decision making

Decision making is most definitely not my forte.

Choosing which theme (beach or garden flowers) I was going to design with was hard enough little lone to start deciding how I want to go about making my print.

I chose to run with the bird of paradise inspiration because they remind me of my childhood (we used to have the most glorious bird of paradise plant in out front yard) and also because I could really envisage the unique shapes and colours coming together to create a textile print.

I found it really difficult to start my print design process on photoshop because I had no idea how to even begin creating the print designs I had sketched up or what tools I was going to use because my photoshop skills are somewhat limited and I found myself just playing with new tools I discovered instead of actually creating my textile print.

Even thought its was fun discovering new tools, I decided that a more practical approach to completing my assignment would be to start applying the different skills we have learnt in class to some of the photographs I had taken.

Here we go...

I thought this photo was both simple and beautiful and a good one to start so I used the magic tool to get rid of the majority of the background, then I painstakingly zoomed in and rubbed out the remaining until I had a nice clear cut out.

 then I tried flipping and rotating the  cut out to create a symmetrical motif.

I tried out a few different filters and adjustments but I think neon glow and adjusting the thresholds were my favourite two, both creating really interesting lines and textures

 

I quite liked this little design although I think as a repeat it could get a bit busy and distracting so I might keep it in mind to add too a design I am yet to create...

doodling around

Idea development begins...

This is a rough sketch using black chalk of the Birds of Paradise I photographed

Another close up sketch using charcoal done on site

I did these watercolours funnily enough for an assignment I did for a different subject, design thinking. I have Birds of Paradise on the brain!

I found the above print design in a Gourmet Traveler magazine a few weeks ago whilst completing an assignment for a different subject and had torn it out just because I liked it. I stumbled across it the other day and the beautiful patterns really inspired me to start thinking about my ever looming textile print... these are some possible Bird of Paradise layouts inspired by the above Del Kathryn Barton print.

 

These are two possible print layouts I very roughly did on the bus using an ink liner.  

searching for concept inspiration

I initially turned to my garden to source inspiration from nature but was reminded of two facts.

1. Our garden is significantly lacking in interesting plant life

2. Winters a comin' so any lovely little flowers we may have in there are now hiding from the cold and don't want to be inspiration for me.

So

the next place I turned to for inspiration was the beach, and although I definitely would not consider myself as a 'beach babe' I do spend quite a lot of time down there be it an early morning swim or a stroll along the bike track, which is sand on one side and gorgeous wildlife on the other.

One morning in the holidays when mum and I were going for a walk along the bike track I grabbed my camera in hopes of finding some form of nature which inspired me and that I could envisage turning into one of the awesome prints featured in my last post.

bird of paradise

I stumbled across (literally had to crawl through some scrub to get to these beauties)  this little cluster of 'Bird of Paradise' flowers. They immediately caught my attention with their vibrant orange and their incredible bird like silhouettes which naturally made them shine out amongst the other scrubby native plants as textile print candidates.

the boat sheds

 

 

 

At the end of the bike track there are these decapitated old boast sheds which I discovered are actually really interesting to photograph with all their rusty, shell encrusted bits and pieces. I think my favorite subject to photograph would have to be the pippy stick. It was a piece of timber about 2 meters long which had little miniature pippys clustered all the way along the sides, kind of reminding me of a delicate string of beads. 

inspiration

Holidays are looming and I promised myself I would make start on my textile print before I got too far into holiday mode.

I thought a nice gentle way to ease myself into this super scary assignment would be to trawl some groovy fashion blogs looking for print inspiration. At this point I have no idea what aspect of nature I am going to use as inspiration for my own repeat pattern so I was mainly just looking for prints I found attractive and hopefully I will have a light bulb moment and a lovely piece of nature will appear in front of me... well here's to hoping!

pattern people

make it digital

natalia grzybowski

think designer prints

There seems to be a trend in the prints I like and the ones that haven't made it onto my blog... The ones which feature above are all quite loud and busy with lots of shapes and flowers and colours!