Tuesday, July 17, 2007

Sumptuous Surfaces - getting started on lesson 1. Lesson 1 is all about finding a concept to use for the first sample and using the ideas from the concept to explore design ideas and to develop the design.

I started thinking about this at the weekend - as we have just returned from a very happy family holiday, I decided to think about the best holidays that we have had as a family. I did a mind map including ideas about places we have visited which have been our best family holidays (Bulgaria, Florida, Rome, Lanzarote), the weather (sunny, hot), accommodation (selfcatering, hotel), getting there (flying), location (seaside, city break), activities (sight seeing, beachcombing, theme parks, museums, stitching, reading, people watching) and more. We plan to do one more big family holiday probably next year to the US, then I expect our eldest son won't come on holiday with us again (he's 19 now and at Uni).

So I have decided that my concept is Happy family holidays.

Motifs that spring to mind linked to this are - shells, pebbles, sunshine, space shuttle, palm trees and stingrays (from when we were in Florida) and Roman architecture.

I have never before had to explore a whole concept like this and am looking forward to keeping a record of it in a sketchbook and seeing where the ideas take me.

So I started by collecting some pictures of some of the ideas - shells, stingray and palm trees. In one of forum postings a suggestion was made to look at sand patterns so I thought I'd have alook at those as well. I sketched some of the designs and these are the ones I have so far -
I have now started to play around with some of the shapes with tracing paper - here are some of my first attempts.

I want to try some different arrangements and changes of scale, I also haven't looked at positive and negative space/shapes. Time to get the tracing paper and pencil out ...

4 comments:

Candi said...

Vicki, I love ALL of your drawings! They all have so much potential!!! The class is very interesting and fun so far.
HUGZ:)
Candi

Unknown said...

Vicky, I have read a couple of the post on your blog. May I ask you where do you study C and G course? Whom with? I am also thinking about distance learning so would love to know more.. Thanks a lot.

Vicki said...

Candi - thank you for your ver positive comments.

Monika - I am doing C+G through WS-Touchbase in S Wales - I really liked the way the syllabus was put together and the topics used. I do enjoy doing it when I have the time.

Unknown said...

Vicki,
Stumbled on your blog whilst surfing about distance learning and from there got to Sharon B's. Would you recommend Sharon's stitch library as a taster before tackling C&G at WS Touchbase? I must have been on their site a dozen times and taken fright at committing. I did one year of the level 3 C&G at a college but poor teaching and long travel times left me very disillusioned. I note you are taking it at a fairly leisurely pace so you've made me feel more positive anyway!