After graduating in July I have had some time to reflect on my three years at uni. I want to start blogging again as this helped me reflect and move forward with ideas.
My graduate screen prints are now made into products (from Kalopsia) and I have been selling these online and at the Christmas market in Norwich. I had great feedback at the Fresh Artisan Market, which I found really rewarding. It was a great test to see my demographic for the various products.
To help me reflect and improve my ideas and products I plan to blog quickly and regularly as 'notes to self' to document my progress and for customers and my audience to see my process and behind the scenes.
I have finished my prints and washed/ironed them all so they are ready to be hung on my rail put into my context illustrations.
Overall I am happy with what I have achieved but I have so much more I would love to do- luckily I can continue working after deadline so that I am making more for TexPrint, degree show and maybe new designers????
I wanted to continue my style in my visualisations and ensure that I am still using the wood as an accent- also using some collaged cut out pieces from my drawings to subtly fill areas such as the plant pot and chair is successful and playful!
Some initial context illustrations:
Today I have been adjusting and adding to older pieces after looking at them all together in one place. Using post it notes has helped me decide where I need to add to and what I should alter/ cover. I also wanted to add some more of the burnt caramel/orange shade to the prints so they wordked better together.
I added to a couple of the prints with posca pen and graphite to add to areas and to fill in some shapes- i couldnt do this whilst printing as the graphite fades too much. I tested permanent marker the other day and this stays throughout the steaming and printing process- Something to think about after deadline for degree show???
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| (adding to the faded areas as this was the one that wasnt steamed- overall the colours dont look too bad considering!!) |
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| the print that was stained blue!! (before) |
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| adding to the print to distract from the blue tint! (after) |
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| blue flock added with some areas of dark pigment |
Had a tutorial with nick, going through the last things I need to do before hand in.. Im not going to magic tape samples as this gives me the opportunity to work on them after hand in.
Does the pink on the wallpaper work? Maybe I should think again about how I could improve the colour ways after deadline?
Unfortunately, dues to the pressure and stress of deadline week I accidentally started washing out my (favourite) piece without steaming it. Luckily with the help of Yasmins, the damage wasnt too bad. The colours are slightly washed out and have altered a bit... but this has been a learning experience and made me realise I must remember to focus and double check?
I will work back over this one with some blue flock to brighten it up slightly and add some texture and interesting surface.
Today I also went over one of the blue samples (that bled) with a royal navy> i masked off areas with paper stencils that were already there to create a resist. I dont think this is particularly successful although I have a some positive feedback from peers! I think this is technique that could be used after deadline- maybe with a different colour. I need to ensure that the screen isn’t blocked as this made some markings on the fabric which was not what I intended.
After researching even further into mid century modern colours of project 4/ wallpaper project I decided that actually these colours could work for my project 3. Initially the colours were inspired by the classic colours of pink and green- using olives, teals and peaches to try to represent the contrast between nature and urban space - inspired by the Batsford Prize competition- Interpreting Nature.
After the incident with the colour bleed yesterday, I noticed that my samples were quite dull and washed out- this was a combination of washing them a lot but also because I only did 2 pulls and also maybe the colour just wasn't strong enough when I mixed it. I feel that the greens worked well together but the peach/pink was just too pale and you couldn't really see it after a couple of washes.
I used the polychromatic technique and applied a darker wash of rust brown and chocolate brown (originally this was the recipe for the pale peach- just a much smaller ratio). After testing this I found the perfect rust terracotta that paired perfectly with a new colour to my palette: an inky blue. I used an inky blue in my final wallpaper designs and my blind competition and think this worked well and connected with the mid century modern influence. This was also inspired by blue print, this was after Nick and I looked at my initial wallpaper repeats which were completed in the print room, where I had a textural secondary print from a slightly blocked screen. Using this inky blue has stopped me from using black too much whilst still keeping a dark tone and balance in my colours.
Completing wallpaper> wanted to get it sent to large format quickly before the wait time was too long- I wanted to potentially get these printed in lengths- or do I wait until degree show so ic an make alterations if they need it
My designs have changed and developed, now focusing more on scribbles and markings, made into forms in some areas?I really like the looseness of these.
After looking at my blue print style secondary print on a screen print onto a length of lining paper- this has inspired me to use a n inky blue after looking at mid century modern colours
Tried mid century modern colours, using the deep blue and flamingo pink??
Using limited colours with tonal variation to create a strong collection.
Completing the blind competition has enabled me talk about my work, telling a story and creating a narrative!
Washed my two samples from the other day- unfortunately they bottle green/blue bled and made my prints blue. I washed these a couple of times more on a cold machine wash but this made them worse!!
I’m really upset about this as this was probably my fault when hand washing- i must take more care next time. I have to seethes as a positive, it might bring other opportunities and has made me resale I’m just thoroughly wash out my fabrics.
