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the next brief beckons... colours and castles...

Back into the fray at college.... I've emptied my work bay and have started to collect inspiration for my new brief.  This time is based on interiors, a fairly loose brief left very much up to ourselves to come up with a concept and then a design which will translate into an interior kinda space...
 I'm very keen to - surprise surprise - ramp up the colour action... research indicates this and next years colours are vibrant hues bright gaudy yellows and greens with splashes of purple and pink - well they are in my house at least - Dr Fred doesn't know this yet but when its a done deal he will learn to live with it....  Hes working away quite a bit in the coming weeks...

So keen to stay with vibrant colours I decided the best place to start was with a mood board.  I've been following some seriously funky decorators and interior designers on Instagram so I started there for  colour inspiration.  When I had picked my favourite colour schemes I wrote to the insta posters and asked for permission to use them on my mood board if credited. With only one exception they agreed and in fact that one person was happy as along as I didn't post the mood board publicly so I decided not to use those images as I want to be able to share the work on this blog and on instagram - so thank you to @theflamingoandthefox, @martine_munroe and @paola_roder - amazing colour inspiration - and please check out @faithkalson, whose pictures I haven't used but her colours are amazing also.



I have so many ideas, floral stuff, boats and beach stuff, more skulls, decay and regrowth, what lies beneath ... some less clear, but equally interesting, concepts that require too much thought so.... recognizing we only have a limited time scale and I'm just wasting it I finally decided to use my frequent castle trips for inspiration.   I looked at my collection of photos and found lots of Bamburgh, Sadel Castle where we stayed last year, this years wee tower house castle The Old Place of Monreith, Bolton Castle, Warkworth castle by moonlight, Barnard Castle in its glorious ruins state and best of all Chillingham Castle.

We visited Chillingham last year and I was fascinated by the amazing eclectic collection of the weird and wonderful paraphernalia on display.    the place was crammed - a real slamititnRubystarrs experience and I took loads of photographs which I am starting to work off as the castle doesnt open until April so I cant make a field visit😒.  I do have a large number of pictures though and I will be drawing inspiration from other castles as well!
5 minute sketches of Old Place of Monreith

My plan is to use the drawings and shapes that hopefully emerge and make some fancy designs yo integrate into sumptuous bespoke cushions - I'm also going to try and be a little more abstract them I usually am as mostly my work is very pictorial- this may well prove to be my style but I feel being at college is my opportunity to experiment  and try different things.

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