Being creative......

Final 2nd Year Project - Wallpaper Competition.

2011-05-12T19:03:00.000+01:00

So it's all handed in and looking pretty in my studio space.

This is everything presented. My papers, mood boards, research file, sketchbooks and drawings.

Hallway Paper

Bedroom Paper

Living Room Paper

Kitchen Paper

Dining Room Paper

Cloakroom Paper

Wallpaper Competition - Design Two and Three.

2011-05-06T22:08:00.000+01:00

My second design for the wallpaper competition is for the living room. It has a bird, florals and a repeating sofa.

This design shows the repeat top and bottom and will be mirrored.

This is a quick mock-up of the bunnies and bedpans (chamber pots really). This is designed for a cloakroom.

Wallpaper Competition.

2011-05-05T22:55:00.000+01:00

For the wallpaper competition I have been looking at a lot of William Morris designs. I am wanting to recreate the kind of patterns he produced using florals and incorporating small mammals, like mice and rabbits and also birds. But I also want to add a modern twist by adding inanimate objects relating to the rooms the wallpapers will be displayed in.

Drawing flowers in the garden.

Flowers from Newby Hall.

Little owl.

Vole.

Field Mouse.

Bird.

Last night I came up with my first design idea. The mouse I'd drawn previously, I decided would look great climbing up the handle of a fork.

The following images show the development of my image from the mouse and the fork, to the finished design. I added flowers and leaves before adding a pattern to the background.

The two separate designs will be scanned in, placed in repeat and colour added in Illustrator/Photoshop. I am going to keep the colours simple, with maybe 2 to 3 different colours. I don't want to detract away from the hand drawn image.

Newby Hall, Yorkshire.

2011-04-13T10:22:00.001+01:00

My last project of the year is a wallpaper design project. My research involves visiting stately homes. Yesterday I visited Newby Hall, and the following photos are pictures I took in the gardens of the house. There were some beautiful plants and flowers, in about a months time they should all be out and flowering. I particularly loved the magnolia trees.

Pink magnolia's

Mum

Row's of magnolia trees

Tree stump

March Photo's

2011-04-11T12:30:00.000+01:00

I have been using my iPhone a lot to take pictures and I'm really enjoying the effects you can get with some of the phone app's like Instagram and Hipstamatic. I've been experimenting with them, these are some of my favourite shots;

Studio

Pens

Chewing Gum

Fitting Room Pattern

Treeson Mini Series Figure

Papers in Paperchase

Drawing Experiment

Me :)

Feb/March Update - Drawing Module

2011-04-11T12:20:00.000+01:00

We had a short drawing module that lasted about two weeks. The first part was drawing plants using different techniques that were given to us. The second part was to choose an object to draw using the same techniques. I chose the subject of chairs.

These are some of the drawings I produced;

Oasis Brief.

2011-01-22T09:52:00.001Z

These are some of the images I've been working on for the Oasis brief. They've all been done in Illustrator using images I've drawn.

I've been playing around with a few different colourways. I wanted the designs to be neutral. The red's vibrant, which I like but not for this project.

The following image is only partly finished. I'm working on a swatch to place in the background. All these images are A2 size which means some of the detail doesn't show up so well on here.

Dec/Jan update.

2011-01-18T22:14:00.001Z

The following drawings are part of my collection for Indigo in Paris. I'm using deconstructed images of insects to build up layers.

I digitally printed out some A4 sample backgrounds that I could try out a few different techniques on. Mostly to see how my designs would work.

Firstly I discharge printed different samples of images onto the digitally printed backgrounds in strips. I love the green and brown background and the moths wing background. Both worked really well when discharged.

I didn't discharge print on the following images as the background was more sparse. Instead I printed over the top with a soft brown on one, and an off white on the other. I liked the colours but I didn't like the backgrounds as much.

After discharge printing on the backgrounds I also printed gold binder over the top. It doesn't show so well in the images but it looks really effective on the silk. Again the green, brown and gold look really lovely. I think I'm really going to go with those murky colours and gold binder with my final images.

As well as the collection for Paris I'm also working on the designs for Oasis. This first image is a part of my mood board which is looking at the theme Garden Party. I'm thinking of garlands of flowers with lanterns in soft pastels.

