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

Archived Snip: Paisley Box and Max Factor

Buttons in black and white

Black and white photocopy of buttons dug out of my old research file from university. The ones with shiny metallic areas scanned in particularly well I think. I had to leave the copier lid up just to stop the buttons backs from damaging the white foam pad on the inside of the lid.
The top row of buttons are particularly decorative, look classical in terms of pattern.

Pringle Packaging

Pringles taste amazing. Their packaging is also quite interesting, using very simple black lines to form the actual simplified shape of a Pringle crisp. Which actually looks like a beak - a duck beak....daffy duck. There is a band of this repeated shape going all the way around the see

through plastic covering of the Pringle tubes.  

They overlay quite nicely too.

 

 



Floral lace scans in b&w

Some lace scans. Originally the lace came form a t-shirt like top I bought from a charity shop in town. The floral pattern on the top can be found on a previous post titled Chintz roses; odd colours of pink, red and purple-blue.

I haven't yet got a chance to use these pieces in any painting or work, but I used the rose print top part in my degree show exhibition as an appropriation of the typical floral patterns now commonly seen on the streetwalk and catwalk. A pattern that has been brought back out of the cupboards and dusted off, then given a pat down with modernisation - as has lace or lace imitation fabrics of course.

Thinking of doing a lace feature of prints/scans/photos for September.

So please by all means send in photos/scans of lace or bits of lace form anything via e-mail to patternandsurface@gmail.com  

 

Archived Snip: Independant Radar, grunge and sequins

Scans from an old Independent Radar magazine from a Saturday Independent

- dunno the date but I can say with a bit of certainty that is it from this year.  

The above costume is really fascinating just because of the abundance of blue glittering sequins.

They catch the light really well, making the costume look more and more intricate and

expensive or couture like.

Then there is the mask made from a kind of net that is also lined with sequins.

The face made highlights the unconventional use of sequins over the facial features.     

 In the above and below images, the singer is dressed in different textures, including feathered,

which beside the grungy and splattered background makes everything look raw and edgy.   

Archived Snip: Blue flowers and Golden Light

Some found clippings from magazine advertisements:
(Can't remember which one).

This beautiful very simply coloured pale blue on white

presents two different flowers in a repeating pattern

surrounded by stems and leaves. Its hard to tell where the

repeat begins and ends in the original snippet. 

The edge of the cutting presents a nice

picture of real (or maybe fabric/fake?)

flower with the carefully printed floral image

that is either a wallpaper or a vinyl sticker.

In a beautiful kind of rhubarb red/pink.

This damask like pattern is very regal looking - suiting the wedding based advertisement naturally. The rich golds and the lighting of the image seem to show a richness of the pattern that perhaps wouldn't be seen without such effects. the pattern is very Victorianesque.

Black, yellow and flowers

I've recently been going through my sack of textile remnants and pieces and have found that these pieces in particular seem quite odd. Normally I tend to stay clear of black or really dark colours, seeing them as tones or colours to be wary of - as if they are predators. But here I utilised them in a scheme to create interesting contrasts between dullish but bright yellows and creams and the dark blues and blacks of the fabric backgrounds - even taking pieces of suit trousers (worn out) to add to the long rectangular piece.  

A fabric piece I have already blogged about here. It is one of my favourite pieces just because of the way the print is, colours used and the way it tiles in places - where the error of the overlap of the pattern/tile makes the piece all the more memorable. 

Swirls, twists and silver

This is a small piece of a wallpaper sample I got from B&Q a while back, known as Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen Cote Couture Wallpaper. 

I picked it solely because of its use of pattern, the damask type of patterns found on fabric where two types or thread are use to create a pattern within the very surface of the fabric.

 

The choice of tone and metallic colour is particularly interesting as it seems to refer to how in traditional damask fabrics, often one thread would be shiny whilst the other would be dull, presenting a pattern that would be shiny, standing out against the dull coloured surface. . 

The damask is made up of floral shapes, petals, leaves - shapes often called paisley motifs as well as vines and other kinds of twists. The paisley itself has particular reference to the Greek motif of a tear drop

The wallpaper itself is not the best kind in terms of practicality, it rips and gets scuff marks quite easily; not the most hard wearing of wallpapers. 

More details about the wallpaper at B&Qs website.      

Geometrics and the red telephone box

Old red telephone box.
Black and white dots.
Golden-yellow lines and boxes.

A part of a series of collages I made last year.
Looking at both colour and geometric shapes that bring together a strange kind of theme to the collage.

 
 

Pinning and cutting

My blog will now be showing my art work and practice as is progresses.
So now to some OLD work:

The above orange fabric is a piece of silk with a very traditional blossom pattern in black and well orange. But what an orange! The photo doesn't show the power in the orange sadly.

Fabric Selection

A few photos I found weeks ago that I never posted but really should have. 
Below is a border design like piece on
a dress styled kameez (tunic top), which is a detail I love.
The whole suit puts purple alongside orange,
and then the touches of brown on the embellished
areas help when it comes to looking for matching jewelry and shoes. 

Just brilliant, two colours rarely worn in my opinion that are brought together.
The trim uses pink, white and brown shiny rayon like threads,
looking into damask like designs that
surround the flower shapes.
Lotus like blooms horizontally lined up.
The light plays with the shiny thread;
creating areas of shade, of light and dark.

