We have Knots! So this is my little dream of having my own boutique taking it's first steps. The products I will be stocking will be for the home or ready to wear. I'm going to be selling statement pieces that can be coupled with the customers own style. My aim in the future is to collaborate with other artists and for them to have their own line too. I thought it would be a great way to get artists starting out into the fashion side of things, with production set up on my part they can set their aims higher than tshirts.
Prints and intimates for the deviant and daring. Knots is about dressing your space and yourself, looking bold and feeling incredible. We believe what you wear and the items you surround yourself with are an an extension of yourself, so side-step into Knots and let our your inner demons.
Our ethos is to bring unique print to your garments and homewear, our current range is ladled with influence from old symbology and the power this holds. We love to collaborate with creatives to made ready to wear artwork, showcasing their talent in bespoke limited run products. Making our stock is ever changing, but still keeping our Knots look.
All our products are ethical, handmade, printed, sewn and painted in the UK.
So this post is a little reflection on my last year of University and what I hope and fear for myself in the very near future. It's good to have a little plan, some guidelines of where I want to be and to remember there are many ways of getting there, not to be disheartened if one of the paths leads to a dead end.
So mainly I want my work to feature in everyday lives. When I find a product that feel like an extension of myself and I get to see it everyday, it might sound materialistic but it makes me happy, to be able to design my space and I get a little itchy footed if I can't. So searching for a specific thing can take time or it doesn't even exist. I then started to make these things for myself or draw designs up. For my future career this is what I would love to do, working with interior designers or homewear brands to make fantastic feature pieces, avoiding kitsch and throwaway fashion.
A big thing for me is keeping things minimalist and less wasteful. We have the luxury and disposable income to buy 'stuff' and it's very easy to fall into the consumerist trap and buy buy buy. The last fashions no longer in so you buy the new thing, it costs alot and it's harmful to the environment. I believe in investing in something you love, that is fairtrade, handmade and going to last you a very long time, products that reflect oneself opposed to whats 'in'.
I think for the next few months I'm going to carry on with my waitressing job and look for internships, It sounds funny but I don't feel ready to go for a full design job just yet, I'm still eager to learn and want to have a go at a few different things and see what different companies feel like and where I fit in with those. So mainly I will be going for, set design, homewear and fashion. Potentially setting up a stall alongside my website to sell prints and handmade homewear. I'm in love with my brand I made, Knots, it's staying with me and its the best reflection for my work that I have come up with thus far. It's a little difficult also because I am travelling in January with an open ticket so I can't get too settled anywhere just yet! While I travel I hope to contact design houses and just spend a few days there, even if I'm just making cuppas.
The best thing I've taught myself over my degree is to take something from everything that inspires you and put it into your work, all your loves, fears and your past, what you've built to get where you are today.
I've had a massive fear of opening up with art, and lately I've thrown caution to the wind and posted some poetry.. let's just say I felt like I was walking down the street naked. This tapping into the place where you feel most exposed has helped my work improve massivley, I want people to look at it and want to understand more, or to change a perception. I am scared of the classics, rejection, people thinking I'm not good enough, and not working hard enough, because I feel that's the worst regret. Plus a fear that no one shares my tastes and they don't want to buy my stuff!
Thanks for reading my long post and letting me share with you how a graduating illustrator feels about her future.
I'll end with this little piece of gold I found, every time I feel I'm losing my grip with what I create or hit a blank page wall I listen to this. One of my favorite writers, and one of my favorite speeches.
Who knew that a visit to a gallery would have such an impact on my work over the coming months. I found an artist I immediately tapped into, it's amazing to feel a connection to a living breathing soul by inanimate objects they have created. The artist is Rebecca Horn, she specialises in artistic costume and film, where these are the stars of the show. She peeks at the hidden corners of your mind and sates them, encapsulating more senses. With the 3D nature of her work you get a real sense of inclusion, you could physically wear them and breathe the artwork. She names them body extensions. long spindly fingers you are controlling but can't feel, scratching at your surroundings, extending your reach, almost like a new part of yourself.
Being face to face enclosed with your partner by soft and pure feathers. A feeling which for most of us would present claustrophobia and invasion of personal space. Yet there's something intruiging about it, and you want to have a go, even just for a minute.
Exposed, raw and curious. These are all things I feel when I look at her work. Along with the help of nine inch nails, I made the images below, always with her in mind.
I guess this is a follow on from Ragdoll, it's almost 5am...
But she still looks pretty doesn't she
How I feel in the mirror a measure of my worth to him. How much confidence I could have to leave. As playful as a child magnifying an ant in the sunlight. Oh how I burn and seethe. Fire comes as water. With only a pathetic singular tear that managed to crack the surface. Practice comes perfect.
