Drawing all sorts of collections for my final project this year. I was originally focusing on interior surroundings and drawing rooms as scenes... e.g. Calke Abbey doodles below! Left me desperate for a home of my own more than ever, I've started picking up things in prep... I'm quickly running out space on my shelves and starting to look like a crazy hoarder. I've moved onto looking at the objects themselves, taking them out of context so I can hopefully have more to work with when turning drawings into designs.
Sneak peek of what i'm planning to produce.. I'm working on combining print with ceramics, screen-printing my illustrations onto transfer paper and creating my own decals... I tried inlay and scraffito last project which worked well as surface decoration BUT I realised i'm just too clumsy for building in clay (this is why there's no updates, broken work isn't nice to look at!) With this in mind i'm testing out putting my designs onto 'vintage' (I hate using that word, people use it to describe anything that wasn't made last month, but I can't think of another which best describes!) ceramics... my idea is to take relatively plainly decorated plates, mugs etc and combine the old aesthetic with my own.
I'm looking at this project as a print project, which is why I don't see recycling and working onto already made forms as 'cheating'. Just the way I'd print onto a fabric and sew it together to make a cushion... I'm printing onto transfer paper and gluing it to make a forgotten about object admirable again!...it's also occurred to me that I worked to a similar aim with my commission project, remember? I wanted to get the boarded up buildings of nottingham noticed again and planned to do so by creating designs which could decorate the architecture and make it more admirable... maybe I've (without knowing) found my passion, recycling to renew?!
Here are some photos I've taken of the type of collections I'm drawing inspiration from... a few from The Hopkinson Gallery jumble sale over easter, and the rest I took this morning at a Nottingham Racecourse Carboot.. it was lovely and sunny + me and Rosie bought just about the whole wardrobe of a recently deceased grandma! (I never thought I'd end a blog post with that..!)
