Design Development

Once I was pleased with the drawings I had produced I began to put the images into photoshop. I began by grouping certain designs together and then putting them into repeat.

Initial designs

The four images below are just a selection of my initial designs. Although I felt they worked reasonably well, it was suggested to me by my tutor that they were too ordered which I agreed with. Therefore I wished to push my self further and create something much more free flowing. I also wanted to create something with a more interesting back ground as opposed to simply having a one colour background. Overall a more complex design using the same colour scheme as I felt that the colour pallet was strong.

After this evaluation I began producing some interesting textures that I could use as backgrounds. I also looked into various designers work for inspiration.

                                                   

I feel the backgrounds I produced were very successful, when layered up behind my drawings they gave a greater sense of depth. They also made the designs look more complex which is what I was wanting to achieve. I feel that looking into the various designers work helped me greatly also. The designers I was most  inspired by are shown below.

Clarke and Clarke - Floribunda

I find this work very interesting as there are both complex and more simple designs in each collection, also the designs work really well together. There are designs for several interior spaces; wallpaper, cushion, curtains etc. Showing they can work well on several different surfaces. The style of the designs produced is very similar to the style of designs I wish to produce as I enjoy creating brightly coloured florals and feel it looks very effective.

Osborne and Little

I am inspired by Osborne and Little’s work for very similar reasons, they too use bright colours and florals and also create textiles for several different types of interiors. I took the inspiration from the two designers and used it in my own work, by creating more complex interesting designs.

Final Design Work

I am very pleased with how my designs have come out, I feel I have a nice balance of complex and more simple designs. I also feel that the designs are more free flowing and have less organised structure to them. And I feel they will translate well into interior. 

The visualisations above show the designs working in the interior space I had intended them for. The designs work well together in the room. They both suit the wall and I feel the scale is correct I also feel they suit the cushions I have put them on to. Overall I am very pleased with the outcome of my designs as I feel I pushed myself to create something different and more complicated than before. I feel it has payed off as the more complicated design are the best and are what make the collection exciting.

Development

Once I had decided that the colours from the African mood board were the best to work with, I looked into my colour pallet further. I wanted to find some images I could work from that had both the bright vibrant and the dull muted colours in it, so that I could see them working together. After looking through various books and journals I came up with the images below to work from.

Once I had established my colour scheme I wanted to find more information to draw from using China as my theme. During one of my tutorials I was told there were several Sotheby's catalogues on Chinese contemporary art. This was something I was very interested in therefore I researched the catalogues, the most inspiring pieces of work I found were the paintings of flowers. The textures and marks made are very interesting, it is a very effective way to draw natural objects as the tone and marks give the image a very unrefined feel. 

This effect is something I would like to achieve in my own work, so I began creating some drawings of flowers using various media and mark making techniques. The image below is a collection of the ones I liked best.

During this stage of the project we had the opportunity to have a one to one tutorial with a designer from the Diane Harrison studio. I found this very useful as it gave me an insight into what someone from the design world thought about my work. He advised me to take a little more time with my drawings and focus on one image for a longer period of time, so that I could ensure the dimensions etc were correct. He also advised that I look at some more artists drawings of flowers to give me a greater understanding of what works well. Below are images of the artists work I looked into.

Georgia O’Keeffe

I was inspired by Georgia O’Keeffe’s work as I feel the bold colours she uses have a similar effect to those I want achieve in my drawings. I also find the shapes of the flowers she draws interesting as they have a great feeling of depth and movement.  

Odillon Redon’s

It was more the positioning of the flowers in Odillon Redon’s that inspired me and it was suggested to me by my tutor that this could be something to consider once designing in photoshop. As I wanted to build up the interesting surface and detailed design that Odillon Redon had created in his paintings.

I came up with the drawings below after evaluating my previous ones and looking into the artists work. I feel that these work much better overall. 

On reflection I feel that the majority of my drawings worked fairly well, although I feel I lost a lot of the free unrefined marks (like those in the Chinese drawings) I had intended to achieve. My images are not as free flowing or as natural looking. However they are original and I feel the mark making techniques I used were effective they create a nice surface and interesting texture, which should translate well into photoshop. I also feel that evaluating the first group of images helped me greatly with creating the second as the second group are positioned better and look to be finished off to a higher standard.

Project Theme

After the group work we were asked to concentrate on a topic on our own, chosen form either our or one of the other groups presentations. I decided to begin with the topic my group looked at. To help me generate some more ideas and determine a specific route to take my project down I began by creating some mind maps. 

Once I had reviewed the research I came up with the idea of looking into new places and cultures. As I felt this would give me great inspiration for initial images, colour pallets etc. and it linked the idea of travel, discovery, adventure and media perfectly. As I found my previous mind map useful I created another one to get my ideas down for my chosen theme, new places/cultures. Mind maps are a great way to get all initial ideas down quickly, however I had no visual research on them, therefore I decided to create some mood boards relating some of the different cultures I had considered in the mind map to give me some good imagery to work with.

I created several mood boards relating to different culture the two below are the ones I found the most inspiration from, and decided to take further.

The colour from the African board inspired me the most. The bright vibrant colours used in the clothing and tribal jewellery contrasted against the clay red make up and brown huts really interested me, as I could see this colour range working well in my own design work. The vibrant blues and yellows with the darker browns and reds would contrast well in interior.

The main inspiration I took from the Chinese board was the imagery, the shapes of the architecture they have and also the patterns on the dragons from the festivals interested me. These shapes and patterns would be a wonderful source to work from in my own drawings and mark making.

Group Work (Exploration)

My group were asked to focus on the heeding Exploration with the sub-heeding’s; discovery, media, travel and adventure. Our group began by creating a mind map so that all our initial ideas could be quickly put down. We then went away to research each of the sub-heeding’s independently, and met up a few days later with our findings. After this we chose a specific heeding for us to each create a board on, and one member of the group looked into artists and designers relating to exploration (as we had five members in our group). I chose to create a board on adventure as this was the topic I had the most research on and was most interested in.

I feel our group worked really well together, as we all shared knowledge and evenly distributed the work load. For example we all gave the initial images we had found to the person focusing on that specific topic. We also met up a few days after working on our boards to make sure no one was struggling and all the work would fit nicely together for presentation (board sizes and fonts etc.). This was very helpful as one of our group members was a little stuck with the media heeding, we all felt it didn’t fit with the theme as well as the other heeding’s did, meeting up meant she could discuss this with us and we could offer advise.     

For the Locating project we were asked to choose our own brief from a group of business briefs set out for us, I chose the Digitext brief and used the theme Baroque, I also created a series of designs for the Bradford Textile brief.  

The images below are the main parts of my Digitext project.

 Below are the main parts of my Bradford textiles project

For my intentions project I come up with the theme “the English Seaside”. I wanted to explore the difference between the natural and the manmade objects found in and around the seaside. We were asked to present our work on a selection of boards.

Context Sheet