Ideas for patterns #3

Johanna Basford, Inked

Website: http://www.johannabasford.com/
Blog: http://www.johannabasford.com/blog
Tumblr: http://www.mydesktoday.com/

Basford is an artist, an illustrator, a designer and importantly works with ink and pens to produce her beautifully decorative and maximalist works. She has an interesting website, with photographs of her previous and present works and has a range of stationary and fun things that feature her beautiful drawings all over them, crawling with an abundance of life, and all inked perfectly.
I bought a colouring book as a birthday present for my cousin a while ago

Its a beautifully printed book on this nice thick paper stock that has a kind of a cotton rag or watercolour paper feel to it. A lot of art galleries I have been to stock some of her stuff so I would recommend checking them out, and also explore her website, it's a beautiful little place on the web.

She works, not only on paper but on 3D objects, has produced illustrations and drawings for various fashion retailers such as H&M, created works for publishing and so on.


Also she loves Staedtler ink pens, as commented on in her blog post: http://www.johannabasford.com/blog-article/247
Staedtler is an important brand in stationary and for designers, artists and makers and well anyone! They produce top notch quality stuff, pens that I have never experienced leaking or breaking unless I have been unduly horrible to them.

Ideas for patterns #2

Ideas for patterns #1

 

The flower/leaf paisley combination looks

like my favourite to work with at the moment.

Lines of mixed variances, inspired by a piece of fabric, 

the change of block fill in to a cross hatched texture is worth playing with. 

 More lines, mixture of pencil and black ink, a nice combo, 

as I particularly like pen for its bold graphic look

but pencil provides a shadow like appearance.

Blue masks, dots and diamonds

A fabric piece that I am working with at the minute, patching it with white pieces of similarly stretchy fabric to create larger pieces, originally an old trouser kindly donated.

 

The pattern looks quite aggressive up close. Like masks all bunched together to scare off irritating people? Brilliant range of blues on the fabric that are hard to capture using a scanner or camera. Quite pretty with the lilac bit of paint I dropped on the corner. 

Plants and Petals, Bloom Journal, Issue 21

Bloom Journal is a beautiful journal that is, like many journals, expensive - so I scanned in pages from issue 21 last year and finally have come around to posting them. A small preview of Bloom journal, issue 21.

A lot of rich photographs of flowers and brilliant shots of fashion, including a clever fusion of African and Japanese textiles, ideas around fabrics and patterns - something that particularly interests me.

More images from previous Bloom issues can be found here: http://www.edelkoort.com/editions/
Additionally it turns out that Trend publication also have a website called Trend Tablet (http://www.trendtablet.com/), where they post often about things that influence trends/direct trends themselves, with interesting visuals and a nice clean site.

References:
Trend Union. (2013) Bloom journal/magazine (photographs and text), no.21 2013. Various photos and texts, pp. 23,53,67 and 145.

K & M Associates. (2014) Trend Magazines, Bloom Magazine (online). Available at: http://s291360959.initial-website.co.uk/trend-magazines-catalogues/bloom-magazine/. (Accessed: 3rd June 2014).

Trend Union. (2014) About (online). Available at: http://www.edelkoort.com/trend_publication/ (Accessed: 3rd June 2014).

Archived Snip: Alexis Bittar, bracelets and bangles

Beautiful bits of jewellery mixed with walls cracking and crumbling. 

This jewellery designer is pretty clever and amazing with his variety of bracelets and bangles.
Not a single rough or sharp edge, the jewellery shapes often takes exaggerated forms, tubular and always so beautiful. They have an edge of other worldliness about them that I find fascinating, I think its his use of kind of frosted materials, or materials with a translucency to them.
Lucite, a material used to form the some of the bangles and bracelets he makes, is a type of thermoplastic which is known and used as a shatter-resistant alternative to glass, a material traditionally associated with bangles due to the way glass clinks and makes sounds when bumping or hitting each other - like bells? Plastic bangles don't share this sound, their more clunky really in that respect, but their safer and stronger than glass. Lucite is also known as perspex or acrylic.    

References:

Alexis Bittar (2014) Alexis Bittar. Available at: http://www.alexisbittar.com/ (Accessed:15th April 2014).

Ellis, K. (2009) 'Alexis Bittar Crystal Bangles', The Gloss, 1st November. Available at: http://www.thegloss.com/2009/11/01/fashion/alexis-bittar-crystal-bangles/ (Accessed:15th April 2014).

Scottsdalefashionista (2012) 'Flower power ! Don’t miss Alexis Bittar’s spring jewelry trunk show at Nordstrom !', 19th April (Online). Available at: http://www.scottsdalefashionista.com/flower-power-dont-miss-alexis-bittars-spring-jewelry-trunk-show-at-nordstrom/ (Accessed:15th April 2014).

 

 

Yee Sook Yung, Blue Ceramics and Gold

2010
Ceramic trash, epoxy, 24k gold leaf

 

Upon seeing this advert in an old copy of Art Review, I did a little digging on the artist.

Website: http://www.yeesookyung.com/

Using what is thrown aside and normally thrown away by a ceramics master. An artisan who reproduces old Korean ceramics (Joseon Baekja or Celadon), the pieces deemed by the master as not up to a high enough standard are cast out.

After baking in a kiln by using the old method, these Korean ceramic masters break almost 70 percent of the porcelains, they don't reach up to their masterpiece standards. Then she takes over, putting 'the broken bits and pieces of ceramic trash together one by one as if I'm putting together a jigsaw puzzle. And I cover the seams with 24 karat gold leaf. The result was uncanny and bumpy objects. Each broken piece operates as a self forming into an infinite proliferation toward as unexpected fabrication-fictitious loquacity and stuttering discards from standard conventional masterpieces.' (Yung, 2014.)

Yung works with these pieces like she is forming a 3D collage, with cracks and raw or rough edges imitating the torn edges found on paper and card, and representing similarities with the sculptural forms of Henry Moor works, in terms of curved and bulbous shapes that look like their glooping in places and splitting by process of mitosis, a fantastic mess of what has been chucked. Busts and bodies and displayed limbs and creeping trunks that weave and wind and grow into obtuse shapes. These works give us a glimpse of a mastery that we may never really see again. Each piece is unique, and special in its present particular state, unlike the historical whole counterparts that are copied from - these have rebelled against their identities, their beautiful shapes becoming grotesque but then so brilliantly given lines of gold. Precious again.

 

 

References:

Art Review. (2011) 'Yee Sook Yung 14.01.11 - 17.02.11', [Advertisement] issue. 47, January - February 2011, p.13.

Saatchi (2014) Yee Sook Yung. Available at: http://www.saatchigallery.com/artists/yeesookyung.htm?section_name=body_language (accessed on: 3rd March 2014).

Y.S.Yung (2014) Translated Vase. Available at: http://www.yeesookyung.com/01_translatedvase2006-2011.html (accessed on: 29th March 2014).

 

Copies: Black and white plants

Copies: Black and white patterns

From an unknown source.