The Intereste In Fashion
The Interests In Fashion I am really interested in fashion illustration. I love the exaggerated body gesture, the overwhelming costume, and the fantasy that the fashion industry provides. I constantly incorporate fashion illustration elements into my work. In my second semester lettering project, I had the chance to combine the glamour of from fashion with a meaningful form, the English alphabet set. The title is “2015 Fashion Alphabets”. I picked selected styles from each major fashion house during the 2015 fashion weeks, New York, London, and Paris, and transformed the shape of the garment to the shape of letters. So, for example, the Z is from Viktor and Rolf 2015 fall couture; W is inspired by the Comme des Garcons’s Spring/ Summer 2015 ready-to-wear collection. Before this project, I had a hard time developing my fashion illustration beyond beauty and glamour. After “2015 Fashion Alphabets”, I find it is very interesting to incorporate fashion with other elements.
Pattern
Pattern
The Finding of the “Five Elements”
Shifting Interestes In Fabric My interest in drawing clothes led me to take a class called “Digital Print on Fabric” in the fiber department. It is the quickest way to see illustration on a different type of media: fabric. Fabric seems to be a more intimate media compared to paper. When holding paper it is like a precious object that should be handled with care, and usually it is the final product
for either a print, or should can be carefully cut to make a book. However fabric is more flexible. It is soft yet steady. Different fibers like cotton, silk or linen, can have very different surface textures. It is usually not the final product, so the material is capable of being heavily processed for the final product. In the third week of the fabric class, we had the first digital print workshop. We saw the
giant printer print out our designs as easily as any digital paper printout. Once the fabric is separated from it’s backing paper, it looks exactly like a printed fabric you can find from any store. We tried silk organza, bamboo shooting, nylon and habotai silk. Four types of fabric create four distinctive look. Silk organza is transparent, so the faint image has a dream-like quality. The habotai silk has a shiny surface. It’s so soft that
I’d like to make a scarf out of it. And nylon just reminds me of sportswear. All of a sudden, it opens the door of almost endless possibilities. I find it is so fascinating to print on fabric. I started to think of shifting my thesis project to do a collection of patterns printed on fabric.
Experiment With Digital Print On Fabric I took a trip to the Rawlings Conservatory. There are many fascinating shapes of trees, flowers, and cactii. It was a steaming summer day, and being in the conservatory which is in a beautiful Victorian style cage like glass structure made this place like a wonderful sauna.
I took many picture of the plants. By just looking at them I got lots of inspiration for how I want to draw them and make them into patterns. While I was busy taking photos, mosquitos were busy making their lunch of me. I went home with a bunch of photos, lots of red bites and the desire to create a bug and plants collection. I drew individual plants, flowers, and bugs. I randomly placed them together as how it pleased the eye. As is the industry standard, I created 5 colorways for each patterns. I was surprised by adjusting hue and saturation, replacing color, and reversing color in Photoshop. Without intentionally thinking of what the outcome should be, the result of pure playing in Photoshop amazed me. I loved the patterns more than my illustrations. When I create illustrations, I have the tendency to overthink the theme, and the image usually ends up looking stiff. The spontaneity in pattern images is much more lively. It made me think about what I want to do after the thesis year.
“Bring The Outside To The Inside” After that, I decided to change my thesis from making a book to making a series of pattern. I was very excited until I realize with making pattern I have to have a theme too. My mind stucked with the plants and bug collection, that I want to create more and more. So I thought I wanted to focus on the theme of nature. But nature is also a vast subject. Plants and bugs are just part of nature. The critique I received is that I have to narrow things down. My research on other pattern
designers led me to one theme, which is “bring the outside to the inside.” By drawing natural objects on the pattern, I want to bring the peaceful natural world closer to our living environment. I decided to use the new theme as my core idea.
Many Sketches Once “Bring the outside into the inside” is decided I started doing many sketches like other pattern designers. In the process of interpreting my photo references, I started to use unrealistic colors and break the background into shapes to create a visual illusion. I drew flowers, trees, bugs, mountains etc. I used mix media, including watercolor, markers, colored pencils, and inks. Visually, I wanted to incorporate elements from nature to create a world beyond nature.
