One more day to go!

We started bumping in yesterday and will continue bumping in today as it's the opening night tomorrow already.  About this time three years ago I would have just finished my interview for this course. Now I'm at the other end of it. How time flies. Grateful that though these three years had been hard but definitely so fulfilling and worthwhile :)

We've put a lot of effort in organizing for our end of year show. We baked to fund raise this entire year and trust me, baking is the last thing many of us think during the uni weeks, there was already too much to do. Yet many of the girls put aside their own time just because this means a lot to us. This is only a very small part to the planning of this show. There were lots more that we did along the year till this point. Finding a gallery, looking for sponsors, designing and printing invites and catalogues, laser cutting, business cards, cleaning, mopping wiping, painting etc. Not to mention we also just had the Moonee Valley exhibition just last week. 

Well, it's finally all coming together now and it'll be a great celebration for all of us of what we've achieved so far. Great work ladies!

Here are some photos I took of the bump in yesterday. Probably got a bit carried away with the camera apps on my iphone. 

Our graduate exhibition runs from 1-7 Dec, Tues- Fri 11am-5pm. Opens on Saturday from 12pm-4pm. Hope to see you there :). Oh it's free too. The more reason to come!

twentyseven

Took this photo while we were putting together the twentyseven catalogue. Exciting!!

Folkå

Ta-da! Here's the debut of a small part of my final project on the WWW.

The theme for Folkå revolves around a fictional character of a girl in the shape of Suzannah (illustrated above), who lives in a rural part of Eastern Europe and leads a humble and traditional farming lifestyle. I've produced a range of home and living products including cushions, tea towels, a mug, plate, framed artwork and a tote bag based on this story. It is an entirely illustrated project by yours truly. It wasn't easy but all I can say is the results are pretty cool. All the motifs and artwork on the products paint a picture of her home and way of life :)

We'll be having a graduate exhibition so you could come check out my work and range for this project.

Our exhibition is named twentyseven at Fitzroy Gallery, 274 Fitzroy Street, Fitzroy VIC.

Check out our exhibition website cleverly done by Sarah Strickland. In it will have details of each one of us graduating this year. Sarah's work is illustrative and really beautiful. Definitely worth checking out!

Opening night on 30 November 2011, running through from 1- 5 Dec 2011, Tuesday to Friday: 11am – 5pm Saturday: 12pm – 4pm 

Love to see you there!

Screen Printing

The past 8-10 weeks have been really intense, to say the least. We had to aim for quality in every single bit of our work. For my latest project, there were both quanlity AND quantity. Have been working on my final project and port folio for at least 8 hours per day, easily reaching 12 hours and beyond in the last month. Stress levels were at its all time high during mid semester but they were managed by lots of planning. 

I plan and write down what I need to do for the day/ week pretty much every day, up to 2-3 times a day. A little excessive really. But it really does make you feel SO good every time you finish and cross each item off. I could have easily crossed off (or rather vigorously inking them till I couldn't even see the words) more than 150 (detailed) items in the past week. Planning has been keeping me on track and helped me work methodically for the past one month or so. 

In this post I just wanted to share a bit of my process. I've been in and out of the printing lab for the past two weeks. It's a place that I love and sometimes hate. I hate it when things don't work my way, especially when certain tedious and time consuming processes had to be repeated just coz something that was out of your control went wrong. That happened quite a few times to me. Felt like screaming coz everyone was running on strict deadlines. 

Another thing I could hate is colour mixing and testing. Testing colours could easily take an entire day. And when all work is finished and the printed fabric was taken to be steamed or heat pressed, the colours might darken/ lighten or worse, turn yellower/ greener etc. That happened to me. But there wasn't time to redo coz it could mean repeating a day or week's worth of work, depending on how many colours went wrong. 

What I do love about screen printing is, despite all that could go wrong which you might have to painfully repeat, the results can be absolutely amazing. Even better than digital printing in some cases. Not to mention the fun part of printing. Love it!!

Seems like this would be my last time ever that I'd be screen printing in my life. I just can't see when or where else I could hand print design work apart from uni and this is already the last week of my course. 

So here are a few shots of me screen printing and what I've been up to. 

 Colour mixing with pigments. A process very much like mixing a cake batter using a spatula.
Colours here look so good and yummy!

 Hosing off the screen after exposing designs with intense UV light, which allows the exposed areas to harden and the unexposed areas to be easily washed off  from screen

 Me holding a squeegee about to print. This shot was from last sem's work but
thought I shouldn't miss out a shot on printing in this post

 My final project! Very folk-inspired ;) About to be made into a cushion

 A tea towel design printed on natural linen

 First time printing my design on decal paper...

...and transferring them onto ceramic!! Fiddly but fun process!

