Presentation and Reflection

Presentation Review

For my presentation to Debbie from Digetex and Teresa I chose to talk through selected pieces of work that have been filed or printed out and mounted. Showing digital work on a screen is a useful way to show work to the world at large (such as on this blog) but I feel that if someone is there with you it's often better to show original work. This demonstrates colour use best, and shows how a design looks when printed out; digital designs can be very different on a screen compared with on paper or fabric, but ultimately they will be printed when sold and it makes sense to me to show them in this way.

I looked back through my blog to plan my presentation, and marked individual drawings and images to mention. I attempted to be brief, highlighting relevant points for me during the project. I focussed on my ideas, as the narrative of a design is important, and it's what gives the final product an extra special quality.

It was good to see how other people presented their work and there are a few things I noticed that worked really well; putting a context image below each design on the same piece of card looks really professional, and it makes it easy to compare how the design works at different scales. Although I like to work on separate pieces of paper and put them into a lever arch file for presentation, it is easier to flick through a sketchbook and it just looks and feels better. It also helps the viewer to see the drawings or designs as part of one collection, and provides a white background to see them on. So I could still work on separate pieces of paper but present them in a book afterwards. My portfolio case is looking worn round the edges, so I'll invest in a new one that has internal clips for next year. Generally saying less and grouping several images together worked well as a way of giving information, looking back I could really have cut down what I was saying further and given Debbie and Teresa more time to just look at my work, without me explaining it. Also, well put together boards look really slick, are a great way to show information quickly and help with selecting down the best images.

It was really useful to get some comments as we went along; Debbie seemed to particularly liked that I had shown my prints on a car, as this is something that she has recently seen at shows and is generally something that is becoming trendy with designers. I had seen cars coated with print a while ago with Mini's 50th anniversary, and a competition I think an MMU student won to get their design painted onto a car, but generally thought it would be appropriate for this project as it is a large scale object, that doesn't usually have print applied to it but due to new technologies could become popular as a way to show off design. This seemed to be in the Digetex spirit and I wanted to try something different.

Project Reflection

This project has been really fun and challenging, and the chance to work towards a live brief was exciting. The factory visit gave insight into how a company like Digetex is set up and works on a day to day basis and inspired me to think BIG in terms of scale and ambition.

Working as group to research the company was good as we each brought a different take on things to the discussion and I picked up useful ideas for presenting boards from the other group members.

I instinctively felt drawn towards 'Camouflage' but wanted to mix it with the more technique - driven trends to make it more diverse and appealing. The idea of presenting images where motifs don't resemble the source material and using visual trickery stemmed slightly from my previous WWII based project where, for example parachutes became hot air balloons.

Sketching quickly at Manchester Museum was something I hadn't really done before, but really altered the way I looked at the subject and produced surprisingly good results. I will definitely do this again in future, and might draw inanimate objects, while setting short time limits to test my skills further.

Using bright colour was something I was keen on coming into summer as my previous palettes this year have been more muted. Looking at Clarissa Hulse's work helped me to be more bold. Selecting my colours relatively early helped push my work forward, and experimenting digitally before going screen printing helped to sort proportion and placement of colour. It also clarified which motifs worked well together and at what scale.

To avoid using pigment unevenly and having to re mix colours, I planned each paper print in advance digitally. This helped to create a good colour range and saved time in the print room. Also I had 3 screens which meant more efficient printing. I knew my time was limited, so I painted backgrounds first to add texture and limit the amount of printing to be done.

The resulting final paper designs are bright and busy, which was what I was aiming for, and I am happy with the results. During our final tutorial, Teresa suggested producing a quieter digital collection to lend more variety to my work. This was quicker to do after my initial more complicated designs, as I knew which motifs would work well, and to give a feeling of space I used lighter backgrounds and left more negative space between motifs. This would allow some of my designs to be used together in different ways, and is definitely something I will consider earlier on in future.

For my context images I wanted to contrast my traditionally made screen printed designs with a modern feeling backdrop and my digitally produced designs with more timeless contexts, including gazebos, a castle and a car. The images for my second digital collection (cars and castle drive) were more successful; they had a better feel and the designs didn't look as out of place.

Overall I'm really happy with this project, and feel like I learned a lot. I feel more confident working to a large scale and being bold with colour, which should help me for next year.

3 Final Collections

My final collections are for different contexts; I have shown the paper printed designs as wallpaper, though they could be used for stationery, or indoor furnishings, while the digital designs could be used for decorating a variety of outdoor surfaces such as cars, garden furniture and structures, and buildings as well as stationery, wallpaper and indoor furnishings.

Paper Collection

   

I wanted to present these designs that had been hand drawn and produced using a traditional screen printing method in a modern context to provide contrast. The brightly coloured chair helps to bring out the bold colour in my designs.

1st Digital Collection

These designs were produced digitally using photoshop; to contrast with this technique and associated style, I presented them in more traditional looking contexts.

Designs in Context: Small Scale Garden Pavilions

Designs in Context: Larger scale Buildings

2nd Digital Collection

Teresa suggested that I create some more simple designs, that could potentially be used alongside other bolder designs. To give a feeling of space I used a lighter background, and fewer, well spaced motifs.

I decided to use a mixture of old and new contexts for these simpler designs, to show them at different scales and that design can be used in imaginative ways to fit any context; they didn't work well directly shown on the castle wall, but could form an interesting pathway.