At the moment I'm drawing as many flowers as I can to build up the garlands of flowers I want to use.

Oct/Nov/Dec mixture of stuff......

2010-12-08T21:07:00.000Z

The images below are some samples from one of my dye workshops. We had dyed the fabric and then used some processes, one of these was a discharge process. Printing on top of the fabric and the discharge dye when steamed removes the colour of the fabric and replaces it with the colour of the printed dye.

The following images are some sketches for the next part of my project. I changed my idea to deconstructed patterns taken from insects. These are the start of my drawings.

Another dye workshop. This time we were using a process of painting dye onto a screen. We then printed with a paste through the screen which transfers the dye from the screen onto the fabric.

We then printed another dye on top and I also tried using some discharge dye to discharge another pattern out of the fabric. It was quite fun to play around with the different processes.

I always forget to wear gloves and I always end up dyeing my hands. This was the worst yet!

One week to go.....

2010-11-10T11:12:00.000Z

Is it wise to change your idea with one week to go till deadline? Ordinarily I would say no but being stalled with your idea and not being able to take it forward, this makes things difficult.

So....I'm changing my idea. I'm running with an idea that started in my CAD elective and already I've got far more things to draw and lots of patterns to draw and adapt.

Because this project is mainly just visual research I just have to knuckle down and make sure I have some drawings to present next week along with the colour's that I want to use. I'm going for brights so this should be interesting.

We'll see what I come up with in a week....I never make things easy for myself!

A little small exhibition......

2010-11-04T20:36:00.000Z

College asked us to create something for a little exhibition that we had today in our studio. They wanted us to take an object and remodel it.

I chose an 8" vinyl and hand cut a pattern into the sleeve. The record was called 'Don't Make Me Over.' I did exactly that.....

This was the pattern drawn onto the sleeve, after this I cut it out by hand with a scalpel.

These are images of the sleeve presented on my desk.....

Just as a warning.....

Our exhibition was busy, I think they all came for the cake....

CAD Elective

2010-11-04T20:18:00.000Z

This last week has been our CAD Elective. I decided I wanted to design some skateboard graphics.

The other day I popped into the Vans shop in Leeds and was chatting to a really nice guy called Mark who let me take some pictures. We had a chat about New York, skating, fixed gear, vinyl figures and hipsters. They have a ramp in there but unfortunately because of the insurance it's only displaying clothes, and no skaters.

The following pictures are the finished concept boards with both skate deck graphics and t-shirt graphic ideas. Please excuse the quality of the photographs, they were taken on my iPhone.

The main image used was a parrot, I layered up patterns and text on the board. I then used elements from the parrot to create the t-shirt graphic repeat patterns. I also used the text 'this aint no paradise.'

Update Oct - Nov

2010-11-04T18:52:00.000Z

Well it's been a really busy few weeks. I went and got my 120 film developed and there were some interesting pictures on there. Not all of them worked out but that's what you get with things like this.

I love this shot above, it's one of my favourite's from New York.

I also had film in my Supersampler which I tried out. I like how it breaks the shot into four. This would be really good for action shots.

There were some older pictures on the camera too. This one below is from when John, Chloe and I went to Paris a couple of years back. That was a great trip, very tiring though!

The next two photographs were taken in the garden of the V&A in London a few years ago. I went down on my own one day to visit some exhibitions. I love the V&A and the area it's in. It's so nice as well to sit in the gardens surrounding the Natural History Museum as it's such a beautiful building.

New York sketches......

2010-10-06T10:16:00.000+01:00

Just a few sketches based around the idea of New York and New York fire escapes.....

We Don't Withhold.

2010-09-29T18:19:00.000+01:00

Some of my work is currently being shown on the blog 'We Don't Withhold' which is a blog created specifically for people in Leeds that are interested in Art and Fashion and who want to show their work.

The blog can be found here; http://wedontwithhold.tumblr.com/

There is also a Facebook group here;

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=161160367242941

Indeed.....

2010-09-28T22:02:00.001+01:00

Soya hot chocolate.....

2010-09-28T17:43:00.001+01:00

....is fantastic in my Hell Yes mug from New Museum, 235 Bowery, NY.

Dye workshops.....