Here I am to change elements, to build and breathe my beautiful body. My arches and curves, contours and crooks, they're precious, an imprint of the earth. Cut from the cloth of my sister yet we are so different. And I love it, I love my body, it is all that I am. Yet I stand in the mirror and hate it so. How this flesh being touched could hurt my head, I'm so connected to it my only relief is sleep which comes so infrequent.
And you here trying to tear down my kingdom, I built this, I rule over it, it was given to me as a gift. A labour of my ancestors who made me, I come from life itself. But your touch burns me, it scolds my skin, I wasn't taught that love could be like this. I knew of the fleeting restlessness, a desperation to be close, loneliness when you're apart, but I didn't know it would be amplified so loud it screeches me awake. This love of ours each facet has been marred and scarred and I hold your hand because I know no other way of being this close to you and not. And I hate myself, your fingers interlocked with mine should be the sweetest feeling, but it's too much and it makes me sick, sick to my stomach that the thought of letting go.
Alone in the bed that I made, sheets I laundered and pulled into place, the thunder becomes soothing, the rain surrounding me like a wall, pitter pattering on the window like it knows we should be as one. You start to take the darkness and find your place in it. As a child everything is golden, happiness is a given and your pillars are set to the core of the earth and nothing will ever rock them. It's part of growing up, knowing these shift and crack with the rolling tides, the night time moon pulling and pushing. You let the darkness in, you learn how to deal with it and one day embrace it with open arms, just maybe not everyday..
This poem in particular has been written rewritten and I could write a short story from all the cut lines. I'll probably never be happy with it, but I don't think I ever could be. But doing so has given me a little closure, taken away some anger and popped everything into a poem shaped box. I can recognise my feelings and see them in a form, and if I ever look back, I know I've made some art out of it.
Ragdoll
Poke me, squeeze me, love me
It's all here on the box
Here to serve you
Here to please you
What you don't hear is stop
Here lies an empty shell
But the shell is all you need
A ghost of who she was
But still she looks pretty doesn't she
Cold comforting chains clasp
Secrets whispered lay our heads
Bind iron to my skin
Burn bright white hot and brand me
The mascara runs no matter
Reapply it
The neighbours heard no matter
Keep them quiet
Lucy go round the merry go round
Sit me up or drag me
Disconnected dots
Walking, talking, smiling
Train screeches to a stop
Tear drops
Now it's time to start thinking about the direction I want to take my work in in the future, and who would be my dream clients. The list below comprises of unique homewear and fashion, when it comes to the bigger brands like Urban Outfitters, the dream for those is to work with the boutiques within those umbrellas. I would love to design statement pieces for these companies opposed to everyday cuts.
Scary prospects of leaving my comfortable studio at uni, into the world of someone could actually reject what I do! And the alien idea of getting paid.
So I love LARPing, mainly for running around in a forest getting to shoot people or hit them with epic "fireballs". There's a ton of production that goes into these events, they need marketing materials, set design, props and costume to immerse everyone in the story that has been written, the surroundings need to look the part. For my venture into professional life I have contacted a few people who run LARP games. After sending out some bottles in the ocean one has got back to me! I will be doing artwork for an upcoming game, an apocalyptic world full broken down androids, big guns and Jeeps with questionable safety, think Mad Max meets Resident Evil... And lot's of leather. So these guys run lots of games, but they feel my art would work best with this one, as I tend to go down the despair route, which is a feeling they would like to instill amongst the players.
My job will be to create simple print illustrations for the Facebook event page, create ID badges for the players and help with the set design. They wanted simple due to the nature of the world, the worlds resources are depleting and everything's roughed up and worn away and they're making the best out of what they have. So I'm very excited to get behind the scenes of a weekend of storytelling.
Here's a snap of a Firefly game I recently played, as I don't have any pics of my artwork yet!
Here is my final business card design. I has always had my lady there designed and ready for my cards but she wasn't quite fitting to have her just alone. I wanted the design to give a feel of the company and the print we used, whilst keeping it intriguing in order to increase traffic to the website. I used moo.com and the process was really easy, had all my files ready as JPEGs to upload, and was all ordered in around 20 minutes. I splashed out a little and got the lux range which has two white layers and a black one in the middle. Can't wait to see them!
I've finished my final logo design for my project I'm currently working on, a clothing/homewear brand. This will feature across the board, for the website, business cards and clothing labels, so I had to get it just right.
I've had a little previous experience with type. I wanted a freehand geometric drawing to make it feel like it hasn't been generated, so the logo seemed like it was designed for purpose opposed to taken from an already made alphabet.
Upon reflection, next time I would print off some letters to use as a rough template, as the curved letters were quite hard to do by hand and it would be easy to lose proportion. They also have to have some uniform aspect to them, so a guide would definitely help. I would also like to find better ways of drawing curves as the last curve of the S on the bottom was especially difficult, so this last chunk I made in Photoshop.
