Art Nouveau

I love the style of Art Nouveau especially when it comes to architecture; the fluid lines within the natural forms and the elegant colours used. Without thinking, my work has turned towards a more of an art nouveau theme. When I started to work with the circles created by the streetlights my motifs started to form elegant, art nouveau styled shapes. 

I transferred one of my designs on to an existing model to see what the design would look like in context. This image changed the way I started to look at my work. I started to see my designs working really well for fashion. Experimenting with the brightness of the photos I had taking and then working on top of them with my motifs created an elegant yet mysterious print. With the context of my work in mind, I started to produce more work.

Circles- Simple yet effective!

   

Edited- two of my own images merged together

   The thing that stood out for me from these images were the shapes that were created from the streetlights. When taking the photos, I did a couple where I moved my hand whilst taking the shot. This meant that it added movement to the lines; effectively producing elegant and quite striking bright orange shapes. Looking at the circles of the lights and the lines coming off them, I started to produce quick drawings, trying not to think too much about the composition, so I could capture the free movement of the shapes. 

Looking At Colour

   When talking to my tutor, I realised that I needed to start bringing colour into my work. Even though I found it useful in my design process to start producing patterns in black and white from the sketches I had drawn, if I didn’t start to use colour, it would becoming increasingly difficult to bring it into my work. 

   So…I had to start getting my head round colour, sounds simple, however I find it important to get a striking colour palette. As I said before, my inspiration for my palette is looking at Mary Katrantzou’s Autumn/Winter 2013 collection, the colours and lights when looking out the bus window and also from the magazine ‘Bloom’. 

Inspirational 'Bloom' image.

   With all of this in mind, I started to respond to a couple of pictures I had taken in and around Manchester. I took them in the dark so I could capture the silhouetted shapes of the city and also the colour of the light. Using water colour I started trying to capture the mysterious mood I wanted. Alongside I worked on Photoshop to pick out the colours for my palette. 

I've looked highly into colour trends for Autumn/Winter 2013 and it was interesting to see what's out and about. There is wide range of colour trends within one time, which I found really interesting, however I suppose, if there was just one set of colours to use, everything would look very bland...so thinking about, I'm not quite sure why I was so surprised! Anyway...I came across  the use of 'lilac blue', 'botanical darks' and 'warm reds'. There were many more, however these fit in with what I'm looking at. 

Lilac Blue

Botanical Darks

Warm Reds

Mary Katrantzou

 I first saw Mary Katrantzou's work in an article at the start of my holidays. I was travelling to France with my family; we were in our car on the euro tunnel and I remember leaning forward to my mum in the front seat and showing her this article. I was mesmerised by her striking designs and I said ‘imagine if I could produce prints like that’. Ever since things have been pointing me to her and I feel like I need to use her as my inspiration throughout my work. 

Autumn/ Winter  Collection 2013

   The colour palettes she uses within her work have inspired my thoughts about my own colour palette. I wanted the dark, deep colours to create the mood and then the dash of striking colours to come through. The silhouette feel reminded me of nighttime and with this in mind, I picked up on different moods when I was out. I was on the mega bus back to Manchester one weekend and it was late at night; we had stopped at the traffic lights and I found my surroundings really inspirational. We had stopped outside of a church; I couldn’t see it in detail, it was just silhouetted, however the lights from the street gave the scene an orange tinge. Additionally I could see people in the bus, in the reflection in the window. Lights from within the bus and lights from outside brought, what could be quite a depressing scene to life.