Scarves finally ready to be printed!!!

detail of autumn dawn scarf

An intense couple of weeks but the whole Photoshop thing has finally clicked and that's all I'm going to say- it was a bit like the day when (aged 15) I suddenly realised how algebra worked... still couldn't fathom its use out but I had a vague idea of how to do it - the result being a much needed maths 'O' level first time round!!! Lets hope Photoshop proves as useful and enduring.. Incidentally and completely irrelevant but I now live with a man who does equations and calculus for fun!

My module brief was to make two different, but matching, scarf designs inspired by Liberty style, a style I have always loved. Each design had to be presented in two different colourways. From the outset I made this module my mission to overcome my aversion to digital design and find a way to incorporate computer aided design into my future work. This required several hours of online Photoshop tutorials and really starting from the basics but I am very pleased with the results and can see ways of using it as a tool - bit like a paintbrush - in future, I was so enamoured I'm even considering a graphics tablet!!!

I decided my designs would depend heavily on my sketched line drawings of flowers collected over the summer and taken from our holiday jaunts and some additional from photographs also taken while travelling - I wanted to bring some movement into the design so I added some hares I sketched last autumn. Recent module colour palates have been fraught with various difficulty but this time it came together really nicely and I have a spring summer collection representing the spring and summer flowers in blues and pale creams and a winter complementary design in warm oranges and reds - two very different palates but looking really nice. The first scarf - detail pictured above - I did by scanning my drawings into PS and working them from there. This was an excellent opportunity to learn everything about PS and more... which is exactly what I did.So this design was all done digitally on Photoshop. (I'm sooooo proud of myself)

The second design was an attempt to marry PS into my way of working - so I hand placed the drawings and then traced them up into a tidy copy and then hand coloured them using promarkers. Once coloured I scanned them into PS and finished the design from there digitally. I didn't enhance to colours but used PS for background and borders again I was very pleased with the result. The line drawings work nicely and give an illustrated kind of effect - to make the scarves more personal to me I added a little poem about hares in the seasons around as a border.

I'm very excited to see the final printed scarves hopefully available next week but in the meantime here are two pictures of detail of each of the designs and each colourway.

detail of summer dusk scarf

RubyStarrs in Paris...

Finally we have made it to Paris. It was a bit of a long travel day - we decided to come by train so we could experience the full glory of British Rail or whatever it's called now which actually delivered perfectly on time... and then the Eurostar which was incredibly disappointing! All that beautiful St. Pancreas Station and the Eurostar is sited in the dungeon... overcrowded, dark, lousy facilitated space... and then the train was an hour late it felt like a long time before we got any fresh air - but eventually we wound up in gay Paree... We navigated the metro and found our airbnb gaff. A mere 70 steps to the fourth floor on a rather lovely winding wooden staircase to a very nice roof top flat which is comfortable and gives a view across a lovely Courtyard with some obviously much posher flats. It's located really centrally about two minutes away from the Opera Garnier so a very good location for getting everywhere...

Funchal

So after three days at sea we finally hit Funchal in Madeira. An escape from the ship, and I have to say it was very pleasant indeed. First of all the weather is really splendid. Especially when you know that everybody else in the UK is suffering grim storms and vile winds.. Over here it is between 22 and 25 degrees is really quite warm. Funchal is a pretty city. It's built on a hill it with lots of lovely white houses with stunning red roofs. In order to get the best of it we walked along the sea front until we got to the cable car and we took it up the hill. It was a really good ride much longer than we imagined and it's quite weird because it goes right through the town - completely over everybody's house... So not only do you get a lovely vista of the bay but you can view the beautiful rooftops and get to look in everybody's gardens and to look at their picnic sets.. clean washing nice plants... scratty backyards.... We got off th

Another Day in Norway where our Trusty Traveller finds Tromsø, Trolls and Totally misses Aurora....

Tromsø - the most northern city on the planet... Its quite a pretty little town with lots of wood fronted shops, but of course like everywhere like this, it is just one big tourist hive and every shop is selling 'indigenous' gifts- didthe Sami make aurora themed mugs and fridge magnets? Nearest I'll get a polar bear (i hope) Although I have to say I did like the big stuffed polar bear and black bear and I am presuming that these are either not real (unlikely) or culled as they sometimes have to be. But most of the stuff is just northern lights tat or Troll tat. Peer Gynt.. famous worldover To be fair the best bit of Tromsø for me was the Troll Museum! We went to the art gallery which was quite interesting (see instagram account) but not astounding, but I always like to look at the local art. We had a mooch around town in the snow and then we went to find the Trolls. This museum was absolutely crazy daft... it was totally dedi

Planet Ruby Starrs

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