Zarah's Blog: Art Nouveau Inspired College Work (Part 2)

This is the second half of my Art Nouveau work. I used the same process on Photoshop by putting a balance of organic linear designs into compositions that can be put into repeat to look like a potential wall paper idea. Gosh...that was a bit of a mouthful. Below are the initial drawings I started off with which I eventually turned into a complex pattern design.

Above and below are the screens I produced for the screen printing process. Above I separated the leaves from the orchids as it was easier to create a continuous effect of the leaves intertwining one another. I was inspired to do this by a famous artist, William Morris who works with intertwining plant veins into his floral patterns.

This is the Final product. I'm not very good at photographing, as you can probably tell, my photos turned out a bit dark so I had to brighten it up a little by changing the contrast and saturation. I used quite a traditional wallpaper composition, so I wanted to change things around by using energetic colours giving a contemporary twist. I'd say this was my most challenging piece ever because I decided to print on calico material. This is known to be very stretchy which isn't very good when your trying to print something so complicated. Due to this I had many complications as I was fighting with the masking tape trying to keep the material in place. Also if I applied too much pressure, the ink turned out blotchy, if I applied too little, the line would appear too faint. It was pretty frustrating, but I hope from a distance you can't notice the imperfections.