Sunday 19 June 2011

Hand-made felt sample pieces








These hand-made felted samples were created during a 2nd year work shop session with my tutor Joyce Paterson. I greatly enjoyed creating these sample pieces. Having a strong passion for screen printing I created a random silk screen and used my independent study time to spend extra time in the university print room with our technician Suzanne to screen print onto the samples with suzanne's assistance.

There are a mixture of screen print techniques used upon these samples, used both independently and in combination.

Sample 1 has two tones of foil added. This was achieved by applying the adhesive via the silk screen and then attaching the foils which were then heat transferred.

Sample 2 was created in the same way but has the addition of fabric netting for added texture.

Sample 3 was again created with the foil heat transfer technique. As an embellishment I hand beaded into sections of the foiled areas. Feedback from my tutors made me realise that I should have used beads with a more contrasting colour. Always a perfectionist, I removed these beads and hand stitched new beads. Picture 4 shows the original bead work in more detail.

Samples 5 and 7 are a combination of heat transferred foils and screen printed inks.

Sample 6 has the addition of puff binder (also known as Aqua Span.) This process is added via the silk screen as a glue and is again heat sealed which creates a raised textured surface. Coloured pigments can be added for extra effect. For this sample I used a completely different silk screen to create the puff binder areas than I used for the foiled area.

As I was not creating these samples in response to as specific brief, there is little continuity between them. However the two brown samples work wonderfully together I feel and are my personal favourites. I also like the blue samples as a cohesive collection. Only the final sample is individual, but I feel that adds to its charm.

I hope you like these samples. Feedback comments would, as ever, be greatly appreciated. I hope to post more work soon. Keep a look out for future posts and thanks for your continued viewings. Cheers Then ;-)

Saturday 7 May 2011

Suffragette Posters











I have always had great respect for the Suffragettes but have also been drawn to their propaganda posters and other merchandise that were produced, such as banners and broaches. I feel they had a very identifiable style that captured the graphic style of the time and loved the use of colours purple, white and green, which were the colours of their logo. I have included a selection of some of the best and most famous propaganda posters, eg. 'The Cat & Mouse Act' and 'Torturing Women In Prison.' I also wanted to included as a final photograph a portrait of one of my biggest heroines, the Suffragette 'martyr' Emily Wilding Davison, who became most famous for throwing herself before the King's horse at the 1913 Epsom Derby, an act which was to tragically take her life.

Thursday 21 April 2011

More congratulations!!

Huge congratulations go to Emma McVan, a friend and fellow student at the University of Bolton, for successfully beating a large number of other students to have her surface design chosen to grace the walls of Bolton One, a new leisure centre complex being built in Bolton.

Check out her blogsite at http://emmamcvan.blogspot.com/ to see the winning Bolton One design as well as other examples of her design work.

Congratulations also to Christina Pelle, a 3rd year University of Bolton student has also had one of her designs commissioned for the Bolton One complex. Check out her blogspot at http://christinagabriellapelle.blogspot.com/

Wednesday 20 April 2011

Scarf design photographs







I took these photographs of my sister wearing this scarf to show the printed outcome of my final design idea for my 1st year Digital Manipulation module. This bespoke scarf is digitally printed onto 100% silk and has a tag with hand embroidered washing instructions and company logo. I tried to photograph the scarf wrapped in as many styles as possible to exemplify its versatility. My sister is now the proud owner of this scarf.

Friday 15 April 2011

Bolton Progressive Threads

I've just found a website for Bolton Progressive Threads. They are a group of 20 textile artists who frequently exhibit their work as a collective.

They will exhibiting at Gawthorpe Hall, Lancashire from March to October. Strangely enough I've just discovered that an ancestor of mine used to own Gawthorpe Hall. How's that for a coincidence!

Contact details are as follows;

Website: http://www.boltonprogressivethreads.co.uk/

To be added to their mailing list: boltonpthreads@btinternet.com

For any other information: joyce-read@msn.com

Hope you enjoy the webite. I certainly did!

Congratulations

A big congratulations go to 3rd year University of Bolton students Rachel Dawson (patcheduptextiles.blogspot.com) Melanie Brown (melanie-kaytextiles.blogspot.com) and Danielle Burke (danielleburketextiles.blogspot.com) for doing so brilliantly at the Bradford Textile Society competition.

