The Stripe project was a great experience in learning and revisiting techniques.  I had used the heat press with disperse dyes last year on my previous course.  On this occasion we got to mix our own from scratch experimenting with application as well as density of colour.  I was intrigued by aboriginal face and body painting seeing how it cracked on the skin when dry forming texture as well as lines of paint on the skin. 

I also looked at other cultural stripe such as North American native clothing and Aztec tunic border pieces. 

We were sent around the college searching for pattern, texture and rhythm.  I sketched various corridors marking down window shapes and rhythm as well as picture placement and brickwork.  Along side these sketches I took rubbings of various textures such as radiators, metal grids and tiling patterns.

Using these sketches and rubbings I started using the corridor sketches in collage of wide and narrow strips of paper and metal tape mimicking the rhythm and patterns emerging.

Texture was important, as I didn’t want the colour to be flat with no interest so I experimented with different ways of applying the dysperse dyes to paper before printing.  I also collaged with these painted papers after looking into tessellation. The patterns were very busy and colours rather bright.  I also work in large amounts of colour finding it hard to choose between so many wonderful hues.  Finally I settled on three main colours with two background colours.  These main colours were to work on their own bold in the foreground and fading lightly into the background.

At the same time I was working on screen printing and had to develop a pattern that would work with the dysperse dyes and well as alone.  With the collage work giving lots of different lines to work with I again took these into tessellation and found some interesting patterns to explore.

Whilst designing, I experimented and learned about binders and foil glues that produced different effects in screen-printing. 

I was determined not to use black in my designs, I think it’s over used and relied upon.  Why wear such a dark colour when there are so many beautiful hues to choose from. 

In my colour palette I took inspiration from the Aztec tunic border that has blue green red white yellow and black.  Straight away I choose to replace black with a rich chocolate brown and once I trialled the screen it took on a 1950s look.  I was encouraged to look and Lucienne Day a 1950s textile print designer.  Amazing abstract shapes layered almost collaged with a fine line detail across the top.  The colours linked with my previous connection.  So I remixed my colours to match both themes.

Some of the collage work with papers were just to clumsy and too large a scale to work properly.  I reworked my ideas after experimenting with water colours and a sign writers brush.  I had noticed how a lot of old print or illustrations used a basket weave texture and using the light to dark idea washed the background in a light watered down colour.  I then built up texture using a basket weave stroke layering colour over each other and allowing each to dry so as not bleed into each other.  I also did the inkblot technique where the paper and paint is still wet and to apply copious amounts of paint on the brush allow to drip and flick.

I then flicked and spattered paint onto the paper using a stiff bristled brush.

I chose to use the shapes that had appeared with the tessellation patterns but scaled down and more freely applied this suited the misalignment and imperfection I strove for.

This lead to two collections to emerge one of clean line and block colour with some texture and very bright.  The other greyer with more subtlety and free hand, with the tessellation to bring it together.

I’m really pleased with my collection both the 1950s styling of collection 1 and the clean bright line of collection 2.