Scanning Flowers

Gathering Inspiration Where Potentially Looking at Patterns...

Somedays I find it harder than others to gather inspiration. A lot can be found online, but I didnt want to explore only secondary research. Where I never fail to be inspired is amongst nature. I think my decisions for my previous project, looking past just nature and into the relationship we have with it as humans certainly came from the both subconscious but evident connection I have myself. Open to any ideas that might come to mind, I went on a walk through my local fields. Smelling the fresh air, touching the leaves and trees and listening to the lambs, all whilst analysing the colours around me - theres a lot to be appreciative of, but I needed to consider relevant ideas where producing designs for a gift wrap range.

Where we are only a couple of weeks out of the winter months, there are only a few initial sights of spring. From my initial brainstorms I have envisioned a somewhat limited colour palette for this project - something mature and a bit more refined. Blue from the skies, greens from the grass and browns from the bare trees are not far from being the only tones and colours seen on my walk - so I collected a handful of the few flowers I came across, as well as some brighter leaves to take back and experiment with.

Focusing on arrangement of different layouts and creating patterns, I decided to see what would happen if I scanned the flowers collected. For the first few attempts, I wasnt sure if this process would even work, and that as a contrasting 3D object, the results would just be unclear and fuzzy! But I was pleasantly surprised so carried on with this experimentation.

I started working with just mostly flowers, then mostly leaves, below. I practiced certain arrangements, always considering how I could take the composition further and extending it to inspiration for gift wrap design. It was fun practicing different appearances - especially as laying them on the scanner, I had to do everything back to front and couldnt see the final outcome until I could see the scanned image.

Framing Where focusing more on the design for the cards and notebook cover, I practiced some framing techniques with the leaves and flowers - sometimes positioning them to focus on just corners, edges, or all the way around. Looking at framing made me think about what would fill the middle of the page, if i were to take designs like this forward. I envision my collection to be a lot like spring - of colour, new beginnings, growth and transformation...so I think text could balance out the layout appropriately...

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Failed Scanning of Tissue Paper Wanting to work a bit further with the colours taken from the flowers scanned above, I found some tissue paper. Looking past flowers, I wanted to develop their outlines and look slightly further into shapes. Starting simple, I cut ovals, circles and tear drop shapes - I wanted to work with layering as tissue paper is fairly transparent. However, after a few initial scans I realised that this medium is probably not the best to work with, as every possible crease is picked up! I can see potential in the ideas of layers, but the crumpled paper for me, is really distracting and not visually pleasing.