Saturday, 19 December 2015

Palette Pin: Purple and Pink and Blue


I love how even the black areas in the palette look dark blue, 
or is it the other way round? 


Zooming out to give you a wonderful view of the print on this fabric
The touches of peach work alongside the pinks is
one of my favourite things about this fabric.

.

Tuesday, 1 December 2015

Butterfly prints flutterby

 John Lewis Edition Spring 2014?
Only because the dark needs some colour to it
and a lightness to it lines.
Advert for Marccain @ Marie Claire January 2011

Tuesday, 24 November 2015

Labels of a decorative sensibility

The original tags for the jeans that are now, sadly deceased (a moment of silence), 
but preserved in photos in this old blog post here
Love the simple graphic stripes with these 
wonderful decorative floral like shapes.

Thursday, 19 November 2015

Blue skies, rain and denim

Then orange, then pink, so denim splurge.

John Lewis Edition (unknown)
Marie Claire. January 2011, pp. unknown


Embroidery on denim too is something that really fascinates me at the moment, 
some of my own embroidery below:

Testing out watercolour brush in MS Paint - nice texture, really irritating point/beginning of it though. If it was a gimp moving brush maybe that would be better? Blues abundance. 


John Lewis Edition Spring 2014/2013, pp. unknown



References:
John Lewis Edition. Spring 2013/2014, pp. unknown
Marie Claire. Spring/Summer 2013, pp. unknown

Monday, 29 June 2015

Narrative

Narrative within my writing can be a strange thing, as a reader, I am constantly finding texts, words, sentences and chunks of literature to read, in a single sitting or several days or weeks. But as a visual artist, it seems like my work lacks a narrative, because it is so caught up in colour and visual language, shapes and geometric, repeated forms and motifs falling into pools of white paint. Or is that a narrative of sorts too?
But I forget how interesting pictures and words together can be and become in front of a reader. Take for instance the classic imagery found within the Chronicles of Narnia, CS Lewis's childhood classics that have been his legacy to generations of people. Such imagery was penned by the artist Pauline Baynes, she presented them looking up to date at that time, now appearing perfectly vintage.

Pauline Baynes' map of Narnia 

A walk through the snow with Mr Tumunous and Lucy 
http://www.paulinebaynes.com/?what=artifacts&image_id=573&cat=69

Images captured from a copy of The Chronicles of Narnia:



Then Roald Dahl and Enid Blyton. Even Brian Jacques, whose animals had the personalities of human beings, of heroes and legends and warlords and mothers, and whose images didn't hide away from emotions that inhabited.

Jacqueline Wilson's books, known by all of kinder kind, are illustrated by Nick Sharratt, an illustrator with a wicked sense of humour, whose 2D drawings have movement and life to them that I bet in 3D or CGI, or as photos, they would lack. Like drawings that the very reader can or might make, making the experience personal, the abundance of stars and hearts on the covers, in pages beside, on top of and underneath text are fantastic and full of imagination, of possibilities. Like her writing.

These writer's books often have interesting particular visuals that are iconic for their books and readers. But what about in other fictional worlds? Fairy tales of course are classic cases of imagery abundance. 
Some scans from my own books of imagery that have really appealed- classical styled books, from which folklore and stories of ages are written in.
The images feature a wealth of pattern and ideas that are worth looking into for inspiration when facing an art block. 

Opposite are a few images that inspired this post, photographic of course. Beautifully coloured and looking paper cut like too, with hints of winter romance and the iconic image of red lips repeated upon the ballet dancer's costume, her tights I think and on her transparent sleeves.
Shadows and projections overlaid upon objects imagery works effectively with pattern and on strange shaped objects.

References:
Dahl, R., (1997) Fantastic Mr Fox. Puffin Books; Middlesex, England.
Dahl, R., (1997) The Twits. Puffin Books; Middlesex, England.Henshall, D. (2008) Pauline Baynes, The Guardian, Wednesday 6th August (online). Available at: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/aug/06/booksforchildrenandteenagers (accessed: 23rd June 2015). 
Lewis, C.S., (2001) The Chronicles of Narnia. HarperCollins Publishing; Great Britain, pp.11 and 139.
Marie Claire (2011), January 2011, pp unknown.

Saturday, 28 February 2015

Spring Coming Soon

Spring is coming, it's on the horizon.
The green shoots.


Marie Claire (2011), January 2011, pp unknown

Friday, 13 February 2015

Golden Lamé, Solar Punk and Sub Genres

The beautiful gown worn by Alicia Keys in the advert campaign for Givenchy's perfume Dahlia Divin is described as being a Golden lamé gown, lamé being a term for clothing or material in which golden or silver threads run to give it the sheen and colour and reflective ability that it has.

From the advertisement of Givenchy's  Dahlia Divin perfume,
scanned from June 2014 issue of Stylist magazine.


I love the details on this gown, they make me think of elaborate steam punk imagery that uses nuts and bolts and other metal fastenings, steam powered contraptions, strange welded together bits of metal and so on. But then they also have a more of a solar punk feel. Solar punk is a recent genre that I've been thinking about and looking into, it is quite futuristic and often involves the use of solar energies as a power source, I imagine it would also involve the use of any green renewable energy sources, sun or star burst motif imagery, (thank you Disney's Tangled).
These coils and things that look like bolts and screw heads look amazing. It is mostly bead work or large bead/gem work as you can see from the borrowed imagery:

Reference:
Stylist magazine (2014) Givenchy's  Dahlia Divin perfume [Advertisement] June 2014.

Sunday, 4 January 2015

Updates and changes

Marking 2015 with some updates to the blog layout and template, less distractions and cleaner layout, I hope. I was considering switching to Wordpress, but I've foregone that and decided to fix up this blog instead. Some old posts have yet to be posted, will be doing that asap.
Need to brush up on drawing skills too.
So much to do.