This has been a week of MAJOR PROGRESS at SquidWhale h.q. We've finally delved into working in color (gouache painting yes!) and went on our first flea market adventure together to hunt for vintage inspiration.
Let me start by saying that I am a fine artist by training and it is not easy for me to work in the way that Textile Designers do. I usually rely heavily on layering of wet and dry media, on rigorous mark making (ok, scribbling) and a lot of adding and subtracting. My drawing tools are filthy with graphite powder.
After much erasing, re-drawing, checking my measurements and much encouragement from Squid, I finally finished the contour line drawing of my first surface pattern design. Here, it's inset into our 4 ft. wide medallion of abstract florals:
To prepare for painting my whole motif with gouache on board which is quite large, I started with just these two little plaid mice. They're seen with some of Squid's designs for our first collection:
Our designs amidst some of our vintage inspiration found at the flea market on Saturday. Please note the color litho plates from a 1939 edition of French Costumes. They're fantastic and will most likely be for sale in the SquidWhale Designs Etsy shop come June or July:
Detail of the most amazing hankie that echoes our color palette and design choices:
And lastly, a little vintage embroidered linen table cloth and leather-topped wooden table for our installation. I plan to embroider a few scurrying mousies onto the table cloth. They'll weave in and out of the black-eyed susans and the french knots that look, curiously enough, just like little mouse turds...
More soon! Thanks for stopping by!
<3 SquidWhale Designs
