Making Textures and Placement Prints

I'd been in the print room this week, trailing different ways that I can create texture to use on the wallpaper and also in digital designs. I needed something to take my designs forward in the project so that I can progress. I feel as though I've been at a bit of a stand still recently and after starting the project on such a roll, panic is starting to kick in and the weeks are quickly disappearing behind us.

I just mixed up a dark binder (so that it would be easy to scan and then separate in photoshop) and then began attacking my papers - a great way to let out any frustrations I might add. I wanted to recreate some of the surfaces that I'd noticed on a lot of the tarnished metals I'd seen in the antique shops. They were so beaten, and they'd lost a lot of their shine, but for me this just added to the story of each item... How had they ended up like this? I wonder what they looked like when they were brand new? I knew that adding texture into my work would help give it a little more depth and also take my drawings to a new level, I was getting quite bored of just drawing with my protractor and compass, and so I just just let myself have fun with it! I covered the page with colour using a print roller, hitting it with a spatula, spreading ink through an open screen and applying the binders with a scrunched up piece of news print. These were the techniques that I felt worked the best, but they were all fun. Letting the paper do it's thing and just letting idea's flow made this day probably one of my best in the project so far, and really lifted the project off the ground!

I then scanned them in and layered them up with some of my drawings, developing ideas for composition and balance within repeats when I finally come to make them. One thing I would say though is that when you're working digitally, there is just too many possibilities, which of course is a great thing; the sky is the limit here, but I think when I move forward with these I need to give myself more restrictions, so I think it's about time I took some work into the print room, got some drawings on screens and get stuck in!