My wild Friday nights...

Garden designed by Cecil Pincent

While most students spend their Friday nights partying, I spend mine watching Gardener's World and, most recently, Monty Don's Italian Gardens. This may seem an unusual choice of Friday night entertainment for a 22 year old student but these programs have given me much inspiration for new floral patterns, introducing me to interesting and unusual flower shapes, colours and combinations. Even the scientific elements to the programs have given me unique ideas about developing pattern on paper and fabric.

Monty Don's Italian Gardens has given me an insight into how the formal gardens of Florence were designed, such as Boboli Gardens created during the Medici Dynasty and later, the gardens designed by Cecil Pincent. The techniques used to lay out these beautifully structured, symmetrical gardens can easily be applied to wallpaper pattern.

Planting grid commonly used in formal garden design. Works well in wallpaper pattern design as straight lines can be seen horizontally, vertically and diagonally, making the overall layout visually aesthetic.

Self-similar fractal print (1)

This is my first print test for the self-similar fractal design. Although the theory is there, the more detailed sections were so small that the clarity of print was lost. I do find that the flaws in the print add to the piece- I have always embraced the mistakes made in the creative process as they often produce new ideas, new patterns and also highlight that the pattern is unique and not something easily re-produced. If I had printed digitally I would lose all this.

I have made a conscious decision to use black and white for this print. The pattern is quite ambiguous and the self-similar theory suggests many elements within nature, therefore, I do not want to force an opinion on the viewer as to what the pattern represents, I feel it is more important for the pattern to speak for itself as different people will view it in different ways. As I have mentioned in previous posts, using colour will influence what the pattern may be and in this case I do not want it to be so definite.

Further colour prints

Bronze print on Baghdad Brown Bronze print on Ebony Bronze print on Royal Blue Bronze print on Forest Green

Everything isn't always so Black and White

Gold print on Emerald Gold print on Harvest Black print on Natural Gold print on Claret. As I predominantly work in black and white when producing patterns for wallpapers, I thought it would be interesting and worth-while to see how my fractal wallpaper patterns looked in and on different colours. Due to the ambiguity of the pattern, using colour could affect how it is portrayed. For example, if the pattern was printed onto a green background and/or in green ink, it would imply that the pattern is linked to nature (trees, leaves, branches). However, if the colour red was used then this would have a much more biological appearance (veins, blood). Also, using colour may be helpful when designing more commercial patterns for example, using metallic inks or paper within an interior space can be interestng as they are affected by both artificial and natural light and the architectural contours of the space. I work in black and white as I feel this does not detract from the pattern or force opinion onto the viewer. Yet commercially, where interior design is concerned, colour can be extremely important depending on the architectural space and function of a room.