MATS: Wall Art

The latest Make Art That Sells assignment that I completed was called 'Wall Art' and, to be honest, I found it really challenging! We were assigned two colours - mine being red and purple which we were only allowed to use (alongside neutrals - so black, while, greys) in our work. I embraced this part of the assignment because I feel that I do need to restrict myself more with colour palettes. I think I am definitely better at using colour than when I was a student - often overwhelmed by every variation of every shade and tint available on photoshop - which I think is common when you are starting out. I also LOVE colour and have in the past, just not known when to stop, wanting to use all the combinations I can - at the same time. Even when I dress myself, I have always gone for the boldest brightest and often, most unfashionable colours that may not compliment. As I'm typing this, I'm reliving a lime green dress that I thought was amazing back when I was an early teen and wore it to every school-hall disco and ice staking night out I could, much to my friends (very vocal) horror. 

What I'm trying to say is, that I am aware that I need to keep working on my use of colour - keep refining, keep playing. But that's like anything - everything - isn't it? I suppose it's also about feeling confident in your own choices, when with lots of conflicting opinion it can be hard to be sure that something is working. Maybe I actually need to channel the spirit of young and brave teenage Jenna in the lime green dress, who really didn't care if anyone else thought she looked cool or not... 

Back to the assignment...  The first task was to create or collect as many items, patterns, papers, objects with the colours on. I spent a day painting, printing and drawing lines, shapes, textures and patterns. Which I scanned in to my computer. 

Then the second part was to combine this into a piece of wall art, with a quote and florals that could be sold at Anthropologique. So like a dream brief really... this was the challenging part for me, I started to think about what is for sale at Anthropologique at the moment - which I absolutely love anyway and began to feel a bit overwhelmed - how can I work honestly but try and fit the audience of Anthropologique? So I stumbled and overthought for a while really focused on the floral requirement of the brief, which derailed me... but then I reflected on what I am good at illustrating, what do I enjoy illustrating? Lila Rogers always says that people relate to your joy and if you are creating what gives you joy, it will shine through in your work and people will connect with it.

I think that I am good at making endearing characters with funny but charming personalities and I love creating them! They make me smile the most... so I thought I would add some critters and characters in my piece, which started to make me feel more comfortable....but what kind of creatures? Why would they be there? The piece needed to have a quote, so what kind of quote would hold it all together? 

I thought about what I believe in - things like 'turn off the TV', 'go on an adventure', 'being brave', 'just go for it' that 'making makes ideas'.... I looked through some old note books where I often record overheard conversations, inspirational quotes from films - or even sometimes scrawled on the back of toilet doors in clubs and pubs. One stood out which, I think, I wrote down when watching a film about graffiti artists called 'Beautiful Losers'. Someone on the film had said something about how we all have the right to be us, and I loved it. 'You have the right to be you undiluted and true' fitted well with strange little characters too. I thought about just making up random characters from my own imagination but I wanted it to be more meaningful than that, so I looked through a hefty illustrated animal encyclopedia and sketched animals that aren't familiar to me - or here in the UK at least - such as okapis, lion tamarin monkeys (which later became other objects and characters you can check them out here),  some unusual rats and deers too.

Then I added them all together, using the hand-painted samples I had made right at the beginning added them to the piece and lots of handmade textures. The final is a mixture of hand painted, handmade patterns and textures, hand-drawn and digitally coloured. The brief was to make the image a square size. Overall, even though it took a long time to get to where I wanted it to be - I really enjoyed the process and the final outcome. I would have never of made something like this, but I still feel that it is true to my own voice and hand. I have recently had some printed at 41cm x 41cm they are available as prints in my etsy shop!

MATS: Round 2, Staffordshire.

For the Make Art That Sells Round 2, the assignment was to look at Staffordshire Pottery, like these guys above, which I found in an Antique shop one Saturday. Staffordshire Pottery is lots of hand painted lions, zebras, sheep, people, cats and dogs, with funny but endearing expressions and lots of lovely motifs on them. My Nana tells me that they 'aren't fashionable anymore' when I told her I now want to collect all the funny dogs I possibly can. They are quirky and fun and something that I never considered drawing before, but that's the point of Make Art That Sells - it forces you to look at new subject matters beyond your normal gaze. I thought I'd share some early sketchbook studies with you - some are rough, most are just playing around. I started to use a brush pen more and added colour with crayons. I also got some new gouache for Christmas, 

so experimented and played with them too.

I LOVED drawing Staffordshire Pottery so much! The aim of the assignment was to have designs for plates based on the characters and motifs. Here is my final submission for it:

What I liked the most, though was the characters that I drew in my sketchbook... and I wanted to use them in another way for my shop and myself. Thinking about this, after work one day some work colleagues and I went Riso-Printing at Dizzy Ink in Nottingham. We were making a risograph printed zine in a few hours and thinking about a theme so that we could all design a section and then bind it together as a long concertina book. One of my colleagues had brought in photographs from her childhood, old houses and shops she'd visited in Staffordshire where she was from, 

sooo, I happily started drawing some of my characters to form a Staffordshire zine! 

Here are the layers being drawn up: 

 ..and the final print (my part of the book) is pictured below. I loved Risograph! 

But that is another blogpost, for another day!

Cats and funny-faced dogs on the mind, I decided to re-draw my favorite characters and add in a few more to make a repeat pattern which I intend to screen-print this week on to fabric and make some cushions and maybe even some plush Staffordshire characters to test the water in my shop. 

I'll post and share the material once it's printed! But above is a sneaky peak - I wanted the characters to look funny and weird and not really match! I think some of them 

will look really good as plush toys - I'll let you know how it goes.