Mon 25.03.13

I looked through a book that I had got out called ‘Colourful World’ which had some beautiful images from all around the world and was about how as a race we are obsessed with surrounding ourselves with ‘man-made’ colour and beauty. As well as the pictures there was also interesting information about the symbolic, cultural, historic etc. significance of lots of different colours which made me think about what I can evoke through which colours I choose to use within my work. The beginning of each chapter also had lots of different shades and tones of each colour which was to follow and I think that I will refer to these pages and play around with my swatches when I come to add my own colours to my work. 

I also finished off any scanning and printing I had to do and took out any books which I thought I might require over Easter, ready for travelling home tomorrow. I took out another book about colour theory and one about illustration because I found looking at illustrators useful during the drawing/sampling stage of my last project. In the afternoon I went up to the Textiles section at Tremough and took out a book about African Textiles, another about the Textiles of Central Asia and a book about Digital Print Design; which I think will be really useful as it has lots of examples of designers work, but also tips and instruction about using Photoshop and Illustrator. 

I feel that it was good for me to have the deadline of travelling home so that I could put an end to my research for now. I think that I have spent too long on this stage of the project, but also that my work so far will be useful and doing this now should ultimately speed up the design and sampling process in the end. I will have lots of sources of inspiration for my work.  I think that because I am not going on to study art next year and therefore this may be my last major project in art and design I was very eager to explore all avenues and make sure that I was using inspiration that I would really enjoy. However, this urge to cover all my interests and stretch myself quite far without committing to a more specific topic has hindered the speed of my research and I feel that quite a few of the things I have looked at may not ultimately inform the studio work which I will produce.