Designing

[Page from sketchbook]

I've been pushing my designs more since I chose my colour palette as it meant I could start to bring in colours, and work out whether I want them to be accents or whole blocks. I like the clean cut of having white included with the blue and orange hues, so when designing less collaged illustrations I can play around on photoshop with amounts of each colour. 

Before next week I think I need to up my pace with designs, and really start pushing them to produce as many as I can. I am worried that I am a little behind on my schedule, but hopefully I can pick that up before I start the next week. To get the best out of my designs and work I need to be able to develop my initial designs through testing parts on an actual person. Due to a shortage of calico at uni, I will be using normal paper, but I doubt this will affect the outcome and what I hope to achieve. 

I started looking to artists who focus on pain and translate that into their art. Earlier in the project I was looking in Egon Schile, but I think I will leave that influence in my illustrations only as his work isn't overly relevant to my concept. However, Frida Kahlo is a brilliant reference. Pregnancy, or the lack of it is a pretty strong running theme throughout all of her work. After being in a pretty bad car accident that left her unable to concieve, her work portrays this 'loss' and mentality of having a missing something. Motherhood being the ultimate aim for her, some say it drove her crazy. Her paintings are pretty powerful, and sometimes very uncomfortable to look at. I admire how she could create such a strong reaction, and aim to create a similar effect. I hope to portray this through shape. When speaking to my tutor Dan, he mentioned creating a pregnancy bump, but moving it around the body to different places. 

I think a lot of my work could be translated into different textiles like print and embroidery, I haven't had a chance to do this so far and would like to include it.