It's Simple

I thought it might be nice to see what simply taking the image my aunty drew of my gran when she was a young girl playing by a pool of water and repeat it would look like. I thought I would do this without any fancy tricks from Photoshop to start with. Just keeping it quite naive. It looks so different to my normal style and I’m not sure how I feel about it. It feels like it’s been done before.

As this is me working here of course I didn’t just stick to the simple style of the image above... I thought as I’m at a computer I may as well see what crazy design I could come up with with this design. Below is one of the examples that came out when playing. I don’t think that this design is as successful as the rest of my designs so far.

They're melting...

While we’re on the subject of my Aunty Lila’s work I thought I would bring a funny story up.

As I had had a lot of fun with the liquefy tool on my designs so far I started doing it to quite a few things (even photos) to see what effects I could get. One that I thought was funny was what I did to the image of my great gran Ada, and my great aunt’s Lila and Doris. So everyone knew which was which I had named them on the image and when I liquefied them they ‘melted’ so to speak.

If you look at the name it has changed from ‘Smelt sisters’ which is their proper name to the ‘Melt sisters’ instead. I think it’s quite appropriate as they are 'melting'. And it's quite funny…

Floral

So far this project hasn’t really headed in a straight line. I’ve jumped from here to there and back again. But then I like how this keeps my options open as which direction I go in when I start developing. I chose to go back and look at one of my aunties images and see what I could do with it.

I thought the flower image was really strong so thought I would work with that one. I decided to draw the outline and see if I could make a pattern from it. Or just modernise it.

I decided it looked a bit bare so added some colour which I thought looked interesting.

Again I started playing around with the blending tools. Removing the opacity of the motif as well as adding the rainbow gradient over the top. I love the colours in this, I think they are really bright and stand out nicely.

I chose to try and take a step back from the rainbow and see what a repeat would look like. I used two layers with the same design over the top of each other. On the black and white the two layers are merged together to create a denser patter however on the colour ones the background repeat is faded slightly so the front one is more prominent.

I then tried my usual flip repeat to see what the pattern would look like. I got rid of the white background and on Photoshop this means the checks show through (which I think is interesting. It makes a better background than simply white) I also had fun with the gradient tool again overlaying the pattern with different colours to see which looks best.

I then tried inverting the pattern to see what that would look like and I have to say I think these are really nice. The white borders aren’t as harsh as the black and blends nicely with the design. I especially like the purple colour palette as the colours stand out more against each other.

Let me know what you think and comment below…

Getting distracted (shocker)

Next as always I got distracted on Photoshop. I thought I would go back and look at the images I found from Sherlock Holmes and see what inspired me. Of all things the shadow of a banister on the wall stood out. I thought it was an interesting design and I thought I would take inspiration from this and create my own.

I started by drawing out a quarter of what I wanted because when I tried to do a good drawing that was equal it looked terrible.

 
I then flipped it on Photoshop to see what it would look like as a full design. When I was actually doing this I was only planning on doing the shape on the computer and then go and draw it by hand but like I said I got a little distracted doing some patterns…

Earlier in the day I had been talking to Abby while she worked on the computer and she used a tool called liquefy on her work which made it look really interesting. I decided as I was already on the computer I would give this a go myself and see what I got from it. I started simple and just accentuated some areas like the image below.

Next I went completely crazy with it. I used the tool to a point where you can’t really tell where the design came from in the beginning which I like. I also decided to add a bit of colour and found the gradient overlay on the blending tool which looked great.

When on the gradient tool I thought the design looked great in many different colour combinations so I decided to save them all and see which looked most impressive printed out. The ones I have posted here are me trying the rainbow colours in different ways which I think look great. This simple use of colour really makes the designs stand out.

After choosing my favourite I thought about the background colour and decided to try and see if it would look better than just simply leaving it white which I think it does. I love love love the turquoise one. The designs remind me of art nouvou and I think this might be a nice route to go down to see if I can get some more inspiration. I also think although I am primarily thinking of doing interior designs for my finals, I think these would look amazing printed into silk scarves or something. I could really imagine them being great like that.

 Let me know your opinions in the comment box below…

Lillian Smelt

So yesterday started well as I posted once on here... however I had planned on posting more but thanks to the weather and not wanting to get stuck in Hartlepool over night (if my trains got cancelled I would be stranded here) so I left on an earlier train than originally planned, and then typically once I got home I got immersed in other things and never got back to posting again so here we are... trying to fill you in on what I’ve been up to the last couple of weeks... hmmm where to start...

How about posting about an interesting object I found?

For things to draw I decided to look in the back of some cupboards to see if I found anything that made me go ‘omg! I haven’t seen this in ages’ and one of the things I found was my great auntie’s sketchbook.  Pictured below with her sisters is my aunty Lila (centured) around the time that she has dated the images were drawn.

Unfortunately a few years ago she has passed away (at the great age of 98) but I thought it would be a great idea to see if I could incorporate some of her images alongside my own work and see where it would take me. As the book is now decades old it’s quite vulnerable to fall apart so I decided to scan all the images from it onto the computer so I didn’t have to keep flipping through the pages to see them all. Below is a few examples of drawings from the sketchbook.

 Next I thought I would combine the two ideas I had had so far. Bringing the old (the drawings) and mixing it with the new (the code). The images below are the first results I came out with which I think look really interesting. I’m not sure where I will take these ideas but for now I think it’s a good start to the project.

What's behind the image?

Again I’m sorry for the long absence… I keep meaning to post but never get round to it.

I thought I would start at the beginning now that I have actually sat down to fill you all in on what I've been up to. When discussing my project with my boyfriend who did computer science at university he gave me the idea to look at what things really look like hidden under the surface, like this blog for example. So I thought I would post some interesting ones I found.  The two images below are actually

I thought it might be nice to repeat them in different colours and layer them over the top of each other to see what pattern i could get just from them.

Mark also said to do the same with a photo to see what that would look like as they may be interesting to use as backgrounds. So I found a picture of the two of us and did just that. The image below is what the code to its right actually looks like.