Digital Art
(1) William Morris Research Board
Brief and Research
For this project, we were asked to design a piece of static digital art based on a traditional or modern artist, using their style to guide us through our design process. Seeing as this project required me to understand and take inspiration from one particular artist, I decided to do research into both traditional and modern artists to decide who I wanted to mimic in my own style. Artists I researched include Van Gogh, Neville Brody and William Morris. Morris' work interested me the most, due to his interesting use of composition, colour and detail. It seemed it would be beneficial to my future design work to learn about patterns and textile design so I can continue to make some interesting backgrounds.
William Morris’ designs interested and inspired me, as his style explored nature in an aesthetically pleasing way to present the beauty found in it. He often used all of the space in his composition and paid attention to every little detail. Something I took away from his designs when researching was the way he created detail with simple patterns instead of using highly complicated illustration techniques, which is something I was interested in mimicking in my own designs. His work is often repeatable patterns for textile use and focuses on natural elements, such as flowers, birds, leaves and many more (1).
Looking through his designs, I discovered the piece ‘Strawberry Thief’. This was the main design that would go on to inspire my project, as I referenced this image repeatedly while illustrating in this task. While researching, I recorded all of my progress on Milanote, so I could reference it later when designing.
(2) Design Initial Sketches
Initial Sketches and Ideas
Before opening up my design software, I wanted to create a few quick sketches to get my ideas out of my head and onto paper (2). I knew I wanted to create a pattern of florals and birds, as this was a common theme in Morris’ work. However, I wanted to make sure I didn’t lose my own style through this project, as this design was only based on William Morris - not a direct copy. To sketch my initial ideas, I used Procreate on my IPad Pro with the 6B pencil brush, to imitate the look of a pencil. Taking inspiration from Morris, I sketched a variety of plants and a few birds, as in his design work he often uses birds or large florals as a focal point in his designs.
After finishing this sketching process, I decided to move forwards with a select few instead of incorporating too many, as this would give me more options to explore with colour and detail without them blending in with a noisy design.
(3) Developing Sketches
Project Development - Procreate
To start my design process, I began by defining my initial sketches in procreate, using a streamlined monoline brush to ensure my illustrations had smooth edges and my hand movements wouldn’t be detected as much when drawing. I then added some detailing, such as different colour variations to define depth.
For my robin, I added some simple detailing using the same technique Morris used for his birds in his ‘Strawberry Thief’ piece, as I thought it looked a bit too plain. Once I was happy with these standalone designs (3), I moved on to creating my pattern.
Digital Art Process
Project Development - Pattern Creation
To start my pattern, I arranged my plants and flowers in a continuous diagonal pattern that was repeatable, so that I could duplicate it throughout the composition. Duplicating it was pretty simple, as I grouped the layers I had created and duplicated them, shifting them to the upwards until my pattern reached the top (1). I then continued this to the right until I had a full composition that was repeatable (2), as William Morris’ work is usually wallpapers, meaning it is required to be a continuous pattern.
Once I did this, I thought my pattern looked a little plain, so I added simple branches to fill in the gaps (3), emphasising the main designs through size differences, similar to William Morris. Next up, I pushed this detail further by adding some small petal flowers to fill even more gaps (4), which also helped create some more variation of colour in my design. Finally, I duplicated this entire design and flattened it to make it one solid layer, so that I could enable the alpha lock. I then coloured this new layer in a darker colour, and shifted it slightly behind the original design, to give the design a shadow and some more depth (5).
Finally, I added my robins over the top of my finished design and had them mirroring each other, mimicking William Morris ‘Strawberry Thief’.
(4) Final Digital Art Piece
Reflection of Project
Overall, I am relatively happy with how this task turned out (5), despite there being a few things that I would change if I was to do this project again. This project was successful, as the use of colours and the overall composition is visually pleasing to look at and I believe it is a good interpretation of William Morris’ textile work without losing my style as a designer. I have learned some detailing techniques, and how detail doesn’t have to be incredibly accurate to be effective, which helped me create subtle details on my plants and birds when illustrating.
Personally, I think my task reflects the brief, as I did lots of research into my chosen traditional artist and used what I learned to create a design piece that mirrored his work without losing my style as a designer.
If I was to do this task again, I would look at creating some larger, more intricate designs to fill my composition, rather than focusing on smaller designs and duplicating them, as lots of William Morris’ work features larger designs that are very delicate and detailed to dominate the composition.