Botanical Untouched Post One

9^th-16^th January

To start my second self-initiated brief off I have been looking at photographs I took whilst on a trip to Amsterdam. Whilst there I visited the Keukenhof tulip fields where there were various types of flowers and plants to capture. (fig. 9)

Fig. 9

Amsterdam Keukenhof 

Using watercolour, I have been painting from the colour, shapes and textures I can see within the photographs. Initially my painting started off a bit rough and messy as watercolour is not something I have practiced much, however I have persevered and started to create my own style and collection of paintings. The paintings have a unique quality to them as they are still not fully controlled and perfect, yet have gained a certain character and delicacy as seen in fig.10.

Fig. 10

Watercolour painting

As my context is furnishing fabrics, I have been looking for inspiration from liberty London’s (see fig.11) print collection for furnishing fabrics and have found many that relate to the theme of florals similar to my work. Comparable to the Liberty London collections, my water colour paintings are very feminine which is ideal for a bedroom wear context as my designs will attract a female audience with the idea to dress both individual and shared bedrooms in many different households. This could also mean designing for bedrooms for couples as females are most likely to take over the interior aspect of their bedrooms, adding softer more dainty furnishings.

Fig. 10

Liberty London furnishing fabrics

As my drawings consist of various smaller motifs, I am planning to scan and photocopy them in order to manipulate scale and create some interesting compositions. These compositions will be the basis of my prints, which I will be taking to Photoshop to create repeat patterns. I also expect some of the repeat patterns to be a guide for my mono prints. Although I have not practiced mono printing techniques recently, I believe it is the right approach to allow the kind of characteristics I have built within my watercolour drawings and paintings to communicate through on to fabric. I expect the mono printing technique will be time consuming and so I plan to produce different prints using my Photoshop developments in order to bulk up my collection when digitally printed.