Mark Making- Recreating Carlos Miele

As you may know I have difficulty publishing some of my freelance work due to a lot of legal mumbo jumbo. Consequently I have to be a touch more creative with how I show my fashion prints. Today I had a cunning plan!

Carlos Mieles's Spring Collection is my inspiration this week. Here are some of my favourites,

Reinterpreting these has proved a little trickier than I had first anticipated. It's really easy when using Photoshop to make designs look overly digital and lose the organic sense that comes with hand painted designs.

After several failed attempts to recreate these shapes I finally found something that works! AND it's great fun!!

A little scanning and some Photoshop later I've got my design for the day! Here's a sample......

Thanks for reading!!

Paisley

There's been a change this week with my freelance work ( and also with my bathroom but that's a story for another time) and I'm loving every second of it!! Allow me to explain........

As you may or may not know, I work freelance for a textile agency which produces prints for womenswear based on the latest catwalk trends. For this company I have designed 180 textures and animal prints with the odd geo thrown in. I have been creating said designs by hand. I am not a fan of doing things by hand. I am not a patient person! The whole process has caused me much frustration for some time now.

This week I celebrated a victory, when after much pleading and bum kissing the company head finally gave in and allowed me to submit some digital designs! That's 1-0 in the battle of hand-made vs digital and 1-0 in the battle of me vs the design studio! get in!!

Anyway, here is my design inspiration for the week,

I am quite fond of Jonathan Saunders and of this collection but would never have been able to even think about tackling something this detailed by hand (at this point I refer you back to my aforementioned impatience). Needless to say I've had an excellent week recreating these designs without so much as a glance at a pot of dye!

Some stupid legal nonsense prohibits me from posting whole designs on the internet but I can post pieces (actually I don't know if I can but I'm going to). So without further babbling.........

Thanks for reading :)

What to do, what to do??

I'm having a bit of a melt-down this week. It's not necessarily a bad thing (my life isn't falling apart you'll be pleased to know). I've just had a bit of a sensory overload. I'm really excited about this next set of designs and typically my enthusiasm has lead to confusion.........

Basically I've been trying to figure out which direction to take said designs. I started out the same way I usually would; research and drawing followed by more research. Then drawing. But somehow I managed to get lost.

See the problem isn't a lack of material to work from or even a lack of ideas. The problem is a complete lack of focus! All the images I've pulled for inspiration are gorgeous and I just can't seem to narrow it down! I can't pick a style or a mood or even a colour palette. To be honest I always have trouble picking a colour palette. Actually that's a lie. I don't have any problems picking a colour palette. The trouble is sticking to it! I love colours and I'd rather not exclude any of them from my designs!

Luckily I know my weaknesses all too well and have decided on a plan of action to combat them! A mood board!

If you're accustomed to creating mood boards you might be thinking that this one isn't actually all that helpful. You're right. It isn't really. While I was compiling it I realised that my indecisiveness might actually be a good thing! I might be able to find a way to merge all these things together into one super, awe inspiring design which all other designs will cower at the feet of. Either that or I'll create some kind of abstract floral monster that will have an eye-melting effect on whoever should gaze upon it. Either way, it won't be boring!

Wish me luck :)

New Floral

I started working on something new this week. I'm not ready to reveal exactly what it is and it's still in the reeeeeeally early stages but as I haven't posted anything in a few days I thought would.

Like I said, this is miles from finished. At this stage I'm still drawing and playing around with composition and repeat. If you're thinking this is an unusually subdued palette for me you're right! Not to worry, that will all change once I've had a chance to build up the layers! :)

When Monkeys Attack!!!!

These are a bit old now but as I recently had them photographed (and since they helped me out in an interview earlier this month) I thought I'd resurrect them!

These were designed as Christmas presents for my sister and a close friend.......for last Christmas, don't worry I'm not spoiling the surprise!!

I'm thinking of designing some more (less personalised scarves) based on one or either of them. They both kinda have a story so I thought I'd share it with you :)

The scarf below was designed for my sister and is about my sister. To be honest I could spend all day telling you what everything means but you'll have to be satisfied with the dragon for now..............

I should explain first of all the sort of child my sister was. She was incredibly neurotic. Everything was scary; rain, elevators, clouds, monkeys (that one is completely rational of course, monkeys are always on the prowl on the streets of London, ready to claw off your face).

Add another 20 fears to that list and you might be able to understand just how concerned my sister was about her safety from day to day. What made this worse was despite her concerns she was also incredibly accident prone. This meant that the rest of my family had to constantly think up ways to console her when she came running into the kitchen yelling things like, 'Mummy have I got brain damage?!', after tripping down the stairs and crashing into the wall.

One of my favourite 'distract-Grace-from-her-own-thoughts' methods was the introduction of a wooden dragon to the ceiling above her bed. An idea which was cleverly thought up by my Dad (who no doubt longed for the days when his sleep wasn't disturbed by an irrational 6 year old yelling about monkey attacks).

You'll be pleased to hear that despite their best efforts, the monkeys never did attack our bedroom!    

The second scarf is slightly more self explanatory...............

Basically, I have a friend, who by her own admission is pretty vain. I considered just buying her a mirror but then I thought, what's better than one reflection of yourself?! A whole bunch of reflections!!!!

Much love as always to Grace and Juliette xx

Woop Woop!!

Last week was pretty hectic. I had a lot of work to do for the lead up to premiere vision and I've not been too happy with the standard of my work of late so I decided it was time to knuckle down and get some good designs under my belt.

I thought I'd post a quick update this evening coz I've just found out that one of my designs has sold :)
If you've been following me u might be wondering why this one sale is worth a post of it's own; a luxury that none of my other sales have had over the past year. Well I'll tell you why!

This design is the first that I've not done for anyone else. This design belongs to me! Not to a design studio or to the person who buys it. It won't be in stores with a Marks & Spencer's label on the back or recoloured to someone else's specification. I did it MY way and it belongs to ME :D ...........so grins all around really!!

A step in the right direction!

Today is a good day!! :D

Contrary to my concerns yesterday my meeting today went very well!! I'm still a little apprehensive about announcing to the world that the whole things a done deal (and by 'thing' I mean scarf related sales) in case it falls through but so far everything is looking positive! Sooooo.......slightly premature yey!

If you've been following you'll know I don't like to leave my posts without pictures so here's some scarves which hopefully you'll be able to buy pretty soon!

In other news, I managed to figure out why I had 2 missing prints and 8 extra for the hotel project. Not sure I mentioned that before (I meant to) but it was slightly puzzling at the time. AND I joined my fellow grown ups yesterday by finally filing my tax return................I realise this isn't something people generally get excited about but I'm always happy to find I have some level of competence when it comes to boring but necessary tasks.............thanks for the help Mum :)

Plus I managed not to get too distracted from work, spill dye on myself or create any more hideous print designs! So all in all this week is shaping up to be a LOT better than last week. With any luck it'll stay that way!

The last of the butterflies

I had every intention of updating on Thursday but things got a little hectic after the whole recolouring the wrong image fiasco. I did manage to get it all done though so here's a sample of it.

I imagine you're almost as sick of looking at these blasted butterflies as I am (if you've been following my progess that is, otherwise hello and welcome)! In any case I won't be posting any more for a while as I move on to other things. Things such as the meeting I have tomorrow to discuss a new project!

To be honest I wasn't even going to mention that in case it doesn't go well and I'm forced to write an embarrassing follow-up post about how much I suck. In fact all now I'm wondering if I should delete it and save myself while I still can!!

.................But I won't............wish me luck!!