22.02.21 - Using Home Furniture as Design Inspiration - Animal Cushion

I really love this cushion at home and decided to use it as inspiration for the furnishings in the dolls house, re-arranging it's motifs and applying them to small scale items.






Observational soft pastel sketches, appreciating the soft tones used in the fabrics of the cushion. I separated animals from plants onto two different pages.



Next I scanned in the plant page because I thought it had potential for a repeat patten for a wallpaper - I made several variations:

1)
2)
3)
This image shows the state of the wallpaper and detailing in the first floor, it made it difficult to add my wallpaper designs neatly because I didn't want to remove the original paper for sentimental reasons, however I later re-painted the skirting boards and door to make them look clean and white


For my cushion designs I made tiny polyprints based on the animals I drew - a flamingo, cheetah, toucan and a zebra. They were so small that I had to use a needle. 


These are my initial tests. I used the most prominent colour of each animal -



I sewed them up and stuffed them to make these little cushions and Im happy with how they turned out - the animals are a bit difficult to make out but given the scale I think they are as good as I could make them.

Then I made "Lite-Brite" design, which is a retro toy involving a Lightbox and little coloured pegs, and although this was more for fun I still enjoy the outcome, plus the whole premise of the lite-bright is re-arrangement to make different designs.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

29.1.21 - Objects in the Bath and Shower

Image
One of the first things that came to mind when I got the re-arrangement brief was to do something with my collection of beanies. Because they are so colourful, I decided they should go against a plain background, so I cleaned the bath out and started filling it with the animals.  The first set of photos shows the animals in a random arrangement where I photographed them from different angles... For these close up images I placed the camera in the bath with the animals and blindly took the photographs, not knowing what the results would be. The flash came on for these pictures which makes the in-focus areas appear very sharp with a clear representation of the animals' surface textures. They also remind me of claw machines in arcades, which gives the images a nostalgic feel - all of these beanies were manufactured in the 1990's and early 2000's. This is the thing that opens and closes the plughole in the bath, and it created some strange reflections of the beanies which look
Read more

'Shades of Green' exhibition at St Mary's Church

Image
'Shades of Green' is a Nottingham city artists studio group exhibition, with various works about the longing to be in green spaces during lockdown and the artists reactions to isolation. My favourite was Karl Wilby's 3D piece with the whales and flowers. I think it's really clever how they seem to be floating in the air and are feeding from the flowers like humming birds, it's also really interesting to see whales represented in such a small scale, it's quite surreal and endearing. I like the contrast between the reflective coppery metal flowers and the matt turquoise whales which suggest the colour of oxidised copper, showing a transition from new to old - shiny to rusty - maybe also alluding to the endangerment of the species. There seems to be quite a strong connection between this piece and our fabricated nature project because of how naturalistic the whales are, when in fact they have been made through 3D printing which is as artificial as it gets. The meta
Read more

Mike Kelley Style Photoshoot

Image
  Mike Kelley's 'Ahh... Youth' piece inspired me to make my own version using old teddies from home, including some from my parent's childhood and some from my own - plus a recently acquired 90's troll doll from a car boot sale. I set up the studio lighting in a way that would reduce shadows behind the objects and used a white background like Kelley's image, which gives a professional atmosphere that  elevates them from being worn-out old creatures to something special and celebrity-like. I used a tripod so that they are all to scale with each other, and I like the empty space around them, it's like they have room to breathe and think. I also had to adjust the ISO, white balance and shutter speed on the camera to suit the light and conditions of the space, then I used manual focus to get the sharpness that allows you to see all the details and textures. After uploading the photos to the computer, I cropped them on photoshop and classified them into two separ
Read more