Previously thought about using discharge and maybe try to mask off shapes to create a bold coloured background> this might be a good way to cover up the blue tint left on the prints that went wrong????
I have booked in next week for printing now> i’m glad I left myself enough time for mistakes to happen. I originally left all of next week for context boards and finalising so now printing for the first 3 days- hopefully will get my designs finished to a standard that I am pleased with.
Slow start today...
I wanted to finalise wallpaper designs- this took longer than planned as I ended up changing designs- thinking about scribbles vs cut outs?
I also used the mover tool in ava to help clean up to begin with- overall had a better finish> i tried a different approach which had an overall cleaner simpler feel
I altered my colours by studying mid- century modern colours to inspire so i could combine with my existing palette. Using avocado, tangerine, granite grey, mustard and rich caramel hues.
I tried using less colours after colour speration > more commercial and simpler feel? the repeat isn't as obvious too?
Washed out my fabrics> still not 100% happy with them, think they need to be a little darker?? try tomorrow and create a piece I'm really happy with
-line in the background worked better? drawing straight onto fabric?
Tomorrow print off wallpapers at Guntons> print a length of fav wallpaper on monday? 3 metre???
Continuing on from yesterdays print, I added extra markings and bolder cut out shapes but now I am not sure if I have overworked this piece?
I think once this has been washed I can decide whether to add to this or cover any areas up which look too cluttered?
I experimented further with polychromatic today whilst using masking off techniques with paper stencils- layering this over the similar shaped cut out. I like this as this looks similar to some areas in my drawings which initially took inspiration from Atelier Bingos work.
I also finished another piece today which was much simpler than the others, I felt that I kept repeating the other pieces and I wasn't too happy with them. Taking a different approach by drawing straight onto the fabric before I even started to print meant that I wasn't working onto a blank canvas and helped me decide where to place the shapes afterwards.
Tomorrow I plan to finish off my wallpaper and try to complete my entry for the direct blind competition. After doing some more research- which i decided was needed after the crit yesterday- I am feeling confident that this will help me make more appropriate choices for the wallpaper designs.
I am pleased with what I have accomplished today as I aimed to get 1 and a half /2 done per day if I stayed 9am-9pm but I managed to double my expectations. I just need to insure I am not rushing them and ensuring that they are of high quality. I need to remind my self to reflect on the pieces I have done and ensure I pick out the positive areas and use that to create a new piece. I also need to remember to refer to my drawings and my inspiration boards.
I came to the crit not 100% sure what I wanted to know or gain from it- I feel like i am fairly on track and just need to finish off final fabric designs- decide on the wallpaper finals and put things in to context. I aim to get the work for the Direct Blinds competition finished this week too.
The crit was helpful- more so for listening to others work and advice from Nick and other peers. This made me think about how things should be displayed (creatively) and that the context can be just INTERIORS and not necessarily anything too specific. I also realised that I need to do some more market research and completely deciding on WHO my work is for not necessarily WHAT!
As I am feeling indecisive about my many wallpaper designs I asked for some feedback and it was mentioned that I should maybe have less colours or change the background colour maybe?? I need to alter the neutrals to warm greys and do further colour research, looking at mid century modern and European manufacturers. I also need to be more mindful of how the shapes look and how they are placed next to one another.
After discussing my potential decision of using a canvas/heavy fabric, I think I should continue to use the cotton satin/ twill and drill for now and potentially alter the material if it suits the context or improves quality (maybe for degree show?) As I am thinking of my main context to be for bedding then the fabric needs to be suitable or I need to have a suggestion of the correct, appropriate fabric.
After reflecting on the large printed piece from Friday- I have completed (almost) two more today (2nd one in progress- still taped down on the print table ready to be added to tomorrow). I feel like I have loosened up now and am really starting to enjoy it. I am trying to be conscious about the placement of the shapes and markings, also making sure that I take more care when printing and making sure the screen is masked off in the appropriate areas and that the screen is flat and held down firmly.
I felt confident today to draw on the fabric free hand, with a lumber crayon and I am quite happy with how this works and sits on the fabric- I tested this previously and it faded slightly through the washing process but I am hoping that it still stays on this piece after vigorous washing. If not I would be able to add to it after it has been washed. I like how this gives me the freedom to disrupt and break up areas without having to reuse the same line from a screen but also keeping the oil pastel/graphite texture to the line.
Today I also had a mini brainwave and wondered why I had not thought of it sooner- polychromatic printing! I was thinking about how I could get bold painterly marks on my work- translated from my drawings. I thought about painting directly onto the fabric but then remembered this technique- I tried it out and it worked quite well, I need to keep in mind that it prints much lighter than it dries and also all texture/paint strokes disappear but the edges stay painterly. I tried this on my second print today (last photo) and I am pleased with it and am excited about how I could move this forward and try more colours and maybe work larger with this technique???