My vision was that the collection “Bring the Outside inside” would be a home decoration collection to inject the vibrant world of nature into cold urban buildings.
The Strusture Behind the World It was harder than I expected. I drew many many natural motives in realistic, representational, and abstract ways. I’m glad to see my style evolved to become more abstract, but the boundaries of the collection became blurrier. It seemed like changing nature to “bring the outside to inside” did not make it more focused. I still had a world to deal with, but could not see an end of it. So, maybe I will just draw the world from the bottom to the top. I had a plan to use my final exhibition as a window display to showcase my patterns on home decor products. From the
bottom is the world of water which gradually moves to the land, the grass, the trees. As the levels go up, the mountain will be on the high level of the wall and eventually the universe would be represented on the ceiling.
I thought I had a plan until in one of the graduate meetings, Whitney asked what is the structure behind the fantasy world that I created? From the bottom to the top isn’t a clear enough structure, it’s a direction. She suggest some possibility that the world can be viewed from micro to the macro,or maybe it is based on five elements like fire, water, etc?
The five elements caught my interest. In ancient Chinese philosophy, people believe that everything was made out of five elements, fire, water, tree, earth, and metal. A peaceful world is the result of the balance of the five elements. But this balance is a non-visual state of being. I took the five elements as a starting point to do more research.
Platonic Solids
I extensively research other cultures to see if I could find similarities. It turned out that many cultures across the world believed that the world is created from the classical elements, fire, water, earth, air and aether. It was Plato who had the idea that the physical world must fundamentally embody beautiful concepts. And it must be in a special way which matches the beauty of mathematical regularity, perfect symmetry. So, he assigned each element with a mathematical representation in
the living world, called a regular polyhedron. These forms are known for their symmetry.
is non-terrestrial and beyond the material world. These were referred to as Platonic Solids.
There are only 5 regular polyhedra in the world: the tetrahedron represents Fire and is visualized as sharp; the icosahedron represents Water and is visualized as flowing minuscule balls; the cube represents Earth and is visualized as dense; and the octahedron is Air and is visualized as smooth and nearly imperceptible. The fifth element, quintessence or Aether
I was so inspired and took the Platonic solids to construct my world.
Start Integrating Making New Patterns The Platonic solids are the structure of my world. So, how could I integrate geometry with organic matters.
I started from the drawing the elements. I tried to put these geometric forms into the existing patterns. For example, in my “ants moving plants� pattern, the motion is so playful, so I added the fire element into it. In the mountain pattern, I put the earth geometry in the background to make the association between earth and mountain. These were not very successful.
I decided to change my way of thinking, I imagining the elements as the source energy. The objects absorb the energy and start to grow into the corresponding geometric shapes. I created the watersprouting pattern, in which little plants sprout out the water elements. The geometric gradation and the sprouts create a visual illusion which blurred the front space and backspace. I found this was the direction to go.
The Creating of the Collection
Imagine The World From Micro to Macro, From Level Low to High Since the structure was nailed down, I still wanted to represent my world like our real world. There are things so small that we can’t see them like the atoms. There are big things next to us but do we know the truth of it? Every object in the world are illusions created by the gathering of atoms. We think it’s a piece of clothing, but it is really a cluster of small carbon atoms.
I imagine that from the Big Bang, the one big initial point burst out the five elements. They are their the earliest life form, like microorganisms. They evolved throughout history from micro to the macro scale. They become the plants, the fungus, the birds, the mountains and the planets. After figuring out the scale of time, I figured out the scale of levels, from below the water up to the sky.
Gather Inspiration Pinterest is the tool I use most of the time to get inspiration. When starting the big theme, like the series of elements related to the water, I create a board, and pin all the related subjects, the fish, the coral, the jellyfish onto it. Books on the quadrivium also provides much inspiration. Except the polyhedra 3D image, there are also the unfolded polyhedra 2D image, and different view on the polyhedra.