2010-09-28T17:30:00.001+01:00

Even though I was wearing gloves today in the dye workshop, I still managed to dye my finger tip blue and my thumb brown.

I learnt about Indigo, Potassium Permanganate and Citric Acid dye's today.

I managed to get Indigo dye spots on my light grey jeans....I used the process of applying the Potassium Permanganate dye to remove the Indigo dye and then the Citric Acid dye to remove the Potassium Permanganate....it worked....was rather pleased with myself.

Note to self, next week wear old clothes as some people aren't as careful with the dye's!!!

New York - Sept 2010

2010-09-28T00:58:00.002+01:00

I took a birthday trip to New York and was very inspired. Some of the things I was inspired by were the fire escapes.....

Soho fire escapes.....

Chinatown fire escapes....

Saw some fantastic graffiti.........

Advert in Chinatown

Walking over Brooklyn Bridge

After a night out in Brooklyn the sequins on my top were catching the light and making patterns dance on Maria's apartment walls.

Horses and ducks.....

View over Central Park.....

More random graffiti in Chinatown.....

Shop front....

'I'm way into stuff'....badges I bought at New Museum.....

I met Jake at Bruar Falls....my iPhone has no flash so we used candles to light the pictures....I really like these shots...fun.....I have lots of New York pictures, these were just a few of my fav's. It's such an amazing city...I hope to be going back there really soon. I fell for that city in a big way......

New Project for the new school year.

2010-09-28T00:14:00.001+01:00

So I'm now a second year!!!!!

Our first project is on innovation, but first we have to create a series of designs to take through to the next design stage.

I started with some of the flower images I took photos of over the Summer. I've been asked to design some merchandise for my friend Maria again. I want to update the image I did for her ep and I have a few ideas of how I can do this.

My new desk space at uni is starting to fill up with images. I like it looking busy.

There are some skateboard graphics up and some of my images from my trip to New York. I'm inspired by New York fire escapes, been drawing them quite a bit.

April/May Update

2010-05-07T21:06:00.001+01:00

The wall covering project went well and I was pleased with the results. I managed to make quite a few backgrounds of black paper and grey acrylic paint that I then tried a few different printing processes on.

This image was black flock printed onto black and grey background.

A little hard to see in the photo because this was black acrylic paint screen printed onto a black and grey background.

I did use the laser cutter to cut out some leaves that I used on the background. This print is a black, grey and gold acrylic paint background, with black laser cut leaves and black acrylic print on top.

One of my favourite prints. This is a black and grey background, and the image is printed using gold foil. Scrunching up the foil before hand gives a nice texture that also sticks to areas of the acrylic used on the background.

Presenting final pieces of work.

Final A1 sized print. Black and grey background with black acrylic print, gold foils and black flock.

Final project of the year is a personal project. I've decided to create patterns for glass using abstract images of flowers.

Here are a few of my sketches.

I've been using tracing paper to try out different compositions and using Illustrator to put some layouts together. Scanning in images and rotating shapes to create patterns.

As well as using the laser cutter to engrave into perspex, I also created templates with vinyl and brown tape stuck onto glass to use in the sandblaster.

On the left is the glass with the templates on ready to be placed in the sandblaster. On the right are the glass samples with the templates removed. You can just make out the pattern left behind from the sandblaster.

Next step is engrave back into these sandblasted samples with more intricate patterns.

Wallcoverings Project Feb/March 2010

2010-03-18T21:40:00.002Z

Brief - To produce a collection of designs for wallcoverings looking at Greek and Roman sculpture and antiquity.

Inspired by Timorous Beasties black flock on a black background and also their detailed line drawings.

I did quite a few drawings from a copy of World of Interiors and an article on a recreation in a Berlin museum of Duke Moritz William of Saxe-Merseburg’s ‘Spiegelkabinett,’ which translated means ‘hall of mirrors’ or ‘house of mirrors.’ used to display artifacts.

Also looking through a book on Greek mythology I came across a skull of an athelete that still had his gold crown of leaves around his head. I liked the idea of using this image as a centre piece for my designs.

Using Gesso was an interesting idea and I tried it with some photocopies of my drawings. I did add some pale colour in and also some gold on the leaves but it did get a little lost within the layers of Gesso. Also adding a lot of layers means it takes longer to rub areas off to reveal the image underneath. There is also the risk that the wet and dry sandpaper will rub through the photocopy.

