Week 8 (3rd-7th December 2007)

FINAL WEEK!
This week was mainly taken up by mounting work ready for handing in on Friday. Completing my technical file and Evaluation was also completed this week.

Evaluation...

EVALUATION (PT301) Natures Delights…
My original title for this project was “Nature’s Delights” but as my work has developed and progressed over the last few weeks I am renaming it “In a Victorian Secret Garden..” as I feel this is more appropriate.
My concept centred around the theme of nature, whether that be insects, birds or flowers I wanted to combine all these elements in the hope of creating a collection that was reflective of my own personal style. Recognising that this is a very common theme I wanted to make the most of my drawing ability and my original way of working to re-invent what is traditionally a very common trend within the printed textiles and surface pattern industry. Themes and points of reference for drawing were wild flowers, seed pods, butterflies, critters and bugs, birds and leaves.

My main influences were…

Carolina Melis (Illustrator)
Timorous Beasties design house
Eduardo Recife ( Illustrator)
Joanna Basford
William Kilburn
Hannah Cottrell and many more…

The main bulk of my research and inspiration was gathered from looking into Victoriana, particularly entomology and botany. This was done by looking online at blogs etc… and by researching books. I also took a series of photographs of unusual flowers which I saw on my trips out, these were used as grounds to draw from and to inspire a potential colour palette. I knew from early on that I wanted my work to have a antique feel about it so I felt it relevant to research my theme both historically as well as modern day interpretations. Specific books that helped me were “The Picture Book” consisting of contemporary illustration and Drusilla Cole’s “Patterns”.

Original designs and work was predominantly Photoshop based as I originally wanted to work in Photoshop with repeats and bold colours in the hope of digital printing wallpapers. Although I like my early work which is quite graphic, I felt that it wasn’t developing in the ways that I wanted. I felt that my own personal style of working wasn’t with computers and I felt better when I was drawing, painting and using collage.

Luckily I managed to source some old books during this time which were on botany and the Readers Digest guide to gardening which triggered a move in direction for the better. This then triggered the idea of my project been called “In the Victorian Secret Garden”… The books were definitely the best thing that came out of my research for this project and I was very lucky to have found them.

The books were quite old and full of beautiful imagery and text which really inspired me and I felt this suited what I wanted to achieve more. With images that I had found in the books and bits of text I found relevant and my own drawings, I decided to make a large screen to screen print with. Usually I don’t like screen printing but felt the need to produce one as it would speed my work up a lot and give me lots of grounds to work from. I was predominantly working with black ink on newsprint then using these to make compositions with collage and these worked well. As I wanted to make sure I pushed myself and made full use of the print room I decided to try some prints on some pages out of my books and these worked well also as I liked the combination of screen printed images over the text. Once I had a good base of prints I decided it was a good idea to leave screen printing anymore. I like to play around with various processes with my work so I also produced a few mono-printed designs which were combined with my prints which were then used to collage over.

I personally feel that my work has developed a lot, but mainly it developed the most during the last few weeks of the project. During these weeks I introduced the foxglove motif and created the large scale painted foxglove. I really like these and although the pink is a little brighter than I anticipated I felt by experimenting with colour, scale and the 3D element helped me develop my other designs further. I wanted to produce a small collection of book ideas that had come about by mistake (as usual with my work) I like to use the photo-copier a lot and I’m lucky enough to have a small A4 printer/scanner/ photo-copier at home. I thought that it may be interesting to scan in a some book pages and then layer up with other imagery to create these beautiful book pages. These were sewn together as if they were a book. It was mentioned in one of my tutorials that it may be a good idea to have things growing out of the seams, and this was something that worked really well.


COLOUR…I always struggle when it comes to using colour as it is something that often intimidates me. I often like to play safe and use a limited colour palette of purples and blues and feel that his can often let my work down. I knew that I wanted to explore colour a lot more within this project and it was something that needed careful consideration throughout the development process. I looked at Victorian colours which are often bold, but not too bold. My books were also a good source of inspiration for my colour palette. Pinks, Greens, Yellows, Creams and lilacs were used and I like the subtle use of colour throughout my work.

CONTEXT… I see my work as been quite versatile and this is always a good thing. Although I haven’t designed my collection with a specific market in mind as I just don’t work in this way. I see my Book collection as been designs for artist books which are great as pieces to look at and admire. There are elements of my print collection and design collections which I can see as been used in stationary, bedding, interior fabrics etc.. Particularly my garland pieces of sweet peas and butterflies I see as been possible ideas for unusual wall coverings. Unusual as they would be attached to the wall wherever (not on a roll) Overall I like the idea of my work been as one off design pieces or textile art/ Illustrations.

I really wanted to be very experimental with this project, aiming to push myself to my best ability in the hope of creating a very professional and concise concept and design collection. Although I struggled at the beginning of the project I feel that I have spent a lot of time in developing my work the best I can. Scale is something that I often struggle with as I am not too keen on working on a large scale. For this project I have tried to stick to A4 or bigger designs in order to create a more professional looking collection. I feel that I have made a strong collection of designs and feel that I have developed this in a progressive way. Overall I am extremely happy with the collection I have created.