Colour refining

Refining the colour was the last and final touch. In a tutorial I was told some of my designs looked a little to 'cabbage-y' (which I assumed meant too green) so I started editing the leaves, bringing some blue into the patterns. This gives a slightly unnatural effect ( which does go with the idea of a jungle with in a city). The added blue suddenly brought out a different quality with in the designs and I have to say I did prefer it to with out the blue so mission accomplished.

Now all I have to do was add them into context, hopefully so they looked like they would be put in a large repeat print with in a fancy city flat such as the flats the urban jungle bloggers would have. I also wanted to print some of them onto fabric so that they could be used in furnishing to add some pattern and colour into the flats.

putting the urban into the nature

I started panicking that I hadn't really included any urban factor with in the design. I knew I didn't want to add any urban imagery in as I had tried and tried before to do this and it was just frustrating me so I looked at how I could do it in other ways.
I decided to tone down the bright colours in the designs and begin to make them look a little more desaturated. This would allow them to fit easily in with their environment and not look too out of place. I took all the colour out at first but then decided this was too much and wouldn't overwhelm the walls like I wanted it too.

I then desaturated them a small amount to give the idea of dim-ness and slight dirt. I lived the colours it created and it toned down the pattern a little so that as a whole wall i wouldn't be overwhelming. This seemed like I good solution to how to get them to fit in with the idea of urban, being made to join an urban properly.

I LOVE IT

After the last break through with the watercolour layered motifs I began to slowly introduce more and more colored leaves into it, all different shades of green. I really feel like I am getting somewhere now. Although this goes against the idea I originally had I think that handing in something I am proud of is more important. It still goes with my idea of introducing the overload of nature into the home but it is more subtle and less cluttered than my first designs.

After looking back I started looking at how I could add a secondary colour into the design. I looked at plants I had seen in the Cafe and decided nature would help me. Finding inspiration I went with red/pink for my complimentary colour. I did some flower drawings and worked on photoshop to do the same as I did with the leaves to give them a watercolour effect.

Experiments then happened to try and create some watercolour, wash-y designs. Some worked , some didn't but it was all about trial and error.

starting again - Wallflora brief

So this week I have decided that this has been going on for too long and I really just want something to fall into place. I am getting MASSIVELY frustrated with the work I am currently producing so I have decided to go back to the Urban jungle Cafe and try and get some new motivation. I did some more research into the wallpaper company WallFlora and was really impressed with there wallpaper designs and decided that would be something I wanted to aim for.

I decided to create my brief based on Wallflora as a company and design wallpaper I could see being sold on their website. I wanted to aim the final result to be displayed as something they would be happy to sell so I looked at the quality and the sizes of their wallpaper as well as colours to see what they would be interested in if i was ever to approach them with work or as if I was one of their wallpaper designers.

I decided to go back to what I enjoy doing - watercolour. I started doing some more watercolour tests in the back of my sketchbook to try and look at how I could get texture by layering it up over and over again, allowing it to bleed. I look the shapes of the leaves that I had sketched using fine liner and on photoshop cut out the watercolour using the leaf stencil to create some watercolour leaves. This worked really well luckily because it meant that the leaves didn't have an outline or shape they were all just this interesting texture. I began to look at how I could layer them to create a repeat motif.

photoshop experiments

I started experimenting with all the scanned work that I had, trying to create a repeat with using the line drawings. I layered all the leaves to create a rainforest texture that would link with the idea of the walls of leaves that I had been researching. As a wallpaper I could have the images really big and it would act like a wall of leaves to bring nature into these dull city houses. I started with the black and white images to build up the pattern.

I then scanned in some watercolour backgrounds to start trying to add some colour behind the black and white drawing. I did some textured green watercolour samples to try and get an interesting background. I tried over and over again to fit these drawings together to make something interesting but they designs just looked way to cluttered.

I really wanted to get watercolour into the design because thats what I like but I was really struggling to work out how to make it work. The designs worked being black and white but I kept thinking that they just looked like a colouring book. So I needed to get colour in them somehow.

The watercolour added some of the bright greens in that I wanted but they were just so busy (which in some ways was alright because I wanted to to be like a wild rainforest) but there was too much going on and even as a larger pattern the colours just ended up looking muddy and not what I wanted.

Cutting out the crap

For this week I have been seriously sick of creating stuff that I have no clue what I'm doing with. I can draw all I want but it doesn't seem to be getting me any closer to creating a design. I love doing the fine liner drawings but I need to start doing things with these drawings.

I decided to try cutting out parts of my drawings in hope that putting things behind it would inspire me. In Thailand this is what I found really made my work interesting. So I wanted to take what I learnt there into my practice. 

Cutting into the drawings did help and after lots of thinking and trial and error (what I tend to do a lot) I discovered that I really liked putting 'urban' textures behind it. I found a magazine and started collaging these texture walls behind them and I thought this made the work a lot more interesting. 

