Inspiration: Emma Lundgren

Future Folklore print:

Emma Lundgren is a Sweden born fashion and textile designer and graduated with a first class honours textile degree from Central Saint Martins.
I particularly like her as she infuses her past (Sweden) with her present with contemporary London influences. Which is something i am going to try to achieve within my upcoming work.

She has used typical scandinavian design patterns like cross stitch and horses with a playful colourful twist so she provokes a feeling of the past and the future - typical design with contemporary colours.

 

I really like this piece as it is very geometric and routine but looking closely it is hard to tell were the repeat pattern starts and finishes and this is a aim that we have had with our recent repeat project. It has been very thought about to me it looks mathematical. I like her use of colours, she has broken up the background with a invisible line from red to white. The pattern of the broken square shapes helps with this transition. My eyes dart across the whole of the fabric due to the broken shapes however my eye is first drawn to the rythmic look of the statement flowers. To me this broken shapes that descend down the page is a way of translating visually that something has broken down, something has changed from it's original state. - Links to the idea of things change from past to present.

 

Emma Lundgren for Tokion Magazine.

"Blend past and future by constructing a future folklore hat for Tokion Magazine Reincarnation Issue 2009"

Emma Lundgren again has used the idea of past and future within her work but within sculpture this time. She has used old tablecloths, re-using materials with the combination of shiny new materials. Again she has used scandinavian design patterns with London culture colours and a feel to it. Her signature 'more is more' style is evident here.
 I love the colours here they are primary colours. The use of primary colours to me is a way of exploring my childhood. I would use paint kits that came with blue, red, yellow and white/black paints. I first learnt how to mix paint with primary colours. Children are more alert to the boldness of primary colours.

This looks so intricate. this inspires me to go onto the laser cutter! She has used a new range of materials to me it looks like a type of rubber due to its scaly yet shiny texture. Rubber is versatile and very tactile to be able to move and bend and be manipulated like that.

 

Colour editorial:

These fashion headpieces are a exploration of narrative and identity. She has used a variety of techniques here, knitting is predominant but it looks as though she has used material manipulation amongst the technique pushing it forward and making it unique. Knitting to me is about the intertwiningof two materials coming together, again another reference to my concept of past and present coming together.

It's all in the research.

Today we had our first contextual studies lesson of the year and i feel lucky to have elaine as she is very knowledgable and she too is doing a masters degree in further research. She is also very easy to talk to. I wrote down a lot of websites i could use to help me gain inspiration, ideas and trends which i have tried to do tonight. I have come up with my initial starting point of my new project: childhood. Nick said : what is Norwich to you? Norwich to me is my birthplace, it is also the birthplace of my siblings; coming froma large family this is a personal subject and something i get lots of ideas from. My youngest siblings are ages 2,6 and 9 years old which is perfect as it allows me to explore my childhood(past) in comparison to theirs (present). It allows me to take a journey through time and record memories that i have of my childhood and theirs in and around Norwich.

From a repeat project to a norwich scarf.

I have been thinking today after my cad embroidery induction that i would like to have a natural transformation from my repeat project where i have been focusing on flowers,pegs,scissors and other 'mechanical' looking objects. Norwich to me was where i was born, and i would like to take this as my starting point - a birthing place -  A people place where 132,000 people live in the Norwich City council area. I would like to investigate the transformation of birth to the working person that journey that they go on. Just like a flower starts as a bud in one persons home and blooms into a flower and is more of a concerntrated and controlled transformation.

Here are some images that i have found inspiring and are quite lateral and far off the target but can be used as starting points, colour palettes and techniques.

Paper sculptures made from tax returns and receipts.

Eunsuk Har.

Lasercut.

Tracey Kendall.
- a wallpaper designer/artist.

This piece of work interests me as this jigsaw wallpaper has been arranged in a way that you cannot ever tell what the image was.  A jigsaw to me signifies different aspects of someones life, different events, chapters, people, history and experience. All of this makes that one person. Using something simple and perhaps 'child-like' in a professional and mature way supports my idea of going forward with idea from birth to adult and the idea of laser cutting - this is all very exciting!

lateral thinking.

Part of Les' talk this morning was about lateral thinking and sourcing inspiration from unlikely sources that can have even the slightest of impacts you. It could be a colour, it could be a question, it could have nothing to do with what you are doing as long as it ticks into your mind and allows it to relate to your theme in one way or another...

Love the cut out shapes, reminds me of one of my scissor drawings negative space.
Also contrasting repetitive prints.

Fendi Spring/Summer 2012.

metals-part of the objects i've looked at all contain mechanical parts like bolts, screws, nuts, springs and metal materials.

metal made feminine.

I think i have learnt how to repeat pattern PROPERLY in photoshop.

Today has been a good day, a much better day than yesterday. I had a lecture first thing this morning that was held by Les (lesbicknell.blogspot.com) and his lectures he gives are a real mind blowing experience. He makes you think so deep into things that you even begin to think into things that you would have never though possible. After an eye opener of a talk, i took a very brave step into the oppostie building at university and stepped into the digital design room. Considering i am never in this building let alone in a computer room on my own, this was a step forward (literally!) and i learnt a few tips on photoshop like how to edit a dawing, how to adjust levels and how to make sure they are the standard of which is good to print onto acetate with. I got these straight into the print room ready to be put onto a screen of which i aim to do next week! Between this and 3pm i had spare time of which i put together 2 layers of kodatrace for another type of print, pat of this project is exploring all of the different types of repeat that print can offer, obviously the list is endless but i want to explore as many as i can as print is something i am very interested in learning about. I had my tutorial at the end of the day, and learnt that my strengths lie with my drawing and that i should continue to gain imagery from my drawing as this opens up so many options for me - print, stitch, repeats, digital art, illustration and acts as a source of inspiration. I also,after this caught our photoshopteacher who taught us more photoshop and for me clarified up all of the points i was obviosuly missing for why my repeats never repeated properly. I am pleased to say they are going well so far tonight and i feel much more confident and better about the project already this just proves to me that all my sleepless nights and negative thoughts stem from that fact that i was getting very stressed over the dreaded p word. I am going to continue makng repeats after i have posted this, i am very excited and motiated right now to explore more printing repeats. Here are some of mine so far...

I will definetley put more time into refining these but i was a bit excited over the fact that i have learnt how to repeat without a line showing, and how they repeat and not knowing what the actual repeat is.

1950s floral inspiration.

 

After my flower drawing workshop with Nick on Monday i wanted to take these drawings further and develop them into prints (also following the photoshop induction on Monday!) All of this week i have been practising photoshop skills to make a successful repeat pattern. To gain inspiration i took to our nuca library and sourced some print books both (1-1950s fashion print by marnie fogg and 2-1950s floral graphics) on 1950s fashion/floral prints and what was popular in that time period. I found that the floral graphics was much more of use to me as it produced some great colour ways and a variety of repeat choices in there. Whereas 1950s fashion prints focused on areas of interest from the 1950s like domestics. This was more informative to me in learning about the history of the 1950s but didn't gain a huge inspiration from it. Here are some prints i found particularly interesting.

I choose drawing over computers anyday!

Today- a start of a brand new week and we had a very fun, fast-paced drawing workshop this morning which i thoroughly enjoyed. We had to draw observational flowers, the print market today is made up of 90% floral designs. I do love florals as they are quirky, beautiful and easy to draw. However saying that i do not want to do my degree to make up that 90% off people, i would like to stand out in my own right with my different designs and be part of that 10%.

We made about 7 or 8 different drawings off different flowers in different perspectives concerntrating on the marks that we saw. What was interesting about this exercise was it was a way of teaching us how to understand different types of prints and what better way to just do and not think. This way of drawing has opened my eyes up to the possibilities and opportunities im missing out on spending time bein precious with my work,when some of the work i deem most successful is when i havent had time to question my thoughts and i have just 'done it'.

We then had to trace over our drawings several times, in order for us to make a half drop repeat enabling us to still see underneath it.

 

 With our drawings traced out and drawn we could then play around to create our repeats, this is what my outcome was:

I quite like it due to the combination of chunky designs mixed in with linear prints as it allows each design to be accentuated within it's own right. I would like to put this onto a screen though i will talk to the technicians about it to make sure that it would be successful or not too do it. Fingers crossed i will be able too! I would have to be taught how to print a half drop as a lot of calculations go into printing a full drop! Because i enjoyed this so much i decided to make some of the half drop repeats onto some of my previous drawings:

This is not a half drop repeat but it is a 'mirrored' repeat something else which we briefly touched upon but i wanted to take it further to widen my knowledge.

Half drop of 2 types of flowers.

 

 

Photoshop.

The second part of our day was learning photoshop skills. Well this was certainly a challenge i spent the hour and a half being able to work out how to cut and copy using mac software (something i am not familiar with) and learning shortcuts and am still not confident enough to be able to just 'do it'. So i was not going to be defeated by a computer and took the learning sheets home by emailing them to myself and going through step by step on my home laptop on photoshop cs5 (rather than cs6 - what the university has installed but i am reassured that this is practically the same system!) It still hasn't been easy and has been harder without someone elses knowledge to steer me in the right direction but i have made one half drop repeat design. It is very basic but didn't want to 'run before i could walk' so with new drawings that i will make, and newimagery hopefully i will build up my confidence to produce more effective repeat prints. Photoshop is such a good skill to have, due to the complexity only few know how to use it. Most industry, companys and business who are in the design industry will make full use of its potential.

 

It's a combination of pegs and flowers! Part of my original drawings and new drawings made today. Tomorrow i am going to look into it's negative space as i have learnt that this is just as important as the subject matter itself.

Print research

From looking at the colours i blogged about the day before i started to look into 1960s as this was the period these photos were inspired by. Looking through some photos and my notes from the past few days i remember one of the girls in class mentioned the fashion and textiles museum of which i went and saw a printed exhibition there. This encouraged and excited me too look into my findings as i was yet to use them to inspire my work.

 

Mary White was a popular post war textile designer in the late 1950s and 60s which fits in nicely to the colour scheme i am looking into and the types of print-layered and repetitive. The exhibition was small and intimate so i was able to evaluate and look into the work as much as i could, and really take on board the colours and shapes. Taking the photos was a great reference, and now i am happy to be able to include these into my current work. It is slightly different, but i have learnt that research (along with drawing) should not be a direct translation/link but a reference, a source that i can interpret to 're-invent' something.

Small environment for an exhibition at the Fashion & Textiles Musuem.

 A collection of the same prints but all in different colour combinations. It just shows how different a print/piece of work can feel in different colours and shades, each one emmits its own feelings and attitudes.

 

Although the colours are not directly the same as previous, they are a lovely and appropriate link into what i am looking at. I am looking at layers of prints in fun and interesting ways - block colours and linear layers with strong accent colours. By looking at a range of work i can fully understand and appreciate what works well and what works best for the context of my work.

 

'The Printed Square' exhibition was also being held at the fashion and textiles musuem at the same time. The exhibition was a colaboration with textile designer Nicky Albrechsten and Oasis for the Spring/Summer 2012 collection and they were off square printed hankerchiefs. It was really interesting however i don't feel i benefited from it's full aims whilst there as i wasn't as heavily involved in printing in my first year and therefore didn't appreciate it as much as i do now. Now i have had time to experiment within my own work and our second year has introduced us to new and challenging printing techniques that i see these printed designs in a 'new light'.

 

 I love how each one is different, some being very linear in pattern, some being photo realistic, some block,abstract and some that were more detailed than others. Seeing all these photos again has given me alot to think about.

Inspiration: potential colour ways for print design.

These photos are not mine, they are from an editorial of Vogue Germany (October 2010), inspired by the 1960s but this is not why i was drawn to it. It was the vibrant but muted colours that drew me in,we want something happy and cheery and although these colours are slightly on the drab side, these could be brightened up and given life too! I love how they are in contrast with one another, which compliments and highlights each of their 'personalities'.
I really like the bright pink with the muted blues lightened up with the sunshine yellows!