Visit to Reeds Home Store, in my Home Town

At the end of the Easter holidays I spent a few days back home and visited Reeds Home Store, and just stumbled across these sample books in the upstairs amongst the fabric. So even though there was no wallpaper actually in the shop, I managed to scramble through some piles and find some more sample books to look through. Again, they were very much about texture, with lots of depth in the work and if they were just drawings, there was texture in the line or the background. This is something I'm going to continue moving forward with.

More Digital Collages

Two More 3m Lengths

THE BIG PRINT

Antique Shops in Ely

Printing on Lining Paper

Looking for something to print on, I didn't want to just print onto cartridge paper, because how would this help me in the long run? I headed down to a local hardware store and bought some lining paper.. They had a range of papers, some textured, some plain, in a range of prices. So I went for the middle ground, as this was my first attempt. I didn't want to spend too much money, but also I didn't want to get the cheapest and be disheartened when it turned out badly. So I went a trusty £6.30 roll of medium weight lining paper. I used the placement prints that I'd come up with in photoshop as a starting point and then just went form there! Combing different textures and testing new ways of applying and creating texture on the paper - using large brushes, the back of a spatula and scrunching up a piece of newsprint paper and dabbing on the binders and foil glue! One thing that I did learn to day, is that foils stick to the gloss binders, and that the end feel of the gloss binder in general is quite sticky and plasticky, which isn't something I feel I want to take forward, I want my work to have quite a soft finish, so this just isn't working for me.

Placement Prints

I've been using a combination of my digital and hand drawn technical drawings, printed textures and digitally made metallics to come up with some collages in Photoshop over the last few days! It's been really helpful in improving my composition and just being able to make something that's not a repeat, but is still balanced and interesting to look at. I need to be producing work that is thick with layers so that there is more depth in my work. I feel as though previously my work has always looked a little flat, so having so many more elements to work with this time has definitely improved the way that the outcomes look. I've also made some A3 sized collages that I'm going to use to influence the work I do when I'm in the print room over the next few weeks! One thing I really struggle with is just going in and producing something magical, I really envy the girls on my course that can just come up with something brilliant on a whim - it doesn't come naturally to me, but I'm getting around it. So I've had some screens made up and I'm going to start with using the compositions below and just seeing where it takes me...