Three weeks in = Inspiration

I'm very excited about the classes I'm taking this semester - Color Theory, Intro to Interior Design and Textile Designs. Although each class has a different focus,  I've noticed there's one common theme in all three, inspiration.

During studio and lectures inspiration talk is always present, the professors are constantly asking "what inspires you?". At first, it definitely seemed like a very broad question, there are hundreds of things that I'm inspired by. However, in the past three weeks I've learned to quickly narrow down that broad thought and find inspirations specifically related to a project or an idea.

One of my professors said that when it comes to interiors designed by a pro, we have to observe it like a work of art, as if we were looking at a photograph or painting in a gallery trying to figure out what inspired the artist to create that piece.  It's the same with interiors, designers also develop a concept and gather inspiration from various sources in order to develop a design.

The first project for my textile design class is all about inspiration and concept. I have to select a country, and then search for inspiration within the country's culture to develop an interior using textiles. Turns out that I actually have a little trip to Istanbul coming up in March, so my decision was pretty easy... Turkey would have been at the top of my list anyway because it has such an amazingly rich culture, it also happens to have a great textile industry.

Within the last couple of days I've spent hours looking at images depicting Turkish culture - their architecture, bazaars, rugs, bathhouses, arts and crafts, and traditions among many more. I'm most attracted to the geometrical shapes and patterns used in tiles, rugs, fabrics, and architecture. I've also noticed that if you look closely you can distinguish two very different color palettes in the Turkish culture, one is very rich and bold with violets, reds, oranges, yellows, blues, and greens and the other is very black and white with lots of contrast. I decided that these two color palettes and the geometrical patterns will take center stage in my textile design project.  

Early on my professors advised that all students have a binder with clippings and cut-outs of images from magazines, newspapers, catalogs, fabrics, etc. that we found to be inspiring. The goal is to develop a personal/visual inspiration and reference guide that will be very handy as we continue to work on specific projects. This week, I finally got around to buying a 1" binder to organize my reference/inspiration book. When I finish inserting all of the clippings I've collected thus far,  I couldn't help but noticed how uninspired I was by the exterior appearance of the "inspiration book" itself. It was in desperate need of a drastic makeover.

After seeing so many beautiful shapes and colors related to Turkish culture, I decided to put all this talk of inspiration into action, and design a binder cover that would be more appropriate.  Inspired by two of the images shown above (in the set of black & white images), I decided to create a design with the black and white zigzag shapes on the pillow located on the top right corner and the center flower-like design on the image on the lower right corner.

The first step was measuring the front cover of the binder and sketching the design on a piece of tracing paper, before drawing in the patterns and details I drew a rectangle corresponding to the size of the binder so that I could keep my design within the correct measurements. 

 

Then, I transferred my design to a piece of 11x14 watercolor paper using graphite transfer paper. Once my design was transferred, using a small brush I painted every other zigzag line with black gouache paint.

Instead of keeping all of the original colors displayed on the images, I decided to mix it up a bit by adding a splash of color on my design. I mixed yellow and red paints to get a nice bright red-orange color that would go around the "flower" shaped pattern, which I decided to leave white.

Once the painting of the zigzag lines and red-orange base were complete and dry, I used an X-Acto knife and a cork back stainless steel ruler to trim the sides of the paper to the exact measurements of the front cover insert of the binder. 

And of course, in true makeover fashion, here's the infamous BEFORE:

And the fabulous AFTER:

Now that's more like it!