Colour

The prints I have designed are drawn in black and white, therefore they are well fitting to work with colour relationships. I am working with duo colours, experimenting with opposing colours and complimentary colours. 

I have kept to using primary and secondary colours within my prints, focussing on how the shapes and design of each print changes the look of the surface. Each print I have moved into colour has 24 colour ways, opposing primary colours and also panning around a colour wheel. 

Once I had created each print into 12 colour ways I had a realisation that the colours could be reversed. The prints change dramatically depending on which colour is in the foreground or background. Though this process of moving all my prints into colour on photoshop and creating the different colours ways was laborious, it has given me a great range of prints. Depending on each colour scheme, prints that are the same can look completely different, from something as simple as changing one colour. Certain colours work on one print and compliment the style yet on others create a truly ugly print. Since the prints have been in colour I feel that they have grown an enormous amount, from soft, subtle tonal changes to bright, garish prints.

Prints in repeat

The designs I have created through hand drawing has a taken a long time, however the time spent making them accurate has been necessary. I have drawn in three different styles, optical, angular and shapes. These different style of drawing have given very different outcome when put into repeat.

Through researching and experimenting with how repeat patterns are put together, it has allowed each design to be utilised into creating multiple different prints from one image. The orignal drawings have been scanned it at 600dpi to allow the prints to be blown up into a large scale without loosing any quality. Some designs have worked well as a drawing but when repeated have created obscure prints that do not work as well as I had hoped. This has meant that I have gone back and altered certain drawings to allow them to repeat better.

The optical style prints have worked the most successfully, moving my work away from the graphic style construction and into a more pattern based outcome. These prints have also had the most outcomes through rotation and scaling, with many of the prints creating tonal levels though I am still working in black and white. 

Drawing References + Designs

The research and drawings I did for the last project was a good starting point for this collection, I am going to expand on the old prints with new drawing references. By the end of last project I began to be interested in chimney tops and layers areas, finding that these images gave me a great range of new shapes and pattern ideas. I have become very interested in how pattern is created, through combining shapes together to form one surface. I have researched into brick laying, knit patterns and woven surfaces to learn about their structures. This has allowed my prints to be planned in multiple new ideas through simple rotations and scaling.

To accompany this, I have researched into optical prints. To be able design my own I have been learning how an optical print is created, what shapes are needed, spacings between lines etc. 

This was harder then I had anticipated, the shaping and layers of a design had to line up perfectly otherwise the overall print would not work. As each design is drawn by hand it has taken a lot longer then I had hoped, meaning that the time spent creating these drawings in a specific way was time taken away from developing them digitally. The collection of final drawings, ready to be taken into digital work, I am very pleased with and I am excited to see how they work once repeated. 

Final Print 1

The large scale drawings have been used in photoshop and put into a half drop design to create this wallpaper. The black and white creates an eye catching image, with changing angles and built up areas. The sections that are complete blacked out shapes work well to break up the pattern, as it would look too crowded if those areas were not there. The visualisations are to a double scale of the print design, the prints works better when enlarged. I have begun changing the print into different colour ways, however I have not finalised a colour pallet as I struggle to find colour schemes that are fitting with current wallpapers.  

Final Humpties Submission

The Humpties external brief as a whole has been a very useful step in my print design process, it has brought to light flaws in my work and also encouraged me to work in a different style. As the largest size humptie is 920mm, it made me design my work on a much larger scale then I have ever worked before. As all my work is hand drawn, it required a lot more time and effort to create these designs, pushing my limits of how much I can achieve when pressure is added into a situation. The designs have been sent off to the company, which added another element into the work, the professionalism of my practice as seen by an external company. I am happy with the designs I have achieved, however if I had more time I would add colour into these designs and also change the print more obviously. The designs do have slight variation, but I would have liked them to be more prominent. I have also re-done the boarders, I felt they needed a more digital look compared to the very loose hand drawn designs I previously had done. 

External Project

Humpties

www.humpties.com

As part of this project I have to complete and external brief, for this I have chosen 'Humpties'. This company creates fabric pouffes, for indoor and outdoor purposes. The design of their pouffes are circular with a boarder running around the edge, so I have tailored my work to fit the design criteria. My previous design work has adapted well into this shape, the straight lines work well with the curves to create dynamic ideas. The difficulty I am having with these designs however are creating them to the desired scale on the brief, as when enlarged they loose quality and become blurry.  

Line Drawing

The images below all originally came from the same image, deconstructed and rearranged. The shapes they created were the starting point, from which I have added line drawing to connect sections. The additional drawing has unified the image and added more depth. The final image was created by combining the two previous images on a larger scale. Again, additional line drawing was added to connect sections together. It is not as successful as I was hoping, the areas of just line drawing are a lot weaker then the built up areas from the previous imagery. 

Image In Repeat Continued

The prints I have been creating have been developing in two ways, one off prints and prints in repeat. The one off prints are designed towards a panel for a room, where as the repeats are designed for more conventional use. The below prints could be used for wallpaper, wrapping paper or a fabric for interiors, as they have are continuous. The work in repeat isn't as strong as the individual pieces, they don't fit right together. 

Large Scale Panels

 I have been researching where I see my work ending up, which has steered me away from wallpaper and more towards wall panels. These would be a feature pieces as the focal point in a room, possibly paper or printed onto fabric/glass/perspex. The reassembled images work best on a larger scale, these images are A1. The below visualisation is the style and scale of how I see my work progressing. 

Image In Repeat

As I am primarily print based, I enjoy putting my work in repeat or using multiples of the same image to create a new one. I have used simple rotation and repeat for the first image, which works relatively well. However, it would be enhanced if the original images we drawn with a ruler and not free hand, as they don't match seamlessly. 

The images below are the most successful, this is due to the change of scale of the original image. The first image would be richer if the layers were carried on further. If the layers multiplied down the page and the chimneys extended up, the process would work more effectively. The second image works well as a simple repeat pattern along the horizontal.