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Block Demo Repeat: Reinventing the Source

What I'm going to start doing is doing some sketches from these and pulling out some art work that I want to then go over with a lot we'll do pencil sketch first and then I'll go over with my brush and and a black line on we can keep talking about some of the things that we're talking about and finding inspiration and process while I'm doing the drawing so if you have questions out there in internet land you're more than welcome to shoot them my way um I'm gonna work right on the pad um and I think I kind of loved this I'm kind of loving this floral and I'm gonna I think I'm gonna play around with that although I'm kind of loving under maybe they'll be combination of the two and a little bit of this day is going to be like watching me work a little bit of a slow process but I think it's it's always fascinating for me to watch other artists work so I think I'm just gonna have to tow hope that it's fascinating for you yeah it has to be able to watch you work so when I'm starting with a b...

lock repeat there's there's a few thing I'm going to actually set up my page that I have uh a block repeat that maybe I should start over by saying what a block repeat is a block repeat and I think we can bring up the so a block repeat is a a repeat where you're taking up almost like a vine pattern or a tile and repeating it in a sort of linear way and it's it's this might be an exercise that you did you know, in high school or even an elementary school or if you've ever done any printing, this is like the basic you make a print on a line a block and then you repeat it right? So you're trying to set it up so that it lines up I'm just going to quickly outline oh, and I brought I brought a square for myself and I left it um but I'll use this and said, so usually I'll have like, a triangular square me to set up a really square piece of paper on dh in this case, I'm going I'm going just for ease in photo shop later and scanning I'm going to do in eight inch by eight inch um square toe measuring out eight inches with my pencil and then I'm gonna go e didn't give myself enough room what's funny I don't I am like I think it's in my computer bag so I don't know if it's in in really accessible or not this's okay, we'll be fine or I will have to wing it make sure I gave myself enough from this time it's only like a nine by twelve inch piece of paper and that that's. The other thing I used on going talk a little bit about the equipment that I used, but I have a small scanner and you don't need fancy equipment to do the scanning and processing of imagery, so but there are limitations, so an eight by eight is actually quite easy to scan. I found that working in an eight by eight inch, um, composition is good, so I've miss measured that one to race this land again and a lot of what I'm doing, I mean, and we'll talk with the director of the art directors and I'm anthropology buyer this afternoon, and and some of my some of my, uh, the folks I work with with my clients, we're going to do a call in and ask questions, but one of the advantages I mean it. One of the advantages of doing the handmade work is that are the hand drawn patterns and repeats is that people people love the way it looks. The disadvantage is that it's quite labor intensive and can be tedious, but I think it's well worth the time, if you can afford to spend the time and you'll get those of you who are well rehearsed in photo shop and other an illustrator, you know, this might just be a nice way to work. Back from you know, get some of the hand back into what you're doing but you know, I think it's it's um it's what people are looking for I can like all the meetings that I've been having lately or like it's so refreshing to see the hand and I keep thinking like twenty years ago probably people are like oh it's so refreshing to see something computer generated you know we were coming back full circle again but it's also nice because I feel like what I'm about to give you today is something that is totally approachable like you khun b you know as long as you are interested in drawing and painting and some level or image generation you can you can uh you can come up with anything on your own so molly, maybe while you're doing this you can you can remind us again sort of what we are going to see today for the people who are just joining us sure, what is that process from hand to hand to screen the service yeah so we're going to be covering how to dio several different kinds of repeats one is a block repeat that well I'll show you how to do a test in photo shop and then a um a paper cut repeat, which is, you know, overall repeat which is how I generated this pattern um and then ah we're going tow I'm gonna talk about how to make it make it work in photo shop and just really basic photo shop stuff and then I'll also talk will be talking with an anthropology buyer and my chronicle editor and and my art director that I work with at blend fabrics for my fabric including line so it's really exciting will have opportunities to talk to people and ask them questions figure out what's going on in their brains so what I've done so far is set out in eight by eight inch square for a black repeat and I'm gonna measure in so four inches is halfway and then I'm gonna actually just make two lines at two inches and six inches on either side so that I have a beginning place and unending place for my pattern which is kind of um you know makes sense when you start to lay it out. So the idea is that when I go to tile this in one direction, that pattern will line up and meet itself right? And you can so even if you don't end up using a computer at all, you could potentially screen print using this process to design something or letter, press multiple and line up things you could you know I mean block printing is where it came from so your classic indian print repeats and all that are done this way so wait can and you can follow along in the step by step key note that I have there's a pdf of that, so step two is just drawing between those lines, right? So I've got a visual here of what I've done, and then you're just going to want to avoid top and bottom so that you don't unless you want to set up and be more complex, you could set up another grid top to bottom so that those things match up, but we're going to stick simple right now and go from, like a read like a book from left to right so you can bring bring me back up on the screen so people can see what I'm doing. Um, so I am going to just using this I love this sort of the idea of this banner or like, these roses here as a repeat, and I also really like there's, this interesting pattern going on in the bottom of this base on dh, so I think I'm gonna play off of that, and I'm gonna make sure that whatever I start as a vine here ends in a way that it will make sense and I'm going to stay away from the edge is here in here so that just knowing that I need to make sure that when it when these two things touch they're goingto lineup and repeat so a vine is a really great you know it's a really great way to start in this case I'm going toe I'm gonna play around with these roses I think um leaf so I'm just going toe stay away from that edge a little bit and draw and I'm just referencing you know some of these areas and here the little tenderly kind of like how those play and I'm going to try to fill the space it's like that yellow flower it's really cool and I think you know when you're looking at something historic like this and you're playing with what is there can be really exciting teo um you know, reinterpret it and you see just how like one of the things that I that I love