Locating | Fashion Illustrations

Part of my self initiated brief for this Unit stated that I wanted to develop my fashion illustrations and make them more outgoing and playful. Because of the colourful and lively nature of my prints I feel like this is the perfect opportunity to create crazy illustrations to go with them.

I began with photographs of my friend's faces and altered them in an app to give perfect complexion and increase the size of their eyes, overall making them look strange. I found an artist on Pinterest called Niky Roehreke, who's collage work inspired me to collage peculiar hair onto my faces using marbling photocopies. I loved the results because of how ridiculous they look.

After showing these in my weekly tutorial it was suggested that I also add block colour features like eyebrows and lips to make them even more bizarre. At first when I did this I wasn't sure if I liked them or not because they really were strange, however I have definitely warmed to them and think they go perfectly with my print designs. They are particularly suitable for my high-end print collection.

I then experimented with poses to see if they looked better. However, with the addition of the heads the weirder seemed a little but too much and looked way over the top. Because of this I decided to go back to the original basic standing position with arms by the sides. I feel like this works better because it doesn't take attention away from the faces and also shows the garment well.

 There is a more cartoony-like feel to my illustrations this time, which definitely goes well with the print collection as it is very colourful and reminiscent of pop art.

Live Brief | Threadess

One of the criteria for the Locating Unit is to create a project based on a Live Brief. As well as creating online portfolios and uploading work, I decided to create an entry for the Threadless competition 'Bad Luck'.

Taking the projector photographs from the self-initiated brief as inspiration, I came up with the idea of working with the word 'Glitch'. Some of my original drawings already had this appearance, which is where the notion came from. My connection to bad luck came from the internal breaking and smashing of phone/laptop/tablet screens. From personal experience, I once dropped my phone which resulted in the bottom of the screen going black along with a glitch half way up the screen. All while my mum had only just left to go on holiday, and with the contract in her name I had no way of getting it fixed or a new phone until she returned. Definitely bad luck!

From my ideas I started on Pinterest and made a new board gathering some ideas, from there I added glitch effects to the photographs I already had. These came out really well and have the damaged and impaired look I was going for.

Using these edited images, I began to create T-shirt designs in Photoshop. Normally my designs are more fashion based and aren’t intended to be particularly literal. However, Threadless competition designs do tend to speak for themselves with no disguised or concealed meaning. Because of this I tried to make the designs literally look like a broken screen, which wasn’t as easy as I originally thought it would be.

Eventually when I got the hang of it I came up with a design I really liked and chose that one to submit. Generally on Threadless people create a 1200 x 1200 pixel document showing the print itself along with an image of it placed on a tshirt. Also, you have to title your design. People come up with quirky and clever names for their tshirts so I decided to go with 'Drop beats, not phones'. Here is the finished design:



Locating | High End Research

I have chosen to make two smaller collections for this unit aimed at two different consumers. As I have never worked towards a high end client before I decided I needed to do some research on the general shape and designs of designer garments. Taking photographs in Harvey Nichols and Selfridges has helped me to sketch what their garments look like in order to decide on shapes for my own.

Sketches of garments in Harvey Nichols and Miss Selfridge


I also did some research on print placement on high end garments. Theres examples of both repeat pattern and print placement in AQ/AQs newest collection.

Locating | Editing in Photoshop

I have finally taken my drawings into photoshop and started to work with them. So far they have turned out quite well.

I want to work with contrasting colours through this unit as it is something I personally haven't done before, I normally stick to a well thought through and structured colour scheme. Because of the way I am, I would stuggle to choose the right colours to contrast with eachother as I am too inclined to choose colours that 'match' or go together, which isn't what I want for my designs right now.
As a result of this, I am repeatedly using the 'Hue/Saturation' tool in Photoshop to edit the colours for me.
So far I really like the effects it is giving me. It makes my designs colourful, weird and a little bit crazy. The vast colour story reflects those used by my inspirations Basso & Brooke, Clover Canyon and Piafries. Although my colour story doesnt match the literal colour of an iris, I feel the designs somehow still look anatomical, keeping in theme with the concept. This is something I said wanted to achieve if possible in my brief, so I'm glad that is starting to look possible.

For a while after my first set of designs I became stuck, as for some reason the colours weren't changing correctly when I altered the hue/saturation. Eventually I realised that it was my projector photos and the vast change of colour in them that was creating the results I wanted, meaning I needed to find a way of working those into each design.
However, I didn't want to disregard the shapes and cut-outs in my collages, so I used different layer effects in order to work them together. Here I experimented with hard light, soft light, divide and overlay. The colours show through nicely and worked perfectly when the hue was altered.

Locating | Clover Canyon and Basso & Brooke

I recently perchased 'The Print Revolution' by Tamasin Doe, and I absolutely love it. It has really reminded me just how much I love digital print. Although I had heard of a lot of the designers there were a few new names. Two of which are Clover Canyon and Basso & Brooke.

I have fallen in love with all of their collections, and they produce the exact type of designs I want to create for this Unit. They are so energetic and full of colour, and are beautiful to look at. In my brief I stated that I want to be more experimental with colour and not stick to a strict palette this time. Taking inpiraton from these colourful collections should help me fullfil this. I will be taking inspiraton from both designers when it comes to editing my own designs in photoshop.

As I am creating a High Street and a High End collection, I believe prints like these could be adapted to both easily and effectively. The prints are so enthusiatic and vibrant on their own, so positioning on the garment will be crucial.

In particular I really like the mirror effect on many of Clover Canyon's Garments. This effect is done a lot in the fashion industry, so if I choose to made use of this I will also have to try and make it my own.

Locating | Marbling

Marbling turned out really well and I came up with a few possible colour stories. I liked how although I moved the inks the way they spread wasn't down to me and there was a broad range of drawings as a result. 

As marbling is a predicted trend forecast there are a lot of designs out there that include marbling. I want to make my designs different and not just remain a simple marble print. I researched ways in which I could edit them and came across a few collage artists that I've taken a liking to, one of which is Justine Khamara who uses small pieces arranged in interesting and regemented ways. Her circular pieces drew my eye because I could replicate the pattern in order to look like an iris.

I have tried some collaging techniques myself and have gotten a little carried away. I didn't expect the outcome to be so strange or look so weird. However I actually like the obscurity. I have never created something I would consider 'weird but wonderful' so I think it would be a good idea to give it a try. This also gives me the opportunity to work with a lot of colour, which is again something I want to experiment with as in the last unit I struggled with using too many colours at once. Now the plan is to get my drawing scanned in so I can start photoshopping some designs together.

 

I came across an artist called Piafries on Pinterest this week, and I really like his work. It looks unpredictable and organic, similar to marbling techniques. I especially like his use of colour and virbancy in his work. The colours appear random but also really compliment eachother and so a probably thought about previously.

I attempted to copy his work which didn't turn out as well as I'd hoped. The colours don't bounce off eachother in the way that his do. Although I wont be using the rough acrylic paint marks in my work, I am going to continue to be inspired by Piafries use of colour.