Fleur De Lys - Rococo Inspired Design

I realised that although I’ve shared the visualisation boards I created for my last BA submission, I haven’t actually shared many of the designs here. This one was inspired by a popular highly ornamental trend of the 18th and 19th centuries; Rococo. I adore all those swirls and elaborate embellishments and I imagine I’ll be creating more inspired by the same theme. You can view this one in the ‘Pattern’ gallery on my homepage.

I experimented with this design using various processes in the textile print room at college. I’ll share more of those in a future post.

MATS BOOTCAMP MAIN ASSIGNMENT - PART 1

Monday saw the arrival of our main assignment for Bootcamp in our inboxes and the brief is to design journals. This gave me the perfect opportunity to concentrate on completing another piece for my website homepage: flowers in vases for the journal cover. I wanted to design a vase for my flowers with a Springtime theme to complement the magnolias.

We’re lucky enough where I live in Devon to occasionally spot little yellowhammer birds darting around. They seem to be shy little birds and so often it’s just a glimpse of their yellow underbelly, but they’re quite unmistakable. I find them absolutely captivating and get really excited every time I glimpse one! Sadly though, they’re on the endangered ‘red’ list here in the UK as their numbers have been declining rapidly in recent years. So, I decided a yellowhammer it was to grace my vase which obviously had to have a vintage feel to it!

It’s actually got me thinking that I might quite like to get into the ceramics room and hand-paint some porcelain, because I’d rather like this vase to grace my own home! The Blue is a deep ultramarine, another colour I have tended to use little of in the past and have fallen quite in love with!

I also had a play in photoshop with my original magnolia design and spurred on by a dear friend, created a repeat pattern.

Next, I will be concentrating on putting this image onto a journal cover and creating some hand-lettering for it, so off to work I go… but I’m nearly there, you never know I might actually have this one ready to submit early, which will be an absolute FIRST for Mats Bootcamp!

BA Textiles - Product Visualisation Boards

The last week has been completely nuts in preparation for the great ‘Hand In’ tomorrow! The list of requirements is seemingly endless and each aspect takes sooo long to manifest! I am a virtual stranger to my poor long suffering family. For the last 3 days I’ve been working solidly from 5am to 9pm while my dear supportive husband take’s care of the day to day running of life at home with a busy family. If only he knew just how much I appreciate him… perhaps I’ll think of something fantastic and creative in equal measure to make it up to him!

For our brief, we were each given two words to work with, mine were ‘Opulence’ and ‘Ornamental’. We then had to take those two words and investigate a whole series of design making solutions culminating in two completely different collections. So, here are my final visualisation boards for those two separate collections. Neither board has all my designs on it, but I will have more time to share those with you after tomorrow. Now, wish me luck, I still have a very long list to complete!

BA Textiles - Preparing for Year 3 Submission

I haven’t posted much for a few months and that’s quite simply because I’ve been absolutely snowed under with work. Switching from Illustration to Textiles and Surface Design for the Final Year of my degree has been such a massive learning curve, it’s utterly wonderful to learn something new, but at times it has also felt overwhelming. I’m now in my last week before having to submit the entire body of work I’ve created in the last few months. Our module has been all about Innovation and Experimentation. Quite honestly, each and every new process I’ve learnt… and there have been quite a number of them, has for me been experimental in itself. There are so many new skills to learn and get up to speed with, from seemingly simple things such as how to make a collection cohesive to different dye techniques and fabric surfaces and a huge variety of different technical processes. Gradually, very gradually I am getting there, although I still have a huge amount to learn.

For now though, I thought I would leave you with a development on my New Year design which has sparked so many new creative ideas of its own.

Time for Tea

Thrush with Crown and Flowers Watercolour

Sweet Williams & Cosmic Serpent Letter S

English Garden Flowers Watercolour Painting Inspiration

Inspirational Packaging

It's hard to believe that the Summer holidays are almost over and school starts in just 2 weeks.   I must admit I was rather surprised when I noticed just how long it's been since my last blog post.  I have however, been rather busy quietly fitting in creative time over the last few weeks.  I entered the Global Talent Search with the wonderful Lilla Rogers and although I didn't get through to the shortlisted 50 for the second round, I did learn so much in the process.  The assignment was to produce a tea cup, saucer and napkin with hand lettering, here's the piece I submitted and a close up of the design on the tea cup.

In the lead up to receiving the first assignment we were given a series of 5 preparation exercises.  The first 3 of which were packaging research, colour palette inspiration and an illustration of the letter 'S'.  My letter 'S' is of sweet williams, sacred symbols and a cosmic serpent.

The 50 finalists produced some really amazing work, check out the gallery here: https://www.facebook.com/LillaRogersGlobalTalentSearch/photos/?tab=album&album_id=1078343725585673

The second assignments are due in this Monday 29th August at which point the judges have to pick just 5 finalists with a 6th being chosen by the voting public.  Very exciting, can't wait to see what they come up with.