Duck Egg Blue Interiors, Ely - What a find!

So, thinking about what life is going to be like after university is over, I've been house hunting and eventually we decided on Ely. It's a lot closer to London, so my boyfriend can commute a lot more easily that he can from Norwich and also it's not too far from my home town either (but far enough that our parents can't just pop round for a cuppa when they feel like it)! Anyway, while we were talking around the city centre, which is more like the centre of a small market town, I stumbled across this little interiors fabrics and accessories store - a little Aladdin's cave of pretty ornaments and cushions, but in the back there is just piles and piles of samples books! Which led me to find lots of new brands to investigate! Casadeco, CaSelio and Eijffinger. All of which had some amazing paper in the collections! Metallics, glass beads and even some holographic designs... And boy do I love a bit of holo'!

Definitely a place to keep an eye on in the future, for inspiration and to keep my designs relevant!

Putting together repeats too soon!

Wanting to get on with the project quickly meant that I was trying to run before I could walk, I just needed to get some repeats togethers to see if my drawings were going to work in the way I wanted them to. What I learnt however is that I really need a larger bank of drawings to work with before I begin thinking about the composition of the wallpapers in the end. Having a library of wonderful, well thought out drawings to work with in the final stages is far more valuable than having a bank of mediocre repeat prints. Not to say that I don't think these repeat examples don't work well, they're just not fitting for the market that I'm aiming my project towards (luxury wall coverings), I can imagine these more fitting to something like a high-end silk tie or suit linings, which is obviously not what I'm heading for. However, after showing these in a group crit, I do understand how valuable little things like this can be - in the future, there might not be anyone interested in buying my wallpaper of final products, although they might be very interested in buying pieces like this to influence their company's work. Something that is just practise to me, could be very valuable in the hands of people that know how to market it and what to do with it, a thought that I will bare in mind from now on I think.

These just aren't how I imagine my final works to look, it's not where I want to be headed. The repeat is quite ditsy, although on a larger scale would obviously be more fitting to wall covering. Scale is definitely something that I need to address in future, but for now I think I'll continue with the technical drawings and try to break away from this tiled aesthetic that seems to appear when I repeat the work I have at the moment.

First Mind Boggling Lesson w/ Les

So to begin the session we were asked beforehand to bring a piece of research, sampling and a final piece. Now obviously, at this stage in the project no-one had a final piece and this rattled me a little bit. After giving it some thought however, I put together these presentation boards to group together what I have been doing so far into the appropriate categories. And so, although I knew that I did not have a final piece yet, my work was very much still developing, I had a final piece from the last few weeks that has progressed from my original starting point. From putting together the Pinterest brooches, to beginning my own technical drawing, completing these using digital processes and then, as I did with the jewellery found online, putting them together to create a hybrid.

We first had to take our work to one side, and on our own come up with a story that explains our work well. Trying to make sure that this "story" if you will, focus' on all the most important parts of our work. Then we presented in pairs and gave feedback: What you said VS what they heard/remembered  Were they the points you wanted to get across? I think I had all the ingredients for a really good story to go behind my work, I just need to figure out how to word it - I don't want it to sound like a sob story 'my Granddad passed away last term, and my Gran passed away at the beginning of this term, so I'd like do dedicate my collection to them' No. Although I do want people to know the reasoning behind my work, I feel like it needs to be much more than that, this isn't the X-Factor, I don't need a sad story to make it through the the next round. If anything, I need an inspiring story, that tells the tale of a young woman that is enthusiastic, hard working and well-mannered in order to make it to the next round: Postgraduate Life. Even though I chose to pursue more creative subjects after high school, Mathematics and English Literature are still very close to my heart, one of the reasons I think I decided to keep going with the technical drawings is because of my love for numbers and geometry; in fact, I can't believe I've never dabbled in it before!

