Whilst at Home..

Yesterday I went to Trentham Gardens to visit their Italian Gardens for some inspiration as I am at home and it is very close. Althought it was incredibly cold and miserable I managed to take some good photos and I studied a few of the flowering plants there for colour inspiration. Dusky pinks and purples looked great with accents of moss/olive green with brighter accents of yellows and blues. Here are just a few photos I took....

Wallcoverings...

Design Realisation- WallCoverings

I have used the photoshop images that I created last week from my photographs of my 3D books to begin to look at realising my market. I am not overly keen on creating work in repeat for wallpapers/coverings as I feel my work looks better as a one off, full wall design or even wall panel. I have played around with injecting my work into wall ideas...I think they work well. Experimenting with colour may look better tho to inject a bit more life.

More experiments with Brushes...

Photoshop Brushes

I decided that the quickest and easiest way of creating more and more imagery was within photoshop and brushes. This became incredibly quick and useful when introducing the symbolism idea.By creating brushes it meant I could use them as embellishment on pieces but also I could vary the scale of them and use to collage with. I used the fliter tool on photographs/internet imagery. I then went to FILTER- SKETCH- STAMP and created a range of brushes and some of them can be seen below.
Love...


Frames...



Crowns...


Eiffel Tower...


Clocks...

Symbolism...Early Drawings and Collage

Using my thoughts, I started to experiment with the symbolism idea. I started to get lots of images which were linked to the meaning and messed around with them in Photoshop, creating brushes etc...These I then printed out so that I could collage with them and realise my ideas. I began with the Oxeye Daisy which meant Patience. I instantly thought of time, clocks etc... I created some small brushes in Photoshop which were made from an old photo of a Pocket watch, I also added some numbers to the drawing of the daisy as if to suggest it was a clock. I want to play around with my own drawings and drawing style in creating a small collection of drawing and collaged pieces inspired by the symbolism theme.

























The next composition I created was inspired by the Forget me Not which means True Love...I incoporated images of the eiffel tower in paris (the City of Love), Pink Love hearts and an image of a love heart sweet which I created in photoshop using the filter option- Sketch and Stamp.

Introducing Symbolism- A Victorian Obsession

As I had researched previously, the Victorians were obsessed with symbolism- they saw that giving flowers meant alot more than just a simple gesture and gift...it reflected something upon them. There are numerous websites dedicated to this and a posted something about this earlier in the blog. I decided that it would be interesting to start incoporating some of these ideas within my work and this would allow me to introduce some new imagery. I decided to focus on just a few of the following flowers and their meanings...
Oxeye Daisy= Patience
Pear Blossom= Friendship
Pink Roses= Grace and Elegance
Magnolia= Love of Nature
Lilly= Aspirations and Hope
Buttercup= Riches
Thistle= Nobility
Thyme= Thriftness
Lavender= Love at First Sight
Forget-me-Not= True Love
Yellow Roses= Jealousy/Infedelity

I began to think of imagery associated with the meanings trying to think of as many things associated with it as possible, this helped me to introduce new and exciting imagery and take my work to a different, more unusual level. For example...
Forget-me-Not= True Love... Love hearts, Cherubs, Paris, Flowers, Chocolates, Lace, Marraige.

ButterCup= Riches....Bank Notes, Coins, Gold, Treasure.

Daisy= Patience...Clocks, Egg Timers, Pocket Watches, Clock Hands, Roman Numerals.

Thistle= Nobility...Regal, Crowns, The Queen, Ruby Red.

Thyme= Thriftiness....Make Do and Mend, Patches, Stitching back together, Money, Tight Fisted

Magnolia= Love of Nature....Animals and Flowers in harmony, love hearts, Intertwinning.

Lavender= Love at First Sight....Eyes, Monacles, Love Hearts, Cherubs, People, Holding Hands.

Compositions and Collage Experimentation

Taking into account what had been said at my tutorial I started to construct some collaged pieces as final, portfolio pieces. Earlier in the week I had created my screen ready for screen printing, I decided to experiment with Flocking- this is something I had never used within my work but I really enjoyed it and it worked well. I flocked imagery onto book pages using black and a duksy grey/navy flock paper. This worked really well so I utilised these small sample bits to start creating more unusual and daring compositions which incoporated all my bits and bobs and sample pieces. I like to layer imagery so I was doing this, I also introduced graph paper and sqaured papers to add more interest and higlight the subtle scientific feel I was hoping for. Some examples can be seen below...

Eduardo Recife.

I have always loved the work of Eduardo. I love his muted colour palete and amazing quirky compositions and humorous collage pieces. I like the ways in which he incorporates alot of imagery into his pieces, layering imagery and embellishing with bold patterns. Looking at his work has inspired me to start producing some more daring collaged peices.

Playing around with Photoshop...

I used the photographs that I had taken of my books and scanned them into photoshop. Sticking to a simple black line and cream background, these really worked well. They were produced by..
FILTER- SKETCH- STAMP....I also played around with the IMAGE- ADJUSTMENTS- THRESHOLD to alter the amount of shadows and dark contrasts.
As mentioned previously, these can be used as possible designs for a collection of more unusual but beautiful giftwrap with matching tags. Wallpapers may also work well due to the stripe within the design, this would look good in repeat. Some examples...

Tutorial Notes- 14th March 2008

• Some strong imagery and good pieces produced so far. Must now start to push pieces into workable sollutions.
• Using screen imagery, print large A3 size images to create into a well crafted book. Large Scale, Embellished with foils, accents of colour (heatpress/hand painted), Flock, Stitch etc... Professionaly bound if possible.
• Smaller scale book pages from photoshoped photographs of 3D book pages, these can be random sizes, manipulated, folded etc... Varying sizes could relate to imagery used i.e Narrow page to represent a long foxglove.
• Photoshop Work- Digi Prints for wallpapers and giftwrap (repeats) posibbly creating a series of these with gift tags as a collection for Giftwrap.
• Drawing, introducing new imagery in relation to symbolism.
• Look closey at work produced so far and begin to see these as designs, beginning to work on final, well crafted pieces.
• Take elements from the books now whether that be the labels and scientific feel of the imagery used, creating keys and labels will look good.
  
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Inspiration- Peter Calleson

I have been aware of Peters work from earlier projects and have always appreciated the technical accuracy, intricacy and delicateness of his work. I like anything that relates to paper engineering and manipulating the simplicity of paper. I am hoping to use the laser cutter at some point in this project and peter's work is definately something that has inspired me to do so.
I admire the simplicity of his work and braveness with the way he cuts and constructs. By using pure white papers allows you to admire and appreciate the technical genius of his work. I particulary admire his Framed peices in which cut out bits seem to cascade down.

Birds trying to escape their drawing (detail), 2005. I loved the idea behind the piece, the fact that the birds seem to be trying to escape their drawings and flee the page. I think that this is something I can use within my work, I like the idea of things looking like they are trying to escape the pages. This is something I would like to play around with.

Development of Ideas

Creating cut out and collaged 3D book pages.

This week I have been experimenting with my book pages and the book itself. By destructing it and cutting into it exposed the spine and I really like the look of this. I began to see the book as an artefact so I was carefully re-constructing it to make it into something. By cutting butterfly shapes into pages, playing around with wire to re-create sweet pea's and collaging onto the pages, it made my work and idea's develop further. Here are some examples...