Project Report- Kirsty Jermak

On receiving the brief, I first of all started researching into different wallpaper designers that I was interested in and also other kinds of wall coverings that were available. I straight away became very interested in Claire Coles and realised that I really like the idea of having some form of collage and stitch involved in my work.
I was particularly drawn to her butterfly piece where the paper stood out from the background piece. I then began looking at Johanna Basford and loved the way she used her intricate drawings to create black and white repeat patterns for wallpaper designs. Her way of drawing would also influence my own drawings.
Another designer who heavily influenced me was Jo Pierce, who used photographs of flowers to create compositions.
At the beginning of this project I wanted my research and drawings to lead to some kind of composition combining tonal drawings/photographs and the 3D effect that Claire Coles uses in her work.
The trip that I went on to Temple Newsom was very beneficial to me and it was also very interesting to learn about the history of wallpapers and the techniques used to create them. This trip also moved my work on a great deal as I became interested in the more traditional approaches to wallpaper design and the tradition designs that are still so common in the market today and are still just as popular.
This green wallpaper was my favourite piece from the whole trip and considering how old it was it, it was amazing to see how similar it was to wallpaper that you see in the shops now. I have always loved this style of wallpaper and decided to take this as an influence and try to give a twist to it. After this trip I researched more into wallpaper designers of this age that use similar designs and compositions. I came across designer’s guild, which is a fairly modern company that manufacture wall coverings. Their designs are quite clearly influenced by William Morris and are what I would call ‘royal style’ designs, as they are big and flamboyant.
I love the colours in this designer’s guild piece and also the piece from the temple Newsom trip and I think they are going to become a colour palette for my work.
The first wall coverings piece that I created was influenced by the very traditional style wallpapers that were seen at temple Newsom. From a drawing of a flower I created a lino and printed this on top of a stripe that I also made and then screen printed. Although I like this piece, I would have much preferred to print this onto a coloured piece of background paper, in a similar blue colour or even tried printing another, very simple, image in the background to make it a lot more exciting.
The next drawing that I used in my work was influenced by this image.
I loved the fine purple lines that were used to create depth to the image and used this way of drawing in the drawing of a flower. This then went on to be in a few of my wall covering designs, one being my own take on the Johanna Basford pieces. For this I used many of my drawings to create a rounded image in black and white that could quite easily be turned into a repeat pattern. After accidently printing this piece onto cream paper, I realised that I much preferred the design on this colour and decided that this would be the background to this piece. I would have loved to have tried to create this image in flocking, or even trying combining flocking and foil to create this piece. I managed to create two slightly different compositions using the same drawings that I think work equally as well. The same purple flower drawing also went into creating another piece where I combined that image with a leaf design that was also influenced by Johanna Basford. I also wanted to use butterflies in this piece, so after visiting the discovery centre, I gathered together some images of butterflies that I included in this design. I then went on to flocking the purple image and leaving the black leaf design flat. I would have liked to again try combining both flocking and foil with this piece too.
After looking at the tonal images of Jo pierce, I decided that it would be a good idea to do some tonal drawings from photographs that I had taken of flowers.

I like the idea of having a single, long drop of wallpaper hanging in a room so I chose to use this tonal drawing to create this. I created a random composition where the tonal drawn flowers run down the centre of the piece. As I had not yet used the 3D idea, I cut smaller flowers using the same image and sewed them down the sides of the long drop. I like how this piece works and think it would look great on a larger scale, where it covered a whole length of a wall. I then took the same idea and created a more central image, where this could be transformed into a repeat pattern with the same 3D effect in it.

The next thing I did was took a very boring line drawing of a seed pod and filled it with a block colour. This automatically brought the image to life and thought this would be great in the greens that I loved at the beginning of the project. I first lino printed the leaves of the seed pod as a test and decided that I couldn’t just have this as a repeat pattern. I looked at Louise body to help me with this piece.

I chose to use another flower to create very faint detail to the background behind the seed pod, which I decided to flock in the green that I liked. I used a daisy image and placed them randomly in cream and a minty green to create the background. The seed pod was then put down the centre of the image, over the top of the faint background. A similar thing was done with a lily drawing but I thought this worked better on plain paper. I picked out some bits of the image with silver foil as I had not yet used this in my work. Again, I think this would work much better on a much larger scale.

These next two flower images were used to create two very similar compositions. With the pink one I used a similar leafy design to the ones used in the designer’s guild pieces and to the ones you would find at temple Newsom. As I liked the grey combined with mint green, I thought the grey would also like this with the light pink. I had originally planned to have the flowers flat in the centre of the leaf design but I found it looked a lot more contemporary with some 3D flowers in the centre. The green flowers were used to create a very simple composition that I would use as a repeat pattern. A different leaf design was used in this piece and this was covered in silver foil as I thought it was more subtle than the black.
Another image was created using photographs of orange flowers. This time I drew over the top of the image. I used this to create a repeat pattern and although I don’t like the outcome of this piece, I do however like the original drawing.
As I had not yet tackled the idea of the 3D flowers, I used the flowers used in the previous piece to stitch together a whole flower piece using some papers that I printed my own geometric pattern on. I liked this idea of creating a repeat pattern out of these and also a long drop where these are clustered into one corner and graduated out down the drop. I also think these flowers would be excellent if they were made out of fabric.
I also wanted to make more of my photographs that I had taken and after a lot of playing about on Photoshop; I made a series of long drops that I think could be very interesting if they were really large. I also created a repeat pattern out of these but I don’t think it works as well.
In all I think I did manage to get the outcome I had originally planned but only wish that I had more time to push my images further. At the beginning of the project I wanted to use traditional ideas and give them a contemporary twist and I think that the idea of the 3D stuff definitely did this.