But what can i do with them now? the answer is I HAVE NO IDEA! Im going to do more experimenting and on photoshop too to see if I can make these into a repeat print. 

How do i draw again?

For some reason at the start of this project I have been finding it so hard to draw something I am happy with. Watercolour is my thing and normally I can paint well using it and be happy with the result. Maybe it was the topic I have chosen but I feel myself struggling over and over again drawing leaves. I keep on giving up with the art for them because I don't like it and am fed up with the drawing which means I am not producing that much that I like. In the end it seems to be the first hand quick fine liner drawings that I am getting on with the most. These look quite professional and keeping them small and simple is more effective I have found. I tried to do as many as I could as I want to look at creating a repeat with them where I layer them together.

But what is the next step? I am going to scan these drawing into the computer and start playing around with them on photoshop to try and get some design ideas. The smaller the scale the easier it is for me to scan them in in good quality. I did them in black so that I could easily manipulate them on photoshop.

Seeing it for myself

first hand inspiration is really important to me so I felt like seeing these places in real life.

The plantation Garden is a beautiful place in Norwich very close to where I live. It contains some more exotic plant types and in a big city it was really important for me to get some first hand drawing done as i was struggling with drawing from the internet.
The plantation Garden is quiet and relaxing even though it is in a built up area of norwich. While there i wouldn't know i would in the middle of rows of houses. they keep it well maintained and the plants are a little more unusual that you would find in a normal garden centre.

The urban jungle is not just the title of my project but it is also the name of a cafe and garden centre just outside of norwich. Me and my mum went to have a look around and see what it was all about. The garden centre was such a lovely place with greenhouses filled with more unusual and exotic plants unlike any I have seen in England. The cafe allows you to sit among the plants so I could get some first hand drawing done while eating some cake.

Digging Deeper

After struggling to produce things I like at the start of the project I decided I needed to start from scratch and do some research into what I wanted my idea to be on. I started from my original inspiration which was how people start to create gardens inside their home to bring nature into it without having any outdoor space. I researched into how in Paris people are being encouraged to plant urban gardens.

Is this becoming a new thing? Urban gardens can be growing plants on walls, in boxes, on rooftops, under trees and on fences. this was all to create hectares of living wall and roofs by 2020. Is this to bring nature back into these cities that are lacking in plant life. Add some green into the dull landscape. Companies such as plug and plant are creating kits to create your own wall of plants. While on Facebook I discovered this company and thought it seemed like a great idea. The outcomes are so pretty and i believe that having plants does make you happier person. Now days its important for some of us to be near a city and its sad when you can't find the accommodation with a garden. This is a great way round it.

PARKROYAL is a hotel in Singapore have started to create sky gardens as a attraction to bring people to their hotel. There is a sky garden in London also which is a big attraction. If the become more common hopefully more people will be inspired to do the same. I am seeing a lot more people trying to add green and nature to their living space. In Milan I saw a building that was made to be a garden paradise even though it is high rise. It was amazing to see and it really made me excited to start this project and showed me that it was something that interested people.

Being a big fan of instagram I was really happy when I found the Urban Jungle Bloggers. These bloggers are all about living with plants in the home. Their photos are so inspiring and pretty and I would love to have their houses with all the plants everywhere. Its a global community and it inspires people and teaches people how to create their own urban jungles. they recently released a book all about members of their community and I really can't wait to get my hands on it. These urban jungle bloggers are very up to date and on trend making me excited that my work could be linked in with them. Instagram also lead me to some artists that create art and textiles to compliment the urban jungle bloggers and add to keeping the idea of nature in the home.

First idea

First Idea - What is a interior?


After hearing the about the project I instantly started thinking about what my theme could be. I wanted to be able to bring in my interests to the project so that I enjoy it, based on other projects I realised this was important in my motivation.

After thinking about the question and then thinking about what I like drawing, nature is something that inspires me a lot and something that I would feel interested in drawing. After seeing a post on Urban Gardens in Paris I thought this would be an interesting way to bring nature into an interior in an interesting way. Urban environments are interesting because as the population of the cities increases the land gets more built up and green spaces and gardens are harder to find. Instagram has been filled with cacti and other exotic plants so that was a great inspiration with starting the project. After summer where tropical prints were big it made me think that normally things come into interiors following fashion trends. A lot of people want to bring nature into their world even if they live in a small apartment crammed within a busy city.

I started by just taking images from google of exotic leaves and plants that you wouldn't find in the middle of the city but in a rainforest instead and painting them.
I thought that as watercolour is my preferred media I would give it a shot. But unfortunately I was finding it really hard to like what I was creating. If i don't love the work I am producing then I often feel unmotivated and don't want to show it. I am not sure why I was finding it hard, I'm use to using watercolour but I think it was a real challenge to paint all in green tones and I was finding it hard to paint the shapes of the leaves from photos online.