Will show more of my illustrations and finished products of this project, which I've named Folkå :)

Mara Hoffman S/S 2012

I seem to always start off my blog by saying how busy I am with uni work, hence the lack of post. 

But today let me just start by saying how INSPIRED I am of the mexican embroidery art! I LOVE and DWELL in absolutely everything colourful/ Central American/ folkloric/ European traditional costumes now. 

Love Mara Hoffman's collection for S/S 2012. It's exactly what I've been dreaming and thinking about. Wish I could travel to Latin America now. 

Her work is absolutely drool worthy. I'd wear it in a heartbeat if I could. 

All images from here.

A Picture Says A Thousand Words

Exactly how I'm feeling. Found here

This could be my living/ working space

Nail Art On Another Level

 

1911

theillustratednail

theillustratednail

Pretty crazy but oh so cool. 

Enough said. 

Beci Orpin's Lovely Pop-Up Shop

Over the past 2 weeks I had the opportunity to do a placement with my favourite Melbourne-based designer, Beci Orpin. Never would I have even dreamt that this would be possible, since I've always thought that independent designers probably don't accept work experience students anyway. I remember rockin' up to class one day and it turned out that she was the special guest speaker that my lecturer spoke about! Hearing how she first started to where she is today was absolutely inspiring. After the talk, somehow I secured a placement with her. I don't remember being as stoked as I was then in my entire university life haha, since she is, afterall, one of my design heroes :) I won't hide the fact that one day I'd like to be just as awesome as she is in design. 

First half of the week was spent at her home studio. Kinda surreal how I didn't get to just work with her, but to actually get to know her family and even her cats and....her son's goldfish. 

Second half of the week had us working at the studio/ shop of Harvest Textiles, as Beci is having a residence at their shop. Got to meet the Harvest Textiles bunch and also designers like Emily Green and Dawn Tan, who both work at a space within the shop itself. 

Beci's pop-up shop has been opened since last week. It looks really cute and it's definitely worth a visit. This week's opening hours are:

Monday 27 June - Sunday 3 July, 12- 4pm

The closing party will be this Sunday, 3 July 2011, 1- 4pm. So do pop by and say hello to her. She's so friendly! Not to mention everything she has in the shop is absolutely adorable.

Address is Harvest Textiles, 512 Lygon St, East Brunswick. There is eftpos/credit card facilities too. 

Some shots of the shop :)

 I love this embroidery!!

 Work space

Beci at work

The placement was really good and I enjoyed every bit of it. One thing that I miss now is.....

 .....her grey little kitty, Tio. On the last day of my placement he came up to me, snuggled on my lap and fell asleep there :( ....and he kept purring as I scratched him. Think he totally surrendered to my charms coz it had its neck extended and belly upwards...

Tio....my first cat-love :(  

Oldie But A Goodie

We all know that pencil, gouache, watercolour and ink have been used for centuries already. Yet one thing that I love most about these traditional drawing medias is how artists nowadays can still produce beautiful and contemporary illustrations with them. 

As powerful as computers can be in helping illustrators produce artwork now, still, a humble pencil gives an edge to an artwork that the computers can't.

In this post I just wanted to share some boards that inspired my work for the post just before this.

The illustrations here are all not mine but works of many talented illustrators that I greatly admire.

 Works of Kelly Smith, Bec Winnel and Laura Laine

 

 Works of Krista Hout, Lorelay Bove and Catherine Campbell

Works of Kelly Smith, Catherine Campbell and Laura Laine

Gotta Love Digital Printing

When I was over in Sweden last year, one of the most valuable experiences I had from the exchange was being able to print digitally on fabric. 

This was a student project which allowed the students to have complete freedom and reign over what we wanted to experiment and achieve, as long as it is textile related. Some of my friends tried embroidery and knitting. I chose fashion illustration, something that I first did when I was 14 years old. The entire process was just soooo fun!! I loved every part of it!! Loved researching and reading blogs of illustrators and had much fun just drawing, experimenting and learnt that even a tiny stroke to the eyes or mouth (for example), could greatly alter the facial expression or look to the illustration. 

This project was meant to spread out over a period of 2 months but I had to condense much of the experimenting and designing leading up to the final outcome to just 2 weeks...because I squeezed in half a week of traveling to Spain into it with a friend, which was fun :). The 2 weeks after the trip basically saw me being stuck in my room the entire time, playing and re-playing all my Pixar movies whilst frantically sketching. My friends were so nice to even cook for me during that time! Love them to bits. Too bad we're now all scattered at different parts of the world now :( 

My desk in the midst of design- chaotic

I put together the illustrations into two patterns. Here's the final outcome!

Tedious project with lots of work involved, my design diary for this was thick as. But oh so worth it :)