Designing with motifs!

This week I have been developing some design ideas based on the motifs I have created, and the work I have done so far. I have really enjoyed being able to use my hand drawn elements to create these designs, which I feel are coming along nicely. I have been playing with colour and scale, to create a range of different styled designs. I have found that my designs are developing in 2 different directions, as some have become more geometric due to the use of lines and strong shapes, and some have hand drawn qualities and look looser. This therefore has also led me to consider having 2 different collections as a final outcome, but I have decided to develop one collection first and if I have time, split this into 2 and develop 2 collections.

I started the week by putting the patterns I was creating straight into repeat as shown above. But I soon realised that as I am new to this the technique was restricting my creativity so I started designing out of repeat. This helped but I also realised that for the type of designing I am doing, unless I want the design to be used on wrapping paper my designs don't need to be in repeat. I will therefor put the designs into repeat if I select them to be used on gift wrap.

When I started designing out of repeat with motifs I didn't like the results such as the design above. But after a tutorial with Alex I soon realised that it was working onto a white background that was putting me off. He suggested that I worked onto a coloured background and that automatically made my designs better, such as the ones below.

The next stage with my designs is to start using context images to try and narrow down my designs to produce a final collection.