Once upon a time…
Like every finished design, each stage of our creative process has a story
London Zoo Aquarium
It all starts with some ravishing research!
Imagery, both primary and secondary you’ll be unsurprised to hear feeds the creative soul and helps to feed visual ideas for all things icluding;
colour, composition, texture, pattern, placement, repeats, aesthetic, movement, scale, materials,
and everything in between.
With our collaborative mission being to help raise awareness of the effects Climate Change is having on our wildlife and their natural habitat, a wealth of research is needed to help feed the narrative behind each design, in order to create thought provoking imagery to engage with our consumers. (Thats you!)
Research both visual and academic is all gathered together from a multitude of sources such as museums, including; The Natural History Museum, The Science Museum and The V&A. Books, films and magazines. Conversations, experiences and areas of outstanding natural beauty like; The Sussex Downs, Kew Gardens and The National Trust.
All these resources contribute to our fantastical creations!
The Natural History Museum
The Natural History Museum
London Zoo Aquarium
The Natural History Museum
Secondary imagery collected with both physical and digital colour swatches to formulate colour palette ideas.
Choosing a colour palette is an essential early stage during a design project.
Colours tend to be chosen from a limited and finely tuned collection of Primary and Secondary imagery.
Existing colour swatches are matched to photographs, and some fun is had in the dye lab to prep for sampling!
Primary imagery displayed with dyed swatches to test colour palettes on muslin and cotton blends.
Open mesh screen printed onto bamboo silk and milk protein cotton.
Experimental textual mark making prints inspired by research imagery of the arctic and Northern Lights.
Screen prep for some more intimate screen printing experimentation.
At home equivalent techniques came in handy during the global pandemic.
Marbling techniques used here onto a variety of textured and weighted papers to mimic a screen printed look.
The messy (and fun!) part.
Since studying at the RCA my exploration of different print processes and combining of techniques has broadened, giving final designs a unique and signature aesthetic.
Open mesh screen printing is a freeing process with no limitations, allowing me to explore textually using different mark making tools on the screen.
These prints were created using tools such as;
sponges, toothbrushes, sticks, wooden forks, cloth scraps, and paint brushes!
The sign of a good day in the print room!
Sketchbook page of exploring more mark making techniques using foil.
These marks were inspired and designed to mimic artic ice bergs and their glistening textures.
Water colour painting onto screen printed textual paper.
Motif illustration. ‘Capturing movement’.
Illustrating stories of how climate change and noise pollution and fishing effects the Arctic and marine life.
The beginnings of large scale placement design - you may recognise some motifs from our secondary research imagery.
Note taking, observing, analysing, and recording creative processes is key to remembering quantities, order and volume needed to recreate a design.
Final design colourised using Adobe Suites, and scanned textual samples.
This design encapsulates the life cycle of the natural habitats of arctic and marine life. The intricate details and elements symbolise and represent how they are all connected and dependant on each other to live and flourish. This piece also acts as a visual representation of how much other life the human race is also dependant upon to survive.
A combination of mark making using marbling, drawing, painting and screen printing.
Tools used: silk screen, paintbrushes, sponges, wooden sticks, ink, water, watercolour, paper, foil, fine liner and pencil.
Drawing out motifs for wordless narrative concertina book.
Mediums used: pencil, fine liner, marbling (for the background), photoshop brushes.
Detailing!
Often the longest part to any large scale design, but the most enjoyable.
The fine liner size normally used is 0.05, but 0.2 and 0.5 is also used for thicker detailing. Between 5-8 fine liners are used for each large scale piece!
In my element!