In the Mood

My goodness this going back to college malarkey is time consuming, great fun, slightly over whelming, informative, and I'm busy busy busy....

Its taking some time to find my feet, well to find just about everything actually - this morning I was heading out early as I had some work to catch up on but first I couldn't find my college pass- essential for getting around the building photocopying, computer access - so I couldn't leave home without it - then I noticed I had my top on inside out.. and while righting this and finding pass I lost my car keys!!! this about sums up my life at the moment, its going a bit faster then I am at the moment!!!

However once I got to school - I settled down and had a very productive day which finally set me on a path for my creative module and started a vague clarification about my concept.  I always find this bit of the brief difficult so many ideas bouncing around my head and they need sorting and filing into good, bad, and plain ugly.

Our brief is work be based on the Bowes Museums Collections.  Last week we all trouped off to the Museum and spent the day looking at the very varied collection of mainly 18 century ceramics, textiles, paintings and the rest...  I took quite a lot of photographs and spent the rest of the week thinking about what they suggested to me.

My concept is loosely based on marrying traditional designs and processes with the digital world we live in.  I'm using the quite eclectic collection of ceramic animals to illustrate the point.  Animals are represented across quite a lot of the Bowes Museum and some are quite fanciful - these are the ones I am drawn to as they already complement some of the imagery I have collected around mythical creatures over the summer.

The animals, both ornamental and illustrative, that I am using are very traditional, classic antique designs but I have used the power of digital to manipulate the images and apply a contemporary look and feel to them.  I have researched how such images are used in the fashion industry in a interesting lively and quite funky way... Gucci 2017 collection, putting all these images together started to gel my idea more cohesively and the colour palate also started to emerge.  I was originally looking at soft greens and lively pinks but true to RubyStarrs colour management they soon morphed into reds, teals and oranges... What a surprise!!!

Today I made a mood board which really helps to sort the chaff from the wheat, confirmed my colour choices and set me on my way to start drawing and designing.

I had sourced a lovely gilt baroque picture frame (free) to put my mood board in but in the end it didn't need it - it would have drawn attention away so I'll find another use for it at a later date.

I brushed up on my Photoshop skills, not easy after a year off - but there were a lot of people in class that could help and I only had to make one panicked phone call to my son!!!

So - all in all a productive, industrious day and most importantly I feel on the right path for this first creative module.