, with 6,000+ students!

You’ll also receive a super handy Adobe Illustrator Keyboard Shortcuts PDF, complete with instructions on how to create your own custom keyboard shortcuts!

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

My Fall Quilt Market Experience as an Independent Designer

READ MY BLOG

I wrote a blog post about my experience at the 2019 Quilt Market Houston as an aspiring fabric designer. To quoth Quilts.com, “The International Quilt Market is the only wholesale trade show for the worldwide quilting, textile, and soft crafts industry.” In my post, I go over what I did to prepare, the process of getting an attendee badge as an independent designer not yet signed on with any fabric company, as well as my experience showing my portfolio to various art directors at the Market! A lot of this is info I wish I’d known prior to attending.

Fast forward to now and I’m a fabric designer for Riley Blake Designs!

 
 
 
 

Surface Design In Adobe Illustrator: A Beginner's Guide to Pattern Building

MY ONLINE COURSES

This class focuses heavily on the technical side of creating a repeating pattern in Adobe Illustrator. I put a lot of time and effort and care into making it a truly comprehensive introduction to surface design in the program. I go over all of the essential tools that I use for drawing, coloring, and assembling motifs to make patterns, and then some. In addition, I cover common beginner mistakes and how to fix or avoid them. I’ve also created some downloadable PDFs, including an Adobe Illustrator Keyboard Shortcuts quick reference guide, among other things, for you to print out and reference along the way. As always, if you sign up for Skillshare with my link, you'll get a free month of membership (much better than the standard one week free trial)! I hope to see you there! :D

 
 
 
 
 

Stay in The Know

INSTAGRAM @MELISSALEEDESIGN

 
I shared a bit about this on Valentine’s Day, but forgot to post about it in my feed! I am so thrilled to share that I have created a special date experience for long-distance couples to enjoy on @withlovewick Distance Dates! Lovewick has desig
Immersion season (as I like to call it 😉) is in full swing and I’m REAL excited because I’m returning for the fourth year running as a part of the support team! And I got a promotion! My official title is Love Squad Expert, and I’l
Over the past couple of years, I’ve presented at some local quilt guilds where they allowed me to sell some of my fabric. One of the attendees (Leslie @photonut55) bought my Dessert Sunrise print and made this awesome tote bag out of it! 😍 The
I made these bunnies a few years ago for my @skillshare class, ‘Characters for Surface Pattern Design’ as a part of my ‘Character Design Crash Course’ series. I should really start drawing cutesy animal characters like this ag
So, naturally, I start an ambitious drawing of fourteen (14) different nocturnal creatures, full color, a day before the challenge “deadline” and think, “Oh yeah, I can do this relatively quickly! Sure thing!” Reader? She did
If you’ve been seeing a lot of advertising popping up for Bonnie Christine‘s Immersion course (not just from me 😅😎👉👉), I am here to tell you that there is a very good reason for that! As is clear to anyone who’s been following m
I know, I know, ANOTHER post about this workshop?! I get it. Truly, I do. But here’s the thing...it’s free. 100% free. In lesson one, Bonnie is transparent about the fact that she’s going to introduce you to her paid course, Immersi