Paper Printing

Before printing in the paper room for the first time, I planned out each print in terms of colour distribution and motifs, to help determine the printing order and save time. I used the black and white motifs put on screen as brushes on photoshop and a generic brush to show where watercolour would be applied in the background. Planning designs in advance was a new way of working for me but I feel that it worked quite well. I tried to use the full range of pigment colours more or less equally, and show all of the motifs at least twice.

Simple plans for use in the print room

When forming backgrounds I couldn't achieve dark enough shades with the watercolour alone, so I also used acrylics, sometimes watered down to give a watercolour effect. I tried to achieve different textures with the paint, and used different sized brushes to form a variety of marks. When painting my time was limited, but because I was loosely following my plans the composition and colour had already been chosen; this freed me up to be more spontaneous and try out different brush strokes, and gave the backgrounds more movement and energy. When it came to printing, the pigment had a more textured effect and the painted backgrounds were more plain than with the photoshop plans; this created quieter designs with better balance, that I actually prefer. 

Paper prints

In the left hand example above I added shells to lend more solid colour to the design, and to contrast with the detail of the sea urchin motifs. I made the green background in the middle seem like grass, by using a dry brush and producing vertical stripes with the paint; this adds to the illusion that these sea fans are trees. In the right hand example, it seemed appropriate to make the background marks circular, to mimic the snail shells, and I felt that the design needed more light space so used fewer of the textured blue motifs than planned.

When printing I didn't do any formal registering using acetate; instead I moved the paper under my screen before it was inked up, so I could see where the print would lie, before marking the position of the paper with tape. This saved time and still allowed me to accurately lay down the motifs. A couple of the motifs became slightly faint after a few prints, so I put the ink through the screen a second time to make them bolder. I found that working with the screen on a frame was easier than having to manually place it on fabric; it was simpler to see where the motifs would lie and visualising the overall effect was easier. 

Working with larger (A3) motifs definitely saved time and effort when it came to printing. I adjusted to working on a large scale sooner than expected, and suddenly A2 seems like a reasonably standard size to work to; previously my comfort zone was A4 or smaller. In future I want to push this further and start to produce a wider range of large and small initial research drawings. 

Colour, Motifs, and Clarissa Hulse

Colour Palette

I created a colour palette using photoshop, based on my research photographs and drawings. I looked at the colours Digetex provided for the camouflage board when choosing them, and tried to get a range of warm and cool colours so I can create designs that differ from each other in terms of mood. I gave the colours relevant unique names so they will be easily identifiable in future, as I would if my designs were being put into production by a client.

Brush Motifs

I made a large range of brushes to use so that my designs will not be too repetitive. Before starting to form images on photoshop I tested each one to see how it lays down colour and to see exactly what I had to work with. This really helped when it came to composition, because the motifs were fresh in my mind so I knew which one would, for example add a grainy texture or sharp edge. These are some of the brushes I made; for some I tested them with one click, and then with several to see the contrast. Again this helped to save time later on.

Photoshop Designs

I began to experiment with colour and composition, and produced designs of varying complexity, each with their own form of camouflage. All are quite busy, so best suited to digital design, and use a range of colours, in a deliberately bold or subtle way. I think they work well, and could form part of a collection despite the different emphasis for each. In previous projects a weakness was a lack of variety when it came to the scale of my motifs, so here I tried to use medium, large and small scale ones respectively. It adds another dimension to the work and extends the range of the collection.

Left: some shells are negatives of others, a subtle form of camouflage
Middle: shells ad feathers become palm leaves, and butterfly wings are parasols
Right: Texture and colour are used to conceal this sea urchin-like motif,
which itself is actually a sea sponge  

Left: experimenting with spacing of motifs and colour combinations
Middle: layering textures to see what works well and what new shapes can form
Right: the purple motifs are actually negatives, which isn't obvious straight away

Motifs for Screen

At first when choosing motifs for screen printing I picked my favourites from my digital designs, and used far too many. I narrowed them down, but after talking with the technician from the fine art (paper) side of the print room I realised that I couldn't use my usual technique of printing several different motifs from one screen onto different pieces of fabric before cleaning it. This is due to the much shorter time it takes for pigment to permanently block the screens on the paper side. This meant having to go back through my motifs and choosing them in a different way, prioritising easy coverage and pulling through, and increasing scale. I picked out the simpler photoshop designs and used the motifs from them for my screen selection (see below). There are 6 motifs, each A3 in size. This should help to achieve coverage quickly.

Both examples are simple in terms of motifs (2 each) and colours (3 each)

Final choice of screen motifs, 2 of which will provide background texture

I also needed another (quicker) way to form a background; rubbing wouldn't work on good quality paper, and line drawing or printing would take too long. Looking back through my research drawings I realised that watercolour would be a good solution as it is quick and provides a contrast to the defined edges of motifs on screen. Watercolour paper which is durable and able to take paint, and also has a slightly textured surface that I could always work into afterwards if needed. I still wanted to keep the printing to a relative minimum so picked out simple, bold photoshop designs and used the motifs from them for my screen selection.

Clarissa Hulse

I looked at a screen print designer called Clarissa Hulse, (also on Teresa's suggestion) and her work is really inspiring; she uses colour in a bold, fearless way and uses natural subject matter elegantly to form shapes and stripes. From a distance it isn't clear what the shapes are, and because of the bright colours you wouldn't assume that they are natural forms. This fits in well with the idea of camouflage and shows that a few motifs can go far if they are presented in an interesting way. Her work encouraged me to be highly selective when choosing motifs and to be less afraid of using vibrant colours together in my designs. Hopefully I will be able to carry this through into the print room.