Wednesday 13 April 2011

Samples for company letter heads



These are my initial design ideas for company letter heads. I obviously wanted to keep the same artwork that is contained on my business card samples but wanted to separate the contact information from my company logo. I could have just placed the contact information at the bottom of the page as text only but felt it was more interesting to have a cropped representation of my artwork design alongside the text.

Another idea I have had is to use a separate image as a watermark style feature in the middle of a letter head and simply have my company name and contact details as text only in the same positions as seen on these two lay out ideas.

Final draft ideas for my business card (I promise!)



These are the final two alternative designs for my business card. My tutor suggested that I should decrease the scale of my contact details to ensure that the emphasis would be on my company name. I realise that this was necessary.

My original design had the same artwork as the 2nd sample above. Some people felt that it's too busy and detracts from the text. Also I originally had the text in black not white and this made harder to understand, especially as my company name is in Italics.

I had also experimented with alternative fonts for my company logo but decided on this font as it looks antique and the name Conway is in memory of my great great grandmother so the vintage style of the text was appropriate.

Tuesday 12 April 2011

A little sample of what inspires me


          


Here are a few examples of the wealth of design work that inspires me. I have always had a great passion for the Art Nouveau and Art Deco periods, but my inspiration runs far broader, taking in the Victorian and Edwardian eras, and design from the 1920s to the 1970s.

The three examples of Art Nouveau here date from 1897 and are the work of Felix Aubert. Although the remaining designs date from the 1960s you can see how the Art Nouveau style was being re-interpreted by designers such as Peter Hall in his 1967 furnishing designs for Heals and Shelagh Wakeley's designs for Fidelis Furnishing Fabrics in 1966. Meanwhile the Art Deco period was also featuring a resurgence as seen in the final design sample, taken from Janet Taylor's 1969 collection of furnishing fabrics for Heals.

Business card design




These are 3 of the alternative design lay outs for my business card. Over the past several weeks I have altered this template time after time, whether it's involved amending the text scale, font, text placing or the positioning of the art work. I have spent so much time on this now that I am no longer able to be objective and decide which lay out to go with. I'm actually starting to dislike this design and am tempted to scrap it and chose another piece of artwork to use with the text instead. Until I was required to design a business card I'd had no concept of just how complicated and time consuming the process really is. Once I've made my decision I plan to NEVER amend my business card ever again!

Sunday 10 April 2011

All Eyes On Celia Birtwell









As with Barbara Hulanicki, Celia Birtwell is one of the designers who has always inspired me. Probably most famous for the striking designs that graced her late husband Ossie Clark's wonderful clothes in the 1960s and 1970s, Celia has recently begun designing equally exciting clothing for Top Shop and has diversified into furnishings. Above are some of my favourite examples of her work from her Ossie Clark designs upto her recent Top Shop creations. I hope you find them as inspirational as I do.

As with the illustrations created by Barbara Hulanicki, I especially love Celia's drawing style. I find her illustrations wonderfully stylised and somewhat childlike and clearly identifiable as a Celia Birtwell creation. Although they were simply drawn to illustrate a surface pattern design idea, I feel her illustrations are works of art in their own right.

Saturday 9 April 2011

Lino Prints










These lino prints were created while I was completing my Foundation Diploma in Art & Design. The project was based on the architecture in a street called Hadassah Grove. This quaint little street is an unadopted street off Lark Lane in Liverpool. I loved Hadassah Grove as it made me feel like I'd stepped back into Edwardian times as the houses all date from this era.

I greatly enjoyed using the lino printing technique as I found it amazingly versatile. Simply by cutting a tile into sections, as I have done in some of these prints, you can create prints in a variety of colours. Also, by simply repeat printing on the printing press without re-inking the tiles you can create a variety of finishes. I liked some of my prints that had a more distressed finish as these make them look antique and therefore fitted with the theme of having been inspired my the Edwardian architecture of Hadassah Grove.

I still have all the tiles I created for this project and intend to use them again at a later date. I also still have more than 200 prints that were made in a variety of colourways for the dozen or so tiles that I made. The samples here were included in my submission portfolio for my interview for the University of Bolton, where I am presently studying. As course leader Donna Claypool was greatly impressed with these pieces I think these may have helped me acquire my place. Maybe that's one reason why I love them so much!