Project 2 week 9 and I-dott week 3

This week I focused mainly on my self-initiated project, wanting to create my repeat wallpaper designs ready to embellish onto. The previous week I had drawn out the designs in repeat, so this week was spent hand painting the designs and screen-printing others. It was interesting to try the two methods; while screen-printing was much quicker, I think the hand-painted effect lends an artisanal quality to the designs, which embodies the bespoke feel I want to create.

 

Hand painted wallpaper sample with flocking.

 

Ultimately, combining the two methods has led to a varied collection of prints, which I believe convey the theme of ‘bespoke wallpaper’ well. However, from doing this process, I have learned that designing in repeat is more complicated than I anticipated. I did not realise, for example that when screen printing in repeat, registration points need to be used to ensure the correct. This has led to some discrepancies in my final designs, which I would aim to avoid in the future. The same can also be said for my hand painted designs. To create these, I traced the cut through repeat of either 26 x 26 cm or 26 x 13 cm onto paper which was 52 x 52cm. on the whole this worked, but it was a very laborious process, and the nature of designing by hand has meant that in some cases the repeat hasn’t quite worked. Overall, this does not detract too much from the design, but is something I would need to consider when doing this again.

This week I also created two publications, one for my self-initiated brief, to detail the processes and materials used in my sampling, and one for the Bruntwood live brief, summing up the pitch I gave to the clients. I was pleased with how these came out - I have not made publications before but plan to again in the future, as I think they can be an effective way of communication ideas through both text and imagery.

I began embellishing onto my wallpaper samples with wood, Perspex, embroidery and flocking. I realised that it would be necessary to use a variety of different types of paper, from textured, to cartridge to thin, not only to convey different types of wallpaper but also to adapt for each type of embellishment. For example, hand embroidery was difficult on very thick and very thin paper meaning cartridge was ideal. Heavier embellishments such as Perspex were unsuited to the thin paper as there was a risk of it tearing. I explored these challenges thorough embellishing first onto small, postcard sized designs before going on to the final designs, which also helped with the arrangement of the embellishment on the final ones.

Finally this week was spent on doing more large scale drawings for the i-dott Geo Drawing brief. I painted onto corrugated paper, and worked with more paper cutting to create clean lines and shapes, while still retaining a handmade quality though the washy characteristic of the paint. This was especially important, as one of the main criteria of the brief was that the wallpaper have a handmade, artisanal effect.

paper cut designing for I-Dott,

 

This week was largely spent rounding off ideas, to focus on completing my final samples and assessing my body of work in anticipation of the deadline. Next week I will be finalising samples and mounting work ready for hand-in.