The embellishments to the above neck area of a top are quite interesting, using thick black thread to create this beautiful leaf motif
and these splodge like flowers drops,
alongside swirls with sequins dotted around the shapes.
Leaves venation in gold thread – lush!

Zag-zig and diamond flakes

So tempting to skive today's post, but I figured 

these photos have been waiting to finally be shown in all their glory, 

admittedly one is a little blurry.

Very simple shapes used on a coat lining,
here is a photo from the hood part of the coat.
Using wavy and zig zag lines as well as snowflake like structures
created using the diamond shape.

The colour is a brilliant kind of midway between pink
and purple and red, 

kind of plumish but with more red thrown in.

Any way the coat belongs to a friend and was bought from Primark.
Fantastic!

The week of coats special has come to a close, but hopefully I'll be able to do a month special next month with it being January, or maybe another week special for the first week of January.
Back to the random regulars.

Boxes and weave together again

These interesting structures, squares
that align themselves into walls of squares
really stand out for me.
The buttons, plain and simple react
perfectly with the colour palette chosen.

The greys, subtle browns and navy blues alongside greys,
so dark they could be mistaken for blacks,
come together alongside whites and creams
to create great contrast that mimics a stone wall like structure,
where stones are not always one colour, and one may be
the one that stands out the most.
I imagine Sean Scully would love this sort of stuff.

It is another Next coat – well who knew?
I didn’t, but clearly all these coats came from the same or similar years, bearing in mind the designs of this and the previous posted one are clearly related, like brothers or sorts.

Again a great display of simple shapes melded
with an intricate pattern of weave using skeins of thread.

Better on the inside with weaves

Starting out the first of the cold months coats week with this coat
found in a charity shop,
which has an interesting inside lining,
made up of both plain fabric
and this brilliant hessian like weave.
Its so tactile and interesting,
again begging the question of weave itself in a piece of clothing, bringing to light its importance,
its initial skeleton and character building of the fabric and item of clothing.
Something personally interesting me at the moment in my own work.

The edges of the coat reveal this beautiful weave very quietly,
with it almost edging forward,
falling
onto the front like some dribbling
                                                                                water running down
the inside part of a table leg.

An overall look of the coat,
to me the outside was quite plain and dull and lacked any detailing on the front except for the beautiful creeping weave.
The colour was a dull grey, possibly because of its age,
so I hope perhaps it was better grey when new.
Though maybe it could be carefully dyed?
Though I imagine a nice bit of embroidery in select places could it bring it back to life.

Buttons lets the coat down too, I'm not a fashionista,
but to me buttons are like the part of a coats soul.
So to conclude, in essay like style,
the inside was more interesting than the outside.
Doesn't sound right, does it?  

Brush Pattern Feature: Wings for all

Well not really. 

They are simple wing brushes to be used in
Adobe Photoshop or in the Gimp,
or indeed any other image software that has an ability to convert images into a brush file.
Really maybe it should be called a stamp file instead. 

Anyway these brushes were created by sammigurl61190 @ DeviantArt.
Sadly she seems inactive at the moment, but her profile is still there,
as are other brush packs she has made. 

Click the link to view it or 

here to see the original upload of her brush set.

The brushes can make interesting motifs
when repeatedly piled on top of each other.

The brushes are well capable in forming flowers too,
very pretty flowers might I add
and as the brushes are in grey-scale
you simply select the colour you want and paint.
(For users of Gimp the brush-set in .gbr)

Spots - and not Spot the dog, though he is adorable.

They kind of remind me of giraffe like polygons, but here they are more more round, and more graphic too - if you see the black stripy parts that almost cling onto the peachy brown areas.

Ever present influences

Pages from Marie Clare October 2011 issue.

Ever present being the polka dot, or the dot, or the circle,
which ever word you use to describe or name or classify it.
It is every where, liek thel ine then if you think about it.

What most interests me with this spread is the interesting colour combinations,

always coming in twos and sticking to at least one fairly bold colour.

There is clearly a sense of constant with the dot.

Moving onto the Aztec inspirations of the moment,

I haven't seen much of it myself on the street - except on jumpers I think.

But I'm looking forward to seeing more of the Aztec's infleucneing through pattern,

their own ideas of pattern are individual and unique.

Incredibly defined by straight lines, angles and points and geometric shapes.

The use of the diamond, or square pushed to one side a little,

features heavily in the clothes on these pages.

Colours are solid, bright and bold,

with black left to make its defining place.

Victorian Design and Ornament - and I didn't have to do any research to find that out

I feel like I should have referenced this book Harvard style.
Any way here is what I got from Amazon:
Meyer's Ornament - Victorian Bible of Design by Frank Sales Meyer

In the library bookshelf above,
and got some pretty graphic golden lines below.

The 'O' in Ornament on the spine is known as illuminated text.
One of the earliest texts found with illuminated text is The Book of Hours.
A quick Google search of this will give you a wealth of words and images. 

Blogger likes to rotate images no matter which camera I use,

I'm going to get to the bottom of this though.

The image in the corner here uses typical Victorian ornamental imagery.
The vine like lines that seem to have an attitude of movement about them, 

almost like a clock face with the interruption of the 

golden blocks that seem to divide the circular motif into pieces.