Context inspiration

As well as designing for print and being inspired by certain print designers and practitioners, I am also influenced by how others style there work or how interior companies style products. I am mostly inspired by Scandinavian homes because they are minimal with certain focal points, whether this be a print design on a product or a piece of art. This brings accents of colour, warmth and texture to the home. I like to visualise my designs in this type of environment as I feel it shows off my designs to their best.

I have used my Bradford textiles submission in a visualisation; The environment around the design is very minimal with light neutral tones which gives the cushion a great canvas to be styled. I get my inspiration for this from many sources, one of my favourite blogs to look at is called 'My Scandinavian home' it features many homes with a great sense of style.

                                                         Image from Pinterest.

 

Images from My Scandinavian home.blogspot.co.uk

 

I love how parts of the room are photographed and show texture with muted colours and contrast of material. I think how something is visualised and photographed can make a huge difference to the product, I am focused on the quality of fabrics and taste of the colours used and by using a minimal 'canvas' I think the print design and product can look really nice also.

 

Throughout the unit I have been inspired by the work of Heather Chontos who creates abstract prints for furnishings and art. I love how she styles her own living room using her work. Her artwork on the walls works beautifully with the upholstery she has designed. I would like to set up a photo-shoot and style objects and furniture in with some of my designs further on in the year, and think this would be a great idea to think about for my degree show.

Development

I have been  developing samples in the print room and testing ideas to further my practice. I still feel like I am being very experimental and developing outcomes I'm not too fond of but still progressing and playing with ideas.

I dyed a heavy cotton/linen blend for this sample, discharged out using stencils then printed over using pigment, also with stencils. I don't think this sample has worked well because the pigment seems to sit on top of the other colour strange, still creating texture but not entirely what I want my finalised prints to look like.

               Adding pigment using stencils and foil.

Creating stencils for my prints still work well and feel the possibilities are endless. I wanted this print to be quite simple with the 'arches' flowing through the print. at this stage of the design process I like even the outside (un used) part of the print where the pigment has still been printed. This gave me an idea to do a rough print by masking off parts of the fabric and printing using the stencil and screen after using it for a placement print.

This inspired me to create a few minimal designs on Photoshop and showing my colour palette and context further.

                                       visualisation using my digital design.

W is for wallpaper

We visited the 'W is for wallpaper' exhibition at the Ruthin craft centre in Wales. The exhibition was hugely inspiring and enjoyed seeing the designs on a large/ professional scale.

                                                                   Timorous Beasties

                                                                     Daniel Heath

                                                                    Eley Kishimoto

All the wallpapers showed great craftsmanship and beautiful designs. The one I was most pleased to see was Daniel heaths Onyx Skyline print. After attending his guest lecture in level 5, I have been inspired by his work since and love the structure of his hand printed designs.
 

 

We also visited Rachael Kelly's artist in residency studio, she explained her designs and the process of this. By sticking pre cut vinyl shapes on the walls she then got some of us to help and add foil over this using double sided adhesive creating various layers.

 

The trip really inspired me and thought it was great to see work from other practitioners up close. It made me think further about my practice and broadened my mind to think about other context ideas and after graduation.   



Developing samples with colour

This week I have been adding colour and shape to my previous samples.Using stencils I've cut out gives me a wider range of motifs for my designs, I can also make and develop them whilst working in the print room. drawing from my backgrounds and other visual research I was able to have varied shapes making each print individual.

             Blocking out the screen using cut outs.

Adding pigment colour to the print using stencils with designs from previous print neagatives.

I've found that the bolder stencils work well and create more of a contrast to the background.

 The ideas I have in the print room have been growing in the result of using stencils as the progress is quite quick and feel that the prints I have done so far act as my sketchbook, and show development.

I have chosen to use pigment because I wanted the colours to be brighter and some to have pastel shades.

By continuous line drawing certain designs, I created a stencils by cutting around these. By doing this, I am able to create thinner motifs linking more with my drawings and still keeping a hand drawn aesthetic to the prints. 
 

 I have been inspired by the work of  James Nares.

Direction

This week I have been gathering inspiration for the placement of my motifs. I have been looking at object placement within interior by looking at vessels and how they've been placed on shelves in quantities.

 

These vessels reflect certain shapes from my architecture drawings. I want my prints be quite random in the way that the shapes are placed and spontaneous giving the prints varied aesthetics. I have also been looking at 100% design for other contemporary interior objects.  

 

My drawings of objects and an idea of how I want my prints to look.

The work of Cecil Touchon has inspired me to create collaged texture for the backgrounds of my prints.I discharged the pattern out as well as my previous ink designs to then work over using colour. I used stencils and a blank screen to block out so I was left with the desired shapes.

 

At the moment I want these to be spontaneous and not linear which I think challenges me to think differently. I feel that the colour of the fabric could be a bit more consistent as I have dyed too many different shades, but hope to bring the prints together with colour.  

 

 

Context

I am inspired by many practitioners such as heather Day, ben Nicholson, peter Lanyon and Daniel Heath. They use paper based art but I feel that I can always translate my prints from paper to fabric. The abstract aspect to the practice of these practitioners inspires me greatly and I enjoy the freeness and fluidity of their work.

                                                                    Peter Lanyon

                                                                    Ben Nicholson
Design companies such as Skinny La Minx, Interiors by Element and Harlequin inspire me and helps me understand my context and what products I would like to design for. Element make custom made rugs, creating a focal point for any room. I find this interesting and think this type of interior context would suit my designs as I like to make one big, placement print which could be a piece of art or focal point.

                           Kaleidoscope rug- forest by Interiors by Element.

practice- Bradford textiles

I was given the brief for Bradford textiles, which is to create a design in repeat. As I need further experience and tutorials for repeat, Teresa re assured me I can turn the artwork into repeat using photoshop later on. I want to carry on with my theme from over summer. I intend to carry on developing my body of visual research and drawing studies.

The boldness of the vermillion arches in this work really well, and can see this translating well onto fabric.As I was dyeing the fabric I noticed pattern starting to form from the ink on the side of the vats and found them to be interesting shapes.

As most of my drawings are quite linear with 'square and rectangle' window and architectural shapes. I feel that having a background with more fluid, movement would contrast well. I started to paint some of these shapes using inks to create the base design for my prints.