final thought

This project was something that I felt developed along the way. At the beginning I had an idea of what I wanted to do, this urban jungle being the title. After starting drawing from the cafe and the plantation gardens I felt I was getting somewhere and really enjoyed doing lots of drawings that I could take into photoshop, I wanted to do enough so that I had a lot of options for placement. Drawing is something I feel I'm quite strong as. I then started to get very frustrated taking them into photoshop. The idea that I had in my head was not coming together how I wanted it within the design so I had to take a step back from the work to see what I could do. I went back to researching wallpaper and looking for designs to inspire me, this was when I came across wallflora wallpaper designs, this website had a lot of exotic and tropical wallpapers to add some nature back into the room. This was when I went back to what I knew and liked and that was adding watercolour into the designs. After this is was like working on a completely different new project, I set myself a brief where I would be designing for this company and create a wallpaper that would fit in with their website.

I did lots of experimenting on photoshop, looking at the size of the print, the colour scheme and the placement of the leaves. Although it took a while to figure out the best results I was happy with what the photoshop designs came out like and once I had chosen the best fabrics to print them out onto I had them digitally printed.

One thing I struggle with in uni is money to print all the designs off as samples, Digitally printing is expensive and although I do have a job I struggle to be able to print everything off that I want. Textiles as a course is one where we do have to spend quite a bit of money one, with buying the fabrics and the printing and laser cutter etc, where as some courses like games art only have to buy a memory stick. I would have loved to print all my work off on fabric but I hope the tutors can see that I did my trial and experimentation on photoshop rather that printing onto fabric. I did think about the fabrics I printed on before printing so I got it right. The vegan suede was something I thought would be perfect for the cushion fabric. Its so soft and would be lovely and soft. The colours work really well on the sublimation printed and come out just as I wanted. I did print onto cotton as well incase the designs would be used for something like curtains or upholstery  as it would last longer. The designs were printed smaller for these as the work would be seen more for smaller things.

Printing the wallpaper was exciting to see, I loved how it looked professional and really looked like a sample like I had in my research folder. I looked at getting the size of the leaves right as I wanted it to be a large repeat design. I printed some out onto a2 pieces that worked the best but I didn't want to put them on my moodboards.

I really do think I hit the brief that I created myself and after creating my context I photoshopped them onto the website as if they were a design and i felt they fitted perfectly. I spend time choosing the right background and rooms to put my context on, going back to my research of the urban jungle bloggers as I feel like these are the type of people I am targeting. I worked on developing my photoshop skills so that I could add shadow and gradient to the context making it look more believable. This was something I can take forward with in my work.

In total I am really proud of all the work I did and felt like the work spoke for itself and fitted perfectly to my title. The samples for both wallpaper and cushions and upholstery work well together on their own or as a collection. Each design is different but fits together really well if you wanted to use it as complimentary fabrics.