Sketching Plus Intuition, The Process of Execution I see the reference image, draw them down in the sketchbook, and play around, integrate each other, and transform them into something else. In this process I always tell myself to be relaxed, and let the intuition to guide me through the process. Also in most of the pattern, I drew gradation out ot the shape which is a face of the polyhedra. It creates an optical illusion when mixed with the foreground and background. It is a intuitively process in which I freely integrate the gradation of the object and break the background. This process sometime surprised me to see the end image.
Color Palette The Complete Collection At the beginning of pattern making, I experimented a lot. Thus there was not a coherent color palette. I thought since it is a world that it should have the freedom to be vibrant. But later, I realized that it is collection of pattern, they eventually live on the fabric surface. It is important that the visual language is uniformed here. So I started to make a color palette as a guide. I realized that I use various shade of pink, and saturated color a lot. Once I chat with Whitney, she said this color palette reminds of her of
the 80s. I was born at that time. It is my latest discovery that the 80’s fashion trend is one of my favourite. I like the overwhelming color. The energy it expressed is very young and vibrant. However, I didn’t have any of that when I was born. I was born in China, my impression of the
80s oliver green, communism red, and navy blue. I wonder if the color expression comes from me intuitively making up for my childhood lost.
The Exhibition Plan
Since my pattern is based on a philosophical theory I got a suggestion it is best represented in an abstracted form. I really wanted the level of scale to be the focus of the world. thus I want to cover the exhibition ground to the rooftop, make it a semi enclosed space .
I decided to make a very long rectangular fabric quilted with panel of different pattern.The level of the quilt represent the level that the objects in the pattern lives. I’d like the big fabric to be in the center of the exhibition space. The big piece would be surrounded with the platonic solids plushies. So it recreates an impression of a world.
Sewing Everything Up
I have two roll of cotton fabric, 50 feet each. I like the sturdiness that unwashed cotton has. And also, cotton is ideal for better color in digital printing. I used all of them for the centerpiece and elements plushies. Digital print takes a long time to print, with the school schedule I booked an entire week to get the 100 feet fabric printed. I intentionally print them in triangle shape, part of the reason is that most of the platonic solids’ face is triangle. The other reason is that I like the diagno direction which breaks up the boring rectangular shape. Also by leave it as triangle, I might be able to improvise in the
installation period. I sewed each piece of the fabric together, and left enough seam allowance to sew a tube behind the connection part. The plan was to inset wood stick at the back of each panel as a support structure for the soft fabric. For the plushies, I plan to sell them later as table top decoration. So their size were not exceeding 8 inch by 8 inch. I did not put a lining to make them the perfect geometric shape, because I still wanted to maintain the intimate quality of the plushies.
Improvising In The Installation
When everything was ready for the installation, I realized that the width of the center piece only covered a little more than one third of the wall. To place it in the center, it makes the world look small. Whitney suggested before that maybe the piece can fall from the left and create a diagno flow towards the center. But before seeing how the fabric drapes, I had a hard time to imaging how it would go.
I have many friends from our program to help me put the fabric on the ceiling. Later I would move the stick back and forth to create the desire movement I want from the fabric. To drape from the left is a great idea. It created such enclosed world view from the entrance, which is exactly what I wanted. I was really glad that I designed the triangle structure which provide many supporting points for me to play with the installation.
After The Exhibition Collection In Products It is a bit sad to take down my show. Once the big fabric was down from the wall, I fold into a small batch and it lost the its magnificentness. I have to find another life form that the fabric can be live on.
Going back to my last semester’s plan, I decided to make pillows out of them. Eventually I will create an online shop on Tictall mart to sell this pattern collection as home decoration pillow to test how the market react to my pattern. On the market, I saw many visually interesting patterns. Except their lovely appearance what is the design mind behind it? I hope with the research on the platonic solids and my visual interpretation, I can bring something new to the pattern market. After doing the pattern, my editorial illustration is influenced by my interests in geometric shapes and abstraction. In my latest illustration, which talk about how life is not a hard path. The artical talk about that the life path is not straight, and usually we are torn apart by many difficult situation. And I realize by using the geometric shapes, line, and colours, life difficulties can be represented in a more abstract and interesting way.
Jackie Zhu www.jackiezhuart.com