More Exotic Fruit

After drawing from my other fruit photos I decided I needed to collect more exotic fruits as these would give me more variation in my prints.

Fruity photos

As part of my visual research I have now started taking photographs of fruit whole and cut up which I will draw in different line techniques. I will then use these drawings in Photoshop and Illustrator to create different designs.

Bird Designs

I have now started doing research into bird designs to get inspiration. I found this piece by Michael Levin and I thought I could do two layers to make it appear like the bird is moving, the top layer black like the archive design I have chosen, and the bottom layer a chosen pastel colour from my colour scheme, inspired by the archive design again. The idea of movement also reminded me of the work of Etienne-Jules Marey, who photographed animals in movement, maybe I could also take inspiration from his work.

Archive design development

After choosing the paisley pattern and bird print from the archives I decided to do research into the two subjects, I first started with the paisley pattern and found the print below which reminded me of fruit cut in half, so I thought that could work well in my contemporary designs, but once I actually started looking into the history of the paisley pattern I found that in the Tamillian language, the paisley pattern design is known as Mankolam (mango design) so I thought this fitted quite well with my ideas.

Other ways I thought that the history of the paisley pattern could inspire me is that when the paisley pattern was first created, it appeared as jewellery that would be worn to the temple. It was also popular in European Baltic states and thought to be used as a protective charm to warn off evil demons.  And in modern culture it has been used as a symbol of rebellion by the youth.

Paisley Patterns

I have started drawing paisley patterns as they are the basis of the archive piece I have picked, so far I don't feel very inspired by the designs I have been drawing, but I have decided I wont rule them out completely as they may work with other ideas I have in the future.

Bradford Textile Society Design Competetion

I have also decided to enter the Bradford Textile Society Design Competition, I have chosen A1, which is the Bradford College Textile Archive Award. For this I have to create  a design for a furnishing fabric manufactured by any process, which is inspired by a sample from the Bradford Textile Archive. It suggests to consider: colour, texture, scale, proportion, rotation and introducing new elements.

I first considered to use this piece from the archives but I thought that it would be a safe one to go with as floral patterns are very popular, I wanted to test myself and go for a more unusual pattern that I wouldn't normally choose to work from.

I also considered this print from the archives, I started to think of other artists work and things that could inspire my redesign of this piece, such as the work of Picasso,

this piece by DQtrs company 

and the work of Lyubov Popova.

But I have decided to use this piece from the archives as I thought it would work with my strengths of line drawing, this will also help me improve my different styles of line drawing.I would also not normally choose to work in pastel colours so I think this piece will help me improve my work with colour.

Final Tigerprint Designs

These are now my final designs that I have entered into the Tigerprint Competition. I think that the Ice Queen design would look especially good with a foil or glitter finish.

boys-toys1

boys-toys2

Ice-Queen

Tigerprint creating visual research

I have now started drawing from the ideas I had about Britain. I will use a few of these to create prints from.

Tigerprint creating visual research

When doing contextual research into the Tigerprint company I found this interesting wrapping paper that they created for Marks & Spencer's. It wasn't in your face Christmas, it was subtle and playful which I liked, but also reminded me of Great Britain as a Nation. I thought how Britain has had such a good year with the Jubilee and the Olympics and so I wanted to take inspiration from this. I thought about what makes us a country proud to be British:

• fish and chips
• British bulldog 
• mini
• Cornish pasties
• Houses of Parliament
• fried breakfast
• Yorkshire puddings
• The Queen
• 10 Downing Street
• London Eye
• James Bond
• cricket
• ale
• NHS
• Thunderbirds
• Sir Isaac Newton
• Abbey Road Studios
• Dr Who
• The National Gallery
• Big Ben
• Monty Python

Tigerprint Competiton

Through university we have been asked to enter different competitions, one I have chosen is the Tigerprint 'Coming together at Christmas' Competition, where you have to create a design suitable for Christmas wrapping paper, cards or gift bags. I had to take into consideration what the companies style was and what they have looked for in previous winners of their competitions, such as hand- drawn sketchy work, graphic and paper cuts.

I started by thinking about what reminds me of Christmas, which is

• Christmas eve
• midnight mass
• mistle toe
• Christmas carols
• Christmas dinner
• drinking 
• carrots
• mince pies
• Christmas party
• champagne
• mulled wine
• nights out
• lights
• snow 
• ice 
• frost
• snow flakes
• home
• presents
• fire
• Christmas trees
•  Santa
• elves
• reindeer

Screen image

I wanted to create another screen image that was inspired by the lace I saw in the Whitworth Collection, specifically the one with the hidden faces in it.

I decided to use the faces from my past designs in my new design so I decided to use the rams skull as this was a prominent figure around Nostel Priory, the stately home where I did my initial research. I first started by creating my images like lace with the holes, marking those down in black. But once I had finished my design and edited it on photoshop my designs in printing had changed, the backgrounds had become more important in creating the different textures. If I were to use this lace design it would be hard for it to stand out against the textured backgrounds as the dots are so small.

After knowing this I decided I needed to reverse the colours, so when I would be printing with the design, I would have more background to work with and the holes would stay plain. I reworked this on photoshop but the lines became unclean again and would need too much editing which I dont have time for. I have decided to carry on using my spirograph screen design, using different techniques combined, but especially devore', illuminating, manutex and testing the extra materials that were inspired by Norma Starszakowna.

Textures in Print

I have now started trying to create more textures in my work. The manutex printing on muslin worked very well as the fainter colours became more translucent through the fabric.

Norma Starszakowna

I found a book in the library on an interesting print artist called Norma Starszakowna, she works using lots of textures and I thought using some of her techniques in my work would help my development. I also thought it would help to give my work a more aged look like some of her pieces. She uses a lot of heat reactive pigment in her work, a long with different techniques to crush the fabric to create more texture. She also uses metal leaf in her work. I have now thought about testing the following materials out in my own work:

• copper or silver leaf
• spray paint
• different paints to mask parts out and then wash out to leave the remaining print
• wax to do the same 

Screen image

I have now started experimenting trying to create patterns using spirograph images I have created. I wanted to create an image for screen that was inspired by the spiderweb like lace that I saw in the Whitworth Collections. I wanted to modernise this design and also link it with the work I had already done. So I decided to work with spirograph images as they are created just by lines, and then fill some spaces out.

Fabric Sampling

I have now started testing out different textured materials to see if this would help me to create new textures. Some of these worked really well especially the ones with the bold colours and patterns.