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| notes from before and after crit |
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| trying polychromatic technique (left) |
trend concept boards- final boards
wish i did this sooner to help me focus more? but sometimes it is helpful to not restrict your self when making work and to just make and see where the work takes you.
working back into project 1> grid structures inspired by signage and street art
using what I have learnt throughout to improve these and develop them> should I have these as final designs with context? - fashion? fashion illustrations for these> portfolio
Must think about blind competition!!!
Today I have printed some neutral backgrounds and added to a couple of my prints. After realising I should just squegee the dye straight onto the fabric it has helped me create a much more successful shade!
In comparison to yesterday, today was a success! I managed to clean up/ neaten up my wallpaper designs in AVA whilst I was waiting for the print room to free up. I also created more designs as I wasn't 100% sure on some compositions and I still need to fully decide on the colour ways and designs- I colour separated all the successful ones and am trying to understand what makes these successful. I am finding it hard to visualise them in a much larger scale.
Adding some more line and hand drawn aspects into the wallpaper designs has helped it flow a bit more and cover the design evenly so that the design doesn't look as disjointed and as if it's "floating".
By tomorrow evening I am going to have my wallpaper designs finalised and hopefully sent off to be printed over in Guntons on the large format printer.
I aim to have 4 final designs- this includes the 2 that I will submit for two categories for the Idott competition.
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| design with added lines and markings- behind |
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| Repeating in length only. This would be approx 1.5 m. I am unsure if this is too small- or if i should alter the large coloured shapes so that the repeat is more subtle? |
I applied my three neutrals to the 1 metre pieces of cotton this evening and I now have 5 pieces that are ready to be printed on tomorrow and next week. I used the new screen that I created yesterday to add some pale background textures and details- over laying the pale colours over the other pale colours created an interesting tonal effect which should work well once I add darker colours and larger shapes and lines.
I came across a few issues yesterday and still encountered some today but overcame them by taking my time and not rushing and then making silly mistakes. Today I didn't use a screen to print not he background and this worked much better than yesterday. The open screen was blocked yesterday which gave me texture and marks on the fabric and also meant that the colour was much richer and deeper (which is not what I had planned). I had tested pulling these colours through the screen on a smaller scale as I knew that the shade would change by doing this- but I was happy with the results. I think that the change in shade occurred when I scaled up the dye recipe. Because I am using such a small amount of dye- normally about 0.01 grams of each colour per 200g, this means that the scales do not normally recognise the dye. So when doubling/ tripling up the amounts of the dye, it wasn't accurate and then made the shade much darker.
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| NEW SCREEN!! |
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| Pale background with initial pale markings as the background |
Today I have had an unproductive, unsuccessful day but I am trying not to let this dishearten me. When things aren’t going right i must try to stay positive and make use of my time as it is precious!
I also need to make now that i must learn when to stop as this will make me understand how this affects the quality of my work.
Today I found out I have been selected for an application for TEXPRINT - this is a massive positive of today and has given me confidence and reassurance.
I am feeling much more positive after todays meeting with Nick about careers and my future. I have been updating my CV, website and gathering pieces for my digital portfolio as well as researching job roles to see what I would be more suitable for. I found many print design jobs which sounded good but I feel like maybe I would prefer to work for my self and have my own brand but I was unsure about this as I feel like it's hard to get your foot in the door and maybe I would need experience?? (or maybe this is good that I lack some experience?) Nick was encouraging and made me think of many opportunities- I am going to research art consultants and art agents whilst also researching designers/artists/ brands that I would love to work for, then work out how I could make that become a reality. I feel like having this meeting has made me research further and think about life after graduation, figuring out what I want from life and what kind of lifestyle I would like to lead. I want to think bigger and maybe look at jobs outside the UK, I want to travel after graduating so this might be a perfect opportunity??
Also, I need to think about who my audience is? What are the audiences of similar prints/ homewares? Where is this audience? How can I show that my work is suitable for many contexts?
This meeting has also made me think about how I could continue making work now which shows various skills that I have, meaning that I have a broad portfolio (for example using typography for degree show shop products to show that I can place type and using interesting and appropriate fonts for stationary brands). I also need to show that I am willing to learn new things and that I am a good and quick learner. I feel like I do learn things fairly fast and I can work on multiple projects on one go- as Ba3b has shown.
I need to ensure that my website is more informative and professional and even have an option for people to buy. I also think I should look at other freelancers/artists/designers' websites to understand how to make it creative but easily accessible.
