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

Scotland part 2

The second half of the week continued in much the same vein. We had one rainy afternoon which was actually quite nice to be holed up in the house with the rain lashing the windows. It probably wasn't quite so nice for the two visitors that came on their bikes but they're tough cookies - and its only water- but I did feel sorry for them having to cycle six miles back down the track in the wind and rain, but given Scotland, it wasn't as bad as it could be. The big quest for the 2nd half of the week was to find some deer antiers! The chap that owned the house dropped in to visit - he was a very friendly fella and was chatting about how this was the time of year when all the Stags lost their antlers (he collected them and sold them) so after that we were on the serious lookout. It's always been Fred's mission to find some dropped antlers.... The Monro baggers continued with the mission to bag the remaining three Monros... there is discussion as whet...

Vigo

We left the ship to explore Vigo. Its a much larger place then we expected... although tbh I hadn't given ut a lot of thought. Its a real mish mash of old and new and having got a map from tourist info we decided to follow the walking trail to the Monte Castro... the highest point of the town. Most of the town was pretty much as everywhere else... lots of traffic... lots of people... one or two interesting buildings and a lot of shopping. We headed to the art gallery - this has been a year of gallery visits so we we seen o reason to change now. The Museo de Marco is housed in the towns ex prison building and its very grand. In fact, I think that on this occaision the building might have been more interesting than the art.... Although the visiting exhibition by Susanne S D Themlitz was strangely compelling. It was a huge varied collection of eclectic items... found, salavaged, manipulated and arranged in lots of ways - weirdly inspiring - and mostly enjoyable to look at...

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 b...

Planet Ruby Starrs

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