about you about how my work has developed is that I have kind of a naive aesthetic like it's not I'm not very I mean I went to art school but I spent most of most of my first couple of years doing drawing and painting but not with watercolor and not like I don't have a very extensive training and in a lot of what I do and so I feel kind of self taught and um and I think maybe we all dio I don't know maybe that's something I'm just I'm recognizing in myself, but I think that naivety or that sort of not super well rehearsed look is something that's being well responded to right now in particular like I think that it's a valuable thing for people but I think it also gives you permission as an artist not tow worry so much about what it is that you're let your hand like what? When I talked with anthropology or some of my other clients often they'll come to me and say with a specific project in mind for me and they'll say we just thought of your hand for this and that's how they're describing it so I think it's really important to remember that and what the advantages of what I'm teaching you today is that what what we're doing is something that your hand can only dio write like it's going to look like it's your it's like handwriting what you draw of this like you all did that same imagery and you all did the same pattern it would look so I mean, I like it would be kind of cool to see what people came up with actually versions of the same pattern that I'm doing today and looking at this the similar part of the same composition just to see like what you would respond to in this image because I think you'd be surprised how differently we all see things and how differently things come out and I think it's really exciting when you'd start to see things happen in a way that you you just give yourself permission to draw and not be worried about what it looks like um and sometimes I will collage imagery and use uh transfer paper so if I if you're really concerned about this there's this transfer paper called sara ll transfer paper and this is a race a ble which is kind of amazing so I will sometimes go and make a new image through, you know, collage like going in scrapbooking or make taking these I mean this is someone's graphics very pulled together this whole woodland walk from like multiple different sources and you could start making a whole scene and enlarging and decreasing imagery and come up with the composition that you want and understand what you've developed and then make a print out or a photocopy of that or just trace over and transfer through to paper and reinterpret that imagery by hand and become you know you're getting a little closer to being directly appropriating of imagery so you have to really make sure that when you were going to do that process that you're even though you're creating a new image with a bunch of different imagesit's still you want to be aware of where your sourcing your imagery especially if you're going to try to make money off of what you generate but that can be a really nice way to also erase the like anxiety about coming up with imagery on your own or a composition on your own. So sara ll transfer papers s a r a l and they have multiple different kinds, but this is a wax free and it leaves a red sort of transfer mark on the paper, and I'm gonna talk about another way to use that hopefully this afternoon. If we have time to finish my big this's azania are molly, I love the way you talked about as you keep because you keep working with the way that you talked about just letting yourself be free in terms of drawing on and seeing what happens. Jason destiny says if I'm looking to become involved in making patterns for my ceramic work but never have and have little or no drawing skills, how do you recommend starting? Yeah, and I think, you know, ceramics is a whole nother a place that, you know, I started by responding to the form and what I was doing in my artwork, so, um, in ceramics and I think, as a ceramic artist or someone who works on a three dimensional surface regularly, if you're wanting to incorporate more surface pattern, it might be really good to try the sterile paper process of working on paper first, but then you can also one thing that I've done in the past which I teach really regularly and all of my ceramic, um, courses that I teach and I all have actually I have a class coming out in the fall of this of twenty fifteen that is a surface design class for ceramics, and I will walk you through how to take something like what we're doing today in two dimensions and how to transfer just the line so you could do a hand drawn look in the surface of the clay so it's basically a transfer process that is similar to transfer paper, so you're leaving an impression in the surface of the clay by tracing over an image and laminating it and then trance, bring it to the surface of clay and I think there's some articles on my website, I believe that that explains some of that process for ceramics, so feel free to look that up. It's, molly hatch, dot com so you could look there and there are articles about past things that I've done, so look through if you're not finding it, you know, make sure that I post it soon on my blog's so you can see that, and I'll make sure it's pretty clear for those of you who are ceramic people looking toa figure out some ways to apply this directly ist ceramics and and that's ah ceramic surface aye really approached the ceramic surface like it's a three dimensional surface that's been that's been wrapped with a pattern so I think that it it was a natural transition from being a three dimensional product surface designer ceramic designer tio working on a flat surface on guy would draw the bottoms and I would have my artwork wrap all the way around and I think that working in as a ceramic artist before doing traditional design work has been um traditional product design has been an advantage for me because I really understand their relationship of the two dimensional sir what I think of as a two dimensional surface with a three dimensional object and I think a lot of people come at surface design guy was just talking with the designer last week in san francisco about this thing and she was working on but she's used to working on paper and then all of a sudden had to figure out how to do her design work on like drawing directly on the surface of mugs for a special project she was doing. And she said it was the hardest thing she's ever had to do and I was like, oh, it was like a total reverse for me like having to figure out howto like flatten that out and make the drying the artwork in two dimensions so that it can get then get reapplied to the surface is is really it's hard to imagine how it's going to lie on the surface, and I even find that challenging now, even though I'm not I'm used to thinking that way, so I think there's an advantage to being someone who's, starting in a different material and coming at surface designed from a different place because you know how you know how that's going to apply to whatever you're starting with in a way that no, you know, someone who's coming at it from from just a design perspective won't know howto won't know howto apply it as well as you would, and I think I think that's, why companies like anthropology and chronicle are in other, like, blend the fabric company I'm working with are looking to nontraditional or not, maybe not trained, traditionally, artists who are coming at surface, designed from a different perspective, it's an advantage they're going to bring something different to it then, um what someone who is trained to think that way will a different story, more, more depth in death? Um, experience with something specific?