Because all my images were drawn individualy, it was quite difficult to know how to place all these drawings together in order to make a composition. The easiest way was to photocopy my designs and try fitting them together.

I knew I wanted to use the skull, so a lot of my designs seemed to work around this.

I also though about the use of the leaves and I drew up some leaves that I scanned into Illustrator and strung them together to make long garlands. These came out really nicely using the laser cutter, which isn't always the most simplest of things to use. But practice makes perfect.

I love how the black leaves look. I've thought of using them to make layers on my backgrounds.

Black paper with grey and gold acrylic and laser cut leaves with black print over the top. This was one of my text backgrounds to get an idea of how my print might look.

This is using the same background but without the leaves. The print has been printed with gold foil. Scrunching the foil paper up before heat pressing it on also meant the creases stuck to areas of the background where there had been acrylic paint, leaving interesting lines and patterns.

One of my favourite prints is this one. Using the black paper and grey acrylic paint background I have flocked the design onto it with flock paper. I love the effect of the black flock on the dark background. I think the flock shows up the detail of the lines of the drawings really well.

I am now looking at extending my ideas and taking the images to a larger A1 scale. I'm considering using hints of black and gold foil as highlights to the decoration and also more flock as I love the effect of this.

Feb 2010 Update.

2010-02-11T18:34:00.000Z

Nov 2009 - This was the start of my first main project as a 1st year. The brief was to create designs for a fashion fabric using drawing, disperse printing and Illustrator. I had to hand in 5 50x50cm drawings, 3 A3 Illustrator images and 6 to 8 A2 size disperse printed fabrics. We had approximately 6 weeks to do this, with two week rotating workshops in each discipline. The subject as you can probably tell, was flowers. My favourite being a hydrangea, which was quite hard to get away from drawing. I decided to produce a Man's fashion fabric rather then a womens, looking at 18th Century mens clothing as inspiration.

Jan 2010 - This was the start of a short four week artist book project. This year is the 13th Annual Artist Book Fair in Leeds and Glasgow. As usual our college has several stands for the exhibition and our brief was to produce an artist book based around a chosen object and a series of repeat patterns bound into a seperate book.

My artist book was based around a vinyl figure I was bought whilst on a trip to Los Angeles in 2007. I decided to base my artist book on my trip to Los Angeles and the format of my book was a map. I screen printed a layout of the places I'd been to, along with illustrations and descriptions. I then worked back into the screen print with pen and ink. My time in L.A was bright and sunny and I wanted my images to reflect this.

I looked at memory maps to give me ideas and also looked at the way maps are folded so I could mimic the folds for my finished map. Lastly I attached a cover with ribbon to keep the map closed. I'm really proud with how it looks.

In keeping with the look of my artist book I bound all my drawings, research and prints with corresponding covers and titles using the Japanese binding technique which works really well on seperate pages.

As well as my map I also produced two mini artist books. These mini books contain only two loose pages with lino prints of an avocado and an avocado sushi roll. The books are called 'From Fruit to Roll.' One has green covers with brown prints and brown sash holding the pages together. The other has cream covers, green print and green sash. The title of the books are letters punched into copper plate, fixed to the covers.

I'm really looking forward to the exhibition. Our college has also been invited to show at the artist book fair in Amsterdam. Having a love of books means I've been really interested in the project and I feel it's something I would like to get involved with in the future.

Feb 2010 - Now the artist book project has been handed in it's time to research for the next project which is wallpaper. I was lucky enough to attend a special talk at Temple Newsam recently. They are currently showing an exhibition of wallpaper called Wonderwall. The curator spoke to us about the history of wallpaper and gave us a tour of the exhibition. We also had talks from Allyson McDermott on reproducing historic wallpapers and Paul Simmons from Timourous Beasties. Have to say Paul was a really nice guy, really interesting and I took a lot from his talk. It gave me ideas for my current project and how I might want to take my practice in the future.

Screen printing my scarves at WYPW.