I'm currently working on applications for my artwork, I'm very interested in incorporating it into homewear and clothing. So first steps, when you have no idea how to do something, take a beginners course or consult Youtube, I chose the former, having no idea where I could get some clay and a kiln. Yep, I'm talking about ceramics, I attended a beginners mug making workshop at the Manchester Craft and Design Center, run by the Manchester Pottery School. I do have to say my mug is abit weird but I love it for all it's flaws as you can see I predicted this in my design.
The plan for the future is to find more classes and have a go on a potters wheel. I would love to sell my designs on tiles or mugs, as these are items that can be a little quirky opposed to dinner plates. My homewear range would be singular stand out peices or smaller ones you could co-ord in a room. Sticking to little use of colour will help me to stay away from trends so much as I would never want the pieces to be kitsch or throwaway, hopefully handmade items you want to hold on to. I'm very much inspired by Moroccan tiles and the beautiful patterns in them, I would love to do some repeating patterns with my work.
Some work for a friends awesome band. They wanted something to use for a single cover and would look good on a tshirt. Here's some development and final piece. And I love working on type!
Here's a link to them https://soundcloud.com/purplethreadofficial
Going back to basics and just playing with your materials can be liberating. My absolute favourite medium is ink, more the watching of how it interacts with water than the finished result. The pictures below I made with the purpose of texture and background for more finalised peices, to give them abit more depth. I always wish I could scan them in wet! Something very intruiging about wet ink on paper... and messy.
Hattie Newman is a paper artist and she came to Stockport College to do a talk with us. She makes epic scenes and creative sets all from paper. For our class soon to be graduating, it was great to hear someone so young at the prime of her career, with how it feels and how scary it all can be, fresh in her mind.
So down to earth, it was an absolute pleasure to hear her talk. Sat down cross legged on the stage humbly chatting us through her impressive client list, such as John Lewis, Louis Vuitton and The Guardian. She just loves what she does, with questions we asked does she ever lose patience, and no, because to her, it doesn't feel like work, yet so many hours, days and some pieces can even take weeks. It's a long process with all the planning measuring and then finally assembly, it's really work that requires a lot of project managing in addition to creative flair.
She works so hard to create beautiful well thought out landscapes, not just scale models but designed to reflect the clients wishes and to convey a message about what the companies all about. Her landscapes are fun, colourful and really well put together with the cuts.
Fresh out of uni she says she didn't know that her job even existed, as with the case with a lot of jobs in creativity, it's meeting people, researching and looking behind the image and seeing what was done to create that. She moved to London, sleeping on a sofa she supported herself with a part time job and started to get the odd jobs here and there, then her talent and hard work payed off and she has snowballed, into and in demand successful image maker.
She spoke about the importance of collaboration with others, she says without working with photographers the images would never do the original work justice. She also said about bouncing ideas off of other people and having people assist her in the paper making, imagine making 100 paper trees alone!
It was interesting to learn about a method I'd never really done before and the awesome results that follow, I feel I would be two hours down surrounded by screwed up paper if I had a go, so hats off to her!
The following exercise is dictated by photographer Erik Almas, but I felt I could still use this method with my illustration work. The aim is to collect 100 images of things you would like to create. Then to brainstorm words that resonate with those said images, do this for each image then see which words pop up the most. These could be colour, genre, or elements that make up the image etc. You then narrow down the list and see what key words you are attracted to, these are then what you should focus on doing in all your future artwork.
The images you choose should be the ones that strike you, resonate with you and what you would love to create.
I have been collecting images for a while now and I have hit my 100 mark, so I'm ready to start writing down my words for each. Here below are a few of my favorites.
I've recently been getting into typography, and wanted to make my own beautiful bold letters to begin my paragraphs. Having recently explored writing my own stories I wanted to make an alphabet that was inspired by and reflects my writing. It's fantasy fueled with elements of dystopia, death, angels and demons, with things that begin with the chosen letter, hopefully to recreate children's classroom borders of "a for apple".
I feel my next step would be to try out borders and some colour, hopefully they can adapt to screen prints without losing too much of the detail. And possibly make some variations as for use in a story it would be nice for all the paragraphs to have a different design.
So I'm on an exciting venture at the minute starting up a new comic book with a friend but to be honest I'm not that great at cartoons! So, it's a little bit of a learning curve. I want to create something different with this comic, so I went for a mash up of my loves, pencil and free flowing ink, trying to create something gritty that reflects the characters. It's been really fun, to tell a story, as normally I produce singular images or a small series. This story was a short 16 page one with an original poem by Pablo Neruda, a man who certainly can articulate love. Which we decided to turn into a little zombie love story. A few things I've learned to work on is developing backgrounds for depth and have a little perspective in there. Also colour.. which I'm inherently scared of :)
So here's a few pages..
XVII
I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.
I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.
I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