Some of my notes towards my story:

After the pairing exercise we then moved up to presenting in groups of 4, where we had 10 minutes to present out work, then 5 and then 1, with feedback and questions in-between. This was ridiculously helpful when we're trying to refine our speech - only say what is really necessary,  because in some circumstances you might only have a minute of someones time to explain to them why they should be involved in your work or ideas! It was a rush, but we made it in the end, focussing on only the essential parts of my work:

 < Grandma's Jewellery >

< Creating something beautiful from old, tarnished objects >

< Taking something feminine and adding a more masculine touch with the technical drawings >

< Luxurious, stunning designs >

< Playing with layers, textures, secrets >

< Like a labyrinth, complex patterns >

Focussing then on these 6 most important points, we were asked to come up with just 6 words to define or title our work. Six individual words or three two-word phrases, or as I did just one 6 word phrase:

A LABYRINTH OF LIFE TIME & LUXURY

Oh I just love a bit of good ol' alliteration! Also please ignore the fact I misspelt 'labyrinth' more than once in my notebook... But all in all, I think a pretty successful session! A lot was covered and I even presented my one minute story to the whole group, not out of choice, but I am so glad Les got me to do it... I just need to calm the shakes down and control my voice a little. Maybe try recording myself presenting so that I can figure out myself where I'm going wrong, work on my confidence a little. 

Finding other sources for my drawing

After my tutorial with Nick, I realised I wanted to begin finding other sources for my drawing. Although the starting point for my drawing was some of my Gran's jewellery, she only had a few pieces that I found inspiring, there was a lot of costumer jewellery in there which didn't really interest me much - the pieces I really loved were those that had a bit of history, they were the more expensive pieces, antiques and heirlooms, that sort of thing. However, as much as I love those, it's not enough to build a collection from so I've began to look elsewhere for inspiration... Starting with a lovely book on Victorian Jewellery and strangely, a book contacting patterns for Renaissance lace - the look of which just reminded me of my technical drawings and gave me a few ideas for composition when it does come to fitting my drawings together and into repeat prints!

I also started looking for inspiration in the world around me. Just by chance I was looking around some of the charity shops in my home town, found nothing of use, but then in the cheap tacky shop next door, I found these earrings and necklaces on sale! Even though they are obviously made quite cheaply (I'm not even sure if they were metal or not) I could see that the designers of these had clearly taken inspiration from an art deco style of jewellery as well, so I can still draw from these. You can't tell in my technical drawings where the imagery has come from, especially because I can add finer details and what would represent jewels quite easily, thus making the design my own.

First Tutorial, lots to think about

Completing the drawings

I've developed a way of working with my technical drawings, where I only draw a section (i.e. 1/2, 1/4, 1/8) and then I scan in the drawing and complete it using Adobe Photoshop to ensure that my drawing is then accurate and easily repeatable. The pieces of jewellery that I am making studies of are very symmetrical and detailed, something that would take me quite a long time to complete by hand - especially as I like to include lots of smaller elements with my fine liners. This was relatively simple for the first few of my drawings, it was easy to just duplicate the original layer, mirror and rotate, then merge and repeat these steps until the shape was complete.

The below drawing is one where I started to encounter some trouble when trying to repeat the designs below, they had a more complex pattern that meant mirroring wouldn't have given me the look that I was aiming for. This design (below) wasn't as much of an issue, although I had wished for it to go under, over, under, over as it went around the circle, I don't think it is noticeable within the pattern that this was my intention. It still flows rather well and is interesting on the eye, when trying to follow the track. 

However, when I moved on to completing this drawing, mirroring definitely wouldn't have worked for me. For starters, I let myself down in the beginning stages of the drawing when I wrongly calculated the angles in the centre of the design, which then informed the rest of the piece - ergo, it's all wrong. No fear, I'm smarter than I look... Hopefully. I began by taking the half circle that I filled in with detail and made this into a full shape. After then duplicating this twice, I rotated the new circles 120° around the central point of the inner circle, creating a equilateral triangle in the centre, meaning all the circles are now spread evenly around the 360° centre. I then used the magic wand tool to select one circle layer, then keeping this selection, I worked on another layer to erase only the part that would go under the selected circle - finishing with a more complex and more accurate under-over pattern than before! Challenge complete.

