Silkscreen – Design process (of failures)

Brace yourself for a really, really, long post. 

In Project 2, we were tasked to create vintage style designs based on movie quotes. However, the challenge was, we were not able to include any words or obvious representations of the characters, scenes or the quotes. Also, we were challenged to use symbols, wingdings, dingbats, and all that sorts.

In the previous post, I’ve included 5 images / gifs of my chosen quotes. And here are my draft designs. (Disclaimer: they’re quite baaaad.)


ONE

We’ve all got both light and dark inside us. What matters is the part we choose to act on… that’s who we really are. – Sirius Black, Harry Potter

lightdark
Sketch

lightdark-a lightdark-b lightdark-c

 

 

TWO

Uh, just a billionaire, playboy, philanthropist. – Iron Man, Avengers

gbpp
Sketch

gbpp-a1 gbpp-a2-2 gbpp-a3 gbpp-b1 gbpp-a2-3

 

THREE

Doth mother know you waereth her drapes? – Iron Man, Iron Man

 

drapes
Sketch

drapes-a1 drapes-b1

 

FOUR

Once you do something, you never forget. Even if you can’t remember. – Zeniba, Spirited Away

remember
Sketch (Including the sketch for the next quote which was not materialised)

remember

remember-b1The remember finger design is slightly okay, but there’s already a design out there that this exactly like that.

Finish what you started, human! – Kamaji, Spirited Away


The first drafts really weren’t fantastic, and I wasn’t able to come up with much research initially.

I found this wood cut artist, by the name of Kent Ambler when I started off.

 

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I quite like his work! It was like a nice blend of a rather modern expression of art in the form of woodcuts, which is a more traditional medium. I also like how he has his own specific themes, seen in the various “Everything will kill you” woodcuts. It is also obvious that he works a lot on animals and nature. He has a lot of interesting stuff, but I definitely failed to apply what I’ve garnered from him into my first drafts.

Unsatisfied with most of my above designs, I set off to look for quotes again and did more designs. In the midst of the second round of designs, I looked for a lot more artist references.

Since it was black and white themed, I started off with Dr. Woo, a tattoo artist, I’m following on Instagram.

 

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Dr. Woo has a very distinct style, and makes use of very thin lines and a lot of geometric shapes, particularly circles and arrows and lines. I like his work, but I thought I could research for artists that were more relevant.

I found Amy Fierro, a silkscreen artist selling her prints on etsy. Here are some of her work:

 

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I like the use of repetition, the same print, but in different colors. Through the design, your eyes are told where to look.

passingwhalesAs always, I love the use of negative spaces! It is very cute and the lines feel very organic and comfortable to look at.

silhouetteOh, why didn’t I think of using silhouettes? Though there are some words here, I thought maybe, if there was a fitting quote, I could make animal-themed designs.

And then, I also remembered how I loved, and loved to design vintage logos. Perhaps I could design something like these, though many of these consists words or names, but I could work in a similar direction?

 

4 nordic-lights-1 preview3-o vintage-logos-logos-from-the-great-outdoors-hero vintage-x-logos-mockups-3-f

 

And finally, after all that creeping around on the internet, I stumbled upon a new genre of art I didn’t know about, but now love. Vintage collages. It started off with a post by Eugenia Loli.

 

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How awesome is that. Also, they seem befitting to the theme of the current project, except the use of detailed images and colors. I was reinspired to do more designs for this project.

From Eugenia Loli, I discovered more artists involved in this style of art. They are Eugenia’s influences, and I can see why.

 

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Kieron “Cur3es” Cropper
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Bryan “Glass Planet” Olson
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David Delruelle
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Magritte
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Julien Pacaud

(I love his signature blue / turquoise color schemes!)

Other than looking for more references, I also sought to look for quotes that could more easily conjure images, instead of actions or thoughts like most of my previous quotes.

So, here is round 2 of my designs. (Disclaimer: most of them, still not fantastic)


 

“The flower that blooms in adversity is the most rare and beautiful of all.” — The Emperor, Mulan.

I felt particularly inspired at the first quote. And hence chose one of my designs for it for print. The one which visