Taking Advice

After the tutorial on monday I took on board everything that had been suggested to me. So I started to put my prints onto existing designs rather than onto illustrations as I still want to spend a lot of time developing my illustration skills and also experiment with the context of my illustrations.

Something Alex also asked me to think about was my target market. When he asked me who it was I could not give him an answer. We looked at the different types of inspiration I had gathered and decided that I was interested in a more high end market, which I agree with. Also another thing we were asked to think about was what was our final outcome going to be? I have decided that I want to create a collection of prints, presented through illustrations and fabric swatches. I want to use natural, sheer fabrics with an expensive quality to appeal to my target market.

Group Tutorial

This weeks tutorial was probably the best one so far. It had the most attendees and personally I felt it was a lot more constructive than any of the other tutorials that I have had this term. Alex said that he really liked the colour palette I had been using and said that I need to be more decisive with my work as I had told him I was still unsure with the colours I had chosen. However after leaving the tutorial I am fully decided on this colour story.

Other areas of my work that we touched upon where the actual prints that I had put together. Alex said that I need to experiment more with scale, and think more about how the design could be communicated into a garment. Which I agree with, so I am going to start putting my prints into garment flats and illustrations using Photoshop, this will be to experiment with scale, composition and to work on the styling of my work, which is another thing that Alex touched upon.

I showed the group an illustration I had put together just before the tutorial, which was a very basic drawing to help visualise my work. The group all thought that I should make my illustrations more abstract and detailed, adding things like hair or collage to the illustrations to make them more aesthetically pleasing.

Scanned Work

Developing Designs

After creating my mood boards I began to scan in my current drawings onto my computer. When creating prints I prefer to work digitally so went straight into Photoshop with my drawings. I had also created some backgrounds as I did not want to have just a flat plain background, something I want to highlight within this project is texture within the design.

Firstly I began with making my drawings into brush tools on Photoshop. I also took some of my designs into Illustrator to make them more graphic as some of the pencil lines were quite sketchy which was not the aesthetic that I wanted with those particular designs.

Currently I am just in the experimentation phase of the project. Both of these designs were to see how the colours I had chosen were going to work together and the proportions of these colours. My favourite between the two is the one on the right. It is not perfect, and I have tried to stay away from repeated prints however what I do like about the print is that even though it is a sketch of scaffolding links, it looks like barbed wire where it has been put together and looks rather abstract.

After looking over these two designs and analysing them I have came to the conclusion that I would like to steer towards less repetitive prints with a low opacity within the brush tools. I would also like to explore placement prints.

Mood Boards

I have been trying to create some inspiration for myself using the images that I have collected over the past week. I have put these images into a few mood/ colour boards to help me decide what colours I want to use throughout this project and what style of design and customer I am aiming towards.

Between the two mood/ colour boards I think the first one is my favourite and demonstrates the style of designs I want to create. The colours within the second board are a bit all over the place on reflection. I really like the combination of the orange and green however I feel that the rose and pink do not fit in. I still want to include some more muted tones of grey, adding gradients into the backgrounds possibly.

My next step throughout the project will be to scan all of my drawings into Photoshop and Illustrator and start to play around with different brushes and colour palettes to try figure out a much more defined path to follow. This is the part of the process I love, so hopefully I will have a larger quantity of work very soon. However with this in mind, I will still carry on drawing to improve my drawing skills and to keep up with the momentum of inspiration.

Contents - At Home

Today's lecture was  about the exploration and ideologies of home. We talked about the class system in the 50's and the ideas about class within the home. This is the scale we where presented with:

• Being seen by others to do/ have.
• Being identified by others as doing/ having.
• Being considered better than others who cannot do/ have.

I was quite interested in the way decorating our homes has evolved over the years. In Victorian times we use to display our belongings and it was seen as a sign of wealth and class, but now we are constantly wanting storage to hide away our possessions. Ikea are a great example of companies promoting storage to hie the 'clutter' within our homes. We discussed how our need for more storage reflects the fact that we must have more possessions which is a reflection of the mass increase of consumerism. We also discussed how our homes are a 'keep sake' for our memories and that we use our homes to store these.

In the seminar we delved further into the idea of memories within the home, how we can hoard items and does 'Tidy home' mean a 'Tidy mind'. Also is 'clutter' just things that are out of place?

I am really enjoying these sessions as they are allowing me to think more conceptually about day to day things that I would not usually think about.

Secondary Research

To reinforce my primary research that I have collected this week I have began to search through a number of blogs and look into a range of artists that have work relating to my brief. After collecting my primary research I have decided to look into much more industrialised urban surroundings, rather than the architecture within my urban surroundings. My reasons for doing this is to support my research and further my understanding of designs within the industry, as I am in the process of deciding who my target market is.

The reason I have chosen these four images is not solely for the print design. I quite like the idea of having a print on a transparent fabric, whether it be on a mesh based fabric or silk based as seen in the two right hand images. The opposite images are quite that, opposite, the bottom left image is in the same colour tones as I plan to use, and the placement of the print is something I have not thought about before as I tend to stick to an all over print in my own designs. The final design in the top left corner is a more literal design influenced by architecture by Mary Katrantzou. However the image I feel most reflects the type of design and styling I will be going for in this brief is the bottom right hand image due to the contrasting colours, type of fabric and the over all styling of the garment.