As I created more drawings, my system started to develop and helps me quicken my pace. By realising that I need to draw even less that 1/4 or even an 1/8 of each piece meant that I didn't waste time with repetition - I just drew a few details and then repeated those to fill a fraction of the drawing that was repeatable, and then worked as I would from there. To begin with this took me a little time to get used to, working in more detail in Photoshop was time consuming but I managed it eventually. I'm going to continue this as a build a bigger library of drawings for the coming project.

Technical Drawing

For some reason, when I began drawing some of my Gran's jewellery, I decided to experiment with a little bit of technical drawing, which I then stuck with afterwards. There's something about it that's just so different from both of the projects that I did last time - I always like to work in different ways so that my portfolio is quite varied once uni is over. This did worry my last term, as I kept seeing other girls from the course really beginning to develop a style that made their work recognisable as their own; I don't have that. I've always thought that this is something that I need to have, but I think maybe showing a more diverse range of skills is just as impressive as having perfected a style of work to call your own.

Anyway, I've gone off track a little bit, but for the moment I think this more controlled way of drawing is really working for the subject matter - it's more than just drawing a piece of jewellery, it's a translation of its details. Perhaps taking it back to its original design plans or adding a more rigid, masculine element to the brooches. I'm not entirely sure where I'm going with this at the moment, but I'm enjoying this for now. All I know is that my end goal is to produce a range of luxury wallpapers, based on this subject matter. Something really interesting, with a good story behind it.

I'm not allowed to paint at my Mum's house

Having been at my 'home home', as we students call it,  for such a long time, I was starting to really panic about how little work I was getting done - especially as I had missed the briefing for the FINAL unit of my degree. This is the project where sh*t is supposed to get real and I'm sat at my Mum's house just constantly making people cups of tea and trying to research some other drawing material. 

Then, just as I was about to pick up my paint brush, my Dad walks into the dining room like some kind of art-student-hating, creativity-sucking dictator, "What do you think you're doing?"

After spending so much time away at uni, I guess I forgot that due to many paint spillages and ink related accidents over the years, I'm not supposed to paint at my parents house. At all. So, after the same old argument about how "I'm 21 now, not a kid, this is my life, my career, my degree, I'm not gonna spill anything, stop being such an idiot" and after my usual loss in the fight, I decided to do something digital instead. How in the world, without any drawings to being with, was I supposed to come up with any kind of digital designs? *light bulb moment* I headed to Pinterest and then took elements from vintage brooches that I found on there, and created a new piece by repeating sections and taking shapes from the originals. 

I'm not going to use these again, but it was certainly a good way for me to play around with adding metallics to my work using digital media and also good practise for manipulating drawings as well as working on composition and layering. It also lifted my spirits a little, made me feel like I had done something productive during a very difficult time.

The Final Chapter

So, at the end of my last project, I said that I would set myself a small 2 week project to work during the time that my work was being marked. I did start this, my idea to draw the pubs around norwich, in a similar way to how I had drawn the homes and buildings from Thailand - this was to then be a starting point for BA3b, where I had the idea into focussing on metallics and designing wallpapers for a more luxury market.  Unfortunately, I only completed two drawings for this as my Gran went into hospital just after I'd handed in and sadly passed away during the first week of the new brief. This meant, much like in the last unit, I had about a 3 week period where I couldn't do any work, or if I did manage, it wasn't a lot.  I felt very very behind when I first came back to uni, but in a way this made me work harder and now I am very happy with the pace that I'm working at now, and I'd really like to keep it up.

So! 

The starting point... 

After my Gran passed away, we had to begin going through her things quite quickly, just to give us all something to do. When my Grandad passed a few months ago, we were all distracted because we still had Gran to care for, whereas this time we had nothing. 

I was drawn to her jewellery and some other things that she has collected over the years - she always had these gold leafed plates that stood on one of their cabinets that I had adored since I was a child and had always claimed them for myself one day (although now I could actually take them, I didn't want them at all). I decided that I would focus my drawing and designing on these little trinkets to begin with, as I still want to stick to using metallics in my work and moving forward from my foil work from the last brief; combing my work from the interior and fashion projects to create something really spectacular and well thought out by the end.