2009-09-04T22:19:00.007+01:00

For the last couple of weeks I've been visiting the West Yorkshire Print Workshop in Mirfield near Dewsbury. It's a fantastic and cheap facility for artists to use. So far I have printed my sushi design on silk and cotton. And I've printed my Human Rights text onto cotton. I still have my Cherry Blossom and Seed Head designs to print. I've had to learn how to coat and expose the screens, which is useful. But the whole process of screen printing can be very time consuming. I'm not sure people realise how much time it takes.

This following photograph is me setting up the red cotton material for printing. I printed onto this material with magenta which looks fantastic on the red. This scarf is going to be finished off with an orange ribbon trim.

This is me printing the purple Human Rights text scarf. I found on printing onto the cotton that I had to give it six goes for the ink to take and show up nicely on the material.

I think the purple is possibly my favourite colour of this print. The words have actually come out really well. This scarf is going to be finished with a nice deep purple ribbon trim.

The following two photographs are of one of my sushi prints. I've printed onto a silk ready-made scarf in violet and I am hand painting pink into the design. The scarf will then be finished off with a pink organza ribbon edging.

2009-08-14T15:59:00.008+01:00

Here is a quick update of my scarf designs. The image above and the next two below are my seed head design. I took the seed head I'd drawn and scanned it into Illustrator to duplicate it in a few different sizes. I actually ended up using only one size of seed head on my design, but I may add some small ones. I haven't decided yet.

It took me about 2 and a half hours to lay out this design onto the film. I drew a grid in pencil which made it easier to place the seed heads in a repeat pattern. This design is going to be 55cm x 55cm in size when printed.

For my next design I have decided to use a quote from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which can be found on the Amnesty International website. I am an Amnesty International supporter and I like the idea of highlighting world issues through design. The quote I am using is; 'All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.' I found a font that looks like an old typewriter font and have used this as my template. I have started to trace the letters onto the film. I am repeating the quote across the scarf in rows in order to make a pattern. This scarf is going to be 65cm x 65cm in size when printed.

Updates

2009-07-29T23:14:00.006+01:00

Well it's been a while since I blogged as I've been really busy with finishing up my foundation course. Above is a picture taken at The BCTF in Harrogate and shows my printed scarves hanging up on their display board.

The show went really well and there was a lot of interest in my work, which was really pleasing.

After the BCTF I then helped organise and plan our end of year show within the college. We had to rearrange our working areas and completely paint mostly everything in order for it to look perfect. And I have to say it did look pretty good when it was all done. The picture below shows my area with my scarves, embroidered textile prints, 2D prints and my sketchbooks.

Through exhibiting at the BCTF I have been asked to supply some of my scarves to a Christmas Craft Fair called Bedazzled, which is taking place in the gallery of Bradford College later this year. I have been designing some new prints to use and have two new ideas.

This image above is a rough drawing of an adaptation of Cherry Blossom which is going to be one of the new designs. The other design is a seed head print that I had drawn in a sketchbook a couple of years back and have wanted to use for a while, but never got chance. I think they both will make perfect scarf prints and can't wait to get them printed up.

Neckerchief number two - design process

2009-02-27T14:25:00.004Z

These are my sketched sushi images for neckerchief design number 2. I'm going to be scanning these in later and importing them into Illustrator to make up a repeat pattern. I'll post a pic of this when I have it.

New artwork for Dalot

2009-02-27T11:06:00.006Z

Last year I designed some artwork for a friends ep. Since this time Maria (Dalot) has moved to New York and also has a record company. So I updated the artwork for the new ep. Above is the template for the new ep with my artwork laid out. The images I used are all hand drawn by myself, scanned in and just placed in Photoshop. I believe this is going to print soon, hopefully it all turns out well and I wish her all the best with it.

Preparing to show at British Craft Trade Fair - April

2009-02-27T10:43:00.016Z

So I haven't updated for a while. Been a bit slack, but now I've got my new phone it's a lot easier to document things and get them straight onto my MacBook.

At the moment I am designing and printing some neckerchiefs to show at the British Craft Trade Fair in April.

I'm at the stage of printing the first and designing the second and third.

This first and second photo below are me preparing the screen for printing. There were a few areas that needed to be 'stopped' out so they wouldn't print. These were areas such as where the acetate had sat together causing a line on the screen. This took about 20 mins to do.

After stopping out I had to use brown tape to tape around the area to print. This is to stop the ink going through the screen and onto the print bed. It also protects the print area on the right which is my black colour. (You need separate images and prints for each colour that you are printing, this first print is the sole colour on my print)

To test the print I am first of all printing onto paper, before printing onto my fabric. Below is the first colour being printed.

First colour on paper;

This is the paper print with both colour and black;

Here is my first colour being printed onto fabric. I've gone for a really bright pink which I think will sit well with the black.

As well as pink I also printed purple. I found that the first colour added shrunk the fabric so my black would not match up completely. This is something to try and sort out when I next print on tues. Either I will have to fill in the gaps or possibly look to using another fabric that will not shrink.

These shots are pink and purple flowers both with black printed;

August 12th

2008-08-06T16:24:00.004+01:00

There were three exhibitions I wanted to see in London while I was on my 'summer hols.' But what with work commitments and money (not having much of it) I've had to settle for getting down to see one.

On the 12th of August I'm going down to London for the day to see Psycho Buildings at The Hayward. I'm really, really excited. It sounds fantastic. Only down side to going down is having to go on my own. It would have been nice to experience the exhibition with someone else so I could talk about it and share it. I will be taking my camera, I'm hoping they allow photographs.

Watch this space as I'll definitely be writing this visit up.

href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/gallery/2008/may/28/psycho.buildings?picture=334400344"

Sketches

2008-08-04T16:39:00.005+01:00

These are sketches I did at the weekend with watercolour pencil. I'd really like to take these further and possibly do larger scale acrylic paintings. First of all I think I'm going to develop the sketches further.

The wall hanging

2008-07-29T13:36:00.011+01:00

This first image shows some of the inspiration behind my wall hanging. I've collected all sorts of different items that I want to weave into the hanging. Here you can see thread, buttons and beads. As well as buying oddments of material, I've tried to where I can use found items including feathers, silver pieces and broken brooch's.

The second image is a close-up of the M.A.C postcards. I like the layering in the photo's, the way they have used lace, feathers and jewellery. The fine features of the models accentuate their femininity, and give them an ethereal quality.

Starting to weave. I had sat and cut material into strips to weave in between the chicken wire, which would be the base of the wall hanging. I have an idea in my mind of how I would like the wall hanging to look. I decided I wanted to use certain colours so everything would tie together, because I want the piece to work as a whole. A lot of the placement of the strips of material is down to how I feel at the time, I have no set plan of where I want everything to go. Just an idea of how I would like the finished item to look.

This final image is all of the green strips woven onto the chicken wire. I decided this colour would be the base, forming a backdrop for the rest of the colours to be woven in, which will be more sporadic, and not as evenly placed. One difficulty of using chicken wire is how bendy it is. You have to make sure you place a lot of magazines onto it to keep it flat. Eventually it will stay relatively flat which makes it easier. Chicken wire also isn't great to lean on and you have to watch out for the sharp edges.

The weaving currently is much more advanced then these pictures show. I have a number of colours and textures woven in, and everything is really beginning to take shape. Although there is still a long way to go. I will be adding more up to date pictures of the progress soon.

What I'm planning.....

2008-07-28T22:43:00.000+01:00

Well, it sometimes seems as if I have so much to do that I don't know what to do next. For the past few weeks I've been working on a wall hanging, but what with working extra hours at work, and trying to see my boyfriend I haven't got very far.

Whilst contemplating my wall hanging, I've also thought about the bags I'd like to make. The other day I sat and cut a pattern out of paper that I think will work. My idea is to make a tote bag but with a better handle then the short one's you usually get. I'm also going to line my bags and put in a pocket.

So the problem I have now is, do I carry on with my wall hanging so I can finish it, or start on my bags. I know it should really be the wall hanging. I'm annoyed at myself for getting so distracted by other things and newer projects. But I have had a lot to think about.

The past few weeks I've also been working on the artwork for a friends EP. So that took up quite a bit of time. My initial idea was ok, but I made some changes and V2 I liked a whole lot more.

I also keep thinking about the website I want to set up and how I'd like to get on with that, but I dont think I'm going to manage that for a while yet.

As well as all these things, I have to write 500 words on what I hope to achieve in the next year at university. Thing is, all the things they mention I might want to do, I want to do them all : D haha!!! Typical!