Discussing my wallpaper made me realise that I need to think about what it looks like from far away- I think I need to alter the background in order for it to flow with the other shapes. I also need to clean up the edges now it has been printed out large, I feel like that if I didn't get them printed, I wouldn't see those small faults and also understand the scale and realise that the scale does work.
website: ameliaellwooddesign.weebly.com
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| Website in progress |
For the rest of this week I plan to complete a few more 1 metre prints for Project 3, Reassembled Space. Today I colour tested the pale background shades as I decided to not dye the cotton before hand any more and to just procion print as I am confident as achieving the right shades in this process. I feel that this is the most practical and efficient way of using my time and skills after trying out dyeing and being fairly unsuccessful with the pale neutral shades.
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| in the process of colour testing for my background layer |
After my tutorial with Nick I thought I would speak to Neil about fax paper drawing as I have been told he has done this previously. He gave me some fax paper and I have started drawing on it with a soldering iron, heated nails/screws and an iron. I thought that If I could heat up a variety of shapes I could build up a design on the thermal paper- I tried this with some left over wooden shapes (as they get super hot in the heat press and stay hot for a while) but this was unsuccessful. For the fax paper to react, it has to be ridiculously hot and the shapes were just not hot enough. I could possibly create some sort of resist or heat up other objects to transfer onto the paper??
I have experimented drawing from some primary images of walls and graffiti and am really impressed with the results. The roll of paper is quite slim so they dont seem big enough to be a "drawing" but I will convert these onto screens or scan them into use in my digital drawings. I really love how the marks made are unique and are markings that you cannot get with any other technique. I like how you can combine the materials used on the paper, for example I have used thick black markers as well as pencil, coloured posca pens and oil pastels.
Today I have spent about 10 hours using AVA and creating my wallpaper designs which are suitable for the IDOTT competition and will also create a collection/body of work for a mini brief.
I feel that I spent a lot of time today just getting to grips with AVA and understanding what I wanted my wallpaper to look like.I feel that spending this time is valuable and helpful as It is a useful tool for the future.
After yesterdays tutorial I felt positive to start designing my wallpaper digitally. Photographing my larger pieces with a DSLR meant that I could use my bigger drawings/wallpaper tests in my digital designs. I wanted to ensure that the texture remained as I feel that this is a strong part of my work which makes it successful. I aim to complete the wallpaper designs by Thursday evening or Friday morning so that I can hand them in to be printed on Friday. I aim to have a collection of wallpapers with potentially some complementary wallpapers or prints along side- not sure whether this would work? I think I will test some simpler, complementary prints to answer that question.
There was various things to discuss with Nick today and I feel that it was really helpful and positive. For my wallpaper, I was unsure whether to hand print it after creating a kodatrace with he cut through, which would be time consuming. Or whether I should get it digitally printed over in Guntons. I was also unsure whether to choose the larger scale dimensions (180x120cm) and if i did- would i need the physical copy of the entry too? How would this work??? I have emailed them to see. I think continuing working to the 52x64cm dimensions is a good scale to work too anyway and it would work printing it digitally in Guntons on the 300gsm paper.
I have been experimenting more with cut through repeats today so that I can complete this mini brief and competition entry by the end of the week. I want to be able to work back on to fabric and develop and create final designs (1 metre maybe?) so I am anxious to get this completed. Because I am not particularly confident and experienced in repeats, I am finding this slightly difficult. The scale and the size is unnerving me- I am finding it hard to understand and get my head around the IDOTT brief and its requirements.
I want to work large scale in the 52x64 cm dimensions but I find that I keep repeating myself in terms of size of shapes in these dimensions.
Today I used colour in my cut throughs to see if this could help. After colour testing for the morning with procion and pigment binders, I used paper stencils with open screens to build up a design of cut out shapes and markings.
Because I'm working on paper, the procion paste doesn't sit particularly well and tends to bubble up at the edges, meaning the shapes aren't crisp and sharp like they are in my drawings. Working with binder on paper sits better but it hasn't got the translucency like procion has. Overlaying the procion means I can create darker and lighter areas with the same colours.
When testing the colours, I tested them on paper as well as plain cotton so that I have the procion on cotton for potential future printing. The colour on paper turns out lighter than on the fabric, but when printed through the screen, the colour on paper is slightly darker than when just tested straight onto paper.
After initially wanting to use warm tones and colours that I have not necessarily used previously, I played around with colour combinations further and managed to create a fresh, in trend palette. I created lots of different colour combos yesterday but found that a lot of them felt too earthy and dull. I wanted to create something fresh and inviting which also came from some of my primary imagery. I finalised my colours with a dark navy, a royal blue/navy, a peach/light pink, a burnt orange rust OR a scarlet coral pink and a light grey. I think these colours can still be developed and potentially narrowed down so that there are more neutrals, meaning the palette is balanced and versatile.
I am ensure whether to translate these into kodatraces or digitally print them on to acetate to then put them onto screens and hand print. Or would it be easier and more time effective if I could just digitally print it onto wallpaper in Guntons?? This is something I will discuss with Nick tomorrow in my tutorial.
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| before cut through |
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| after cut through |
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| complete design |
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| complete design |