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

Alesund

Our final destination stop was Alesund. This is a very pretty town in southern Norway built on a peninsula. All the houses are painted pretty colours and a lot of the architecture is all very Art Nouveau based. This is because the town itself was completely burnt to the ground In 1904 by a fire for which they never found the original cause. The whole town had to be rebuilt and this became a huge National Effort and a lot of prominent and up and coming architects flocked to the town to stick there 20 pence in. Consequently the town is very heavily Art Nouveau which was very fashionable at the time. There is this wonderful Museum just off the harbour which is a very beautiful Art Nouveau house. It has amazing panelling, doors, wallpaper, and it's all furnished with beautiful art Nouveau Furniture. It also house a collection of of enameled Art Nouveau Trinkets,boxes, spoons, jewellery, very very beautiful. There is an interesting collection of old books and paintings a...

Isle of Bute

Another Landmark Trust tick - this time Ascog House on the Isle of Bute - stunning as always... a very comfortable warm accommodation for the usual 8 suspects. This time we had a wee tower house for Dr Fred and myself - a lovely bedroom up the stairs with a big window and a bathroom al to ourselves - having said that all the other bedrooms in the big house were large and serviced by two bathrooms so there was no hardship for any visitors! The grounds of the house were very extensive with ponds and secret passages - hidden paths and we even spotted a deer late afternoon - there were lots of old features - ornate staircases and a lovely hidden door which I did a quick sketch of. Bute provided quite a lot of entertainment as well - the weather was kind and we did a a muddy wander down the south of the Island taking in St Blanes Monastery and Kilcannon Bay. The views were spectacular and it was fabulous to be out in the fresh (and it was fresh on the tops) air and we...

The Blue Dot

Excellent evening spent at the first Blue Dot festival held at Jodrell Bank. Clever use of the radio telescope as back drop for the main stage... there were some major teething issues which hopefully will addressed if this event happens again - mainly access and parking.. it was a nightmare approach to the festival and fortunately as we were only doing one night we decided to ditch the car and chose to walk the last mile and half into the site... what a relief as if we had queued we would most certainly missed Public Service Broadcasting which was one of the reasons we were going.. anyway we caught them and then enjoyed fantastic set by Underworld - danced much of the night away in the rain - my trusty solfest poncho almost kept me dry.. it was a splendid evening and the telescope looked brilliant when lit up when it got dark. There was a rather fab "installation" called a luminarium, lack of site information - another hiccup meant we were really lucky to catch it just ...

Planet Ruby Starrs

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