Picnic Design...

Some more drawings that I have been doing, which I hope to turn into images...

Below are hearts actually done with watercolour, I tried to re-create gingham with watercolours...

I've also been playing around with the idea of untensils and in one image trying to make a gingham pattern with it...

Below, attempting a Gingham pattern...

Artists Research, dealing with pattern...

I need some inspiration and a fresh outlook at repeat pattern!

So... here's a quick look into some artists who deal with pattern that I've been looking into...

http://abduzeedo.com/10-great-surface-pattern-designers

This is a webpage full of lots of pattern, there are only a couple which I particularly like though, they are:

Julia Rothman - http://www.juliarothman.com/ (nice website)

Julia Rothman, situated in Brooklyn, New York, her work has a simplistic, hand-drawn style, which is what I would like to portray in my work a little, although this seems quite hard to do, and keep it looking clean at the same time...although doing a piece which is completely hand drawn pattern gets me excited and was an idea I was going to try before. I particularly like the merky brown colour of the piece below and also the line work in amongst the houses...

Rinzen - http://www.rinzen.com/

I really like the design below, although it looks very graphicy, I think im a sucka for polka dot and also I really like the way they've used colour and also the idea of making the bear appear every so often...

Marian Bantjes - http://www.bantjes.com/?c=Patterns

She works with interlocking objects in some of her work, this is really interesting and makes me wonder how you would go about repeating something as intricate as that without hand drawing it all!

Artivism - Exhibition Opening at Armly Mills.

Today, was the final exhibition to which we received invites in the post, for the Artivism project, the sculptures had all been put up in a section of Armly Mills Museum, everyones hard work had pulled off and it looked pretty good and very biazare! There was drinks and nibbles, very civilised and Kevin had said that people which had visited the museum throughout the day and all been intriegued by the project and had enjoyed looking at it.

Above the work was a film Shari had put together, encompassing everybody's stories behind their work, in which my illustrations were featured, which got me a little mention in the credits of the film, which I took a photo of.

Below are bits from the film...

This film will now be shown in the Museum...

Shari had even put together a cute DVD for everybody, on them, - the film projected above the work, - the interviews documentary style piece shown at green generations launch and - a slide show of the work done throughout the project.

Finishing Artivism Project pieces.

Here are some photos of Chris Jodie and I getting our characters finished for the exhibition...Chris and I spent the morning searching the craft shops of Leeds, to find paints and things we didn't need but just wanted. The idea of my piece is a bear sat on a shelf with books...

I don't think my finished thing is something that I am overly proud of, but it was fun to do something totally relaxed and not really worry about what it looked like, although when I looked at the finished thing I did hate it and feel kind of ashamed that I'd done it!

'Cute' Wallpaper.

I have been asked by Paul to design a 'cute' repeat pattern/wallpaper for him to put up around Leeds, don't know whether It will be the finished design for the end of this brief, I'm going to start it and then will give Paul something in the near future, after the deadline.

This also ties in well with my 'Picnic' brief as picnics are pretty cute, and I have got this reaction from people when faced with the word cute:

I began playing about with origami, which also then seemed to form a sort of 'cute' patchwork picnic blanket idea, but from this, I then tried to put it in a digital format as the design will be screen printed.

These are the little paper/origami pieces I was doing, It felt nice too just play about with paper and folding rather than a pen.

Although they look a little bit like an advert for Thortons chocolate which is a bit shit...

Then I worked into them digitally on the computer, making shapes from the original origami heart I made on illustrator...

PICNIC - Research.

The work I will take to 'On The Wall', will be by the theme of 'Picnic', therefore I have started drawing and re-searching picnics!

There was an online picnic blog I found, which has pretty much everything you need to know about how to have a picnic and places to picnic.... http://picnictablechatter.com/

Online I found recipes entitled 'picnic', picnic equipment, luxury picnic hampers, picnic events that were being held, even sites where you can order already made/put together picnics!

http://www.justpicnics.co.uk/_site/samplemenus.php#

As expected a gingham background and I enjoyed the idea of the packaging they had used for their picnic boxes.

I'd been itching to do a bit of Origami and so I put together some little picnic baskets in this style, the first one I did was plain, but the second, I thought of 'The Teddy Bears Picnic' and used the repeat pattern I had put together for the Armly Mills project, as this was quick to do and I wanted to know what they picnic baskets would look like with a patterned put to them. I think it looks pretty cute...

But I also asked friends what they though of when they heard the word picnic:

From this I got a lot of inspiration and got some good drawings from each word and began drawing....

Big Issue.

Today I got a call while I was in college from Rosemary Townsend from the Marketing Administrator for the college, Christian had spoken to me the day before about a magazine article that the college have been asked to write about what students have done, supplementing their course, and said he would forward me the article and then told me to perhaps get it touch with Rosemary to add something to it about what Amber and I do with the Big Issue In The North.

She called me today and we met and had a 10 minute chat about what we do and how it coincides with college, also about the exhibition we are putting on for them.

She took my email address and has emailed a copy of what she wanted to send and wanted to just run it by me and see that we were happy with it, she also wants a photo of us doing Outreach, so I intend to call Claire(from the office) tomorrow and ask her to send a photo to me if she doesn't mind.

In the document Rosemary sent to me, she mentioned that we were putting on a photography exhibition, although this is only where we're taking the images from, so I'm half and half whether to email back and get it changed to 'laser cut illustrations'.

This is good publicity for our exhibition!

We could also get into touch with the West Yorkshire Post!?

Below is the email I received from Rose with the article she has written about it, it's good in publicising the idea of volunteering as well!

I emailed Claire at the North office asking for a photo and she said that she would send it to the communications team at The Big Issue and they have to OK it, but also that she thought it was a good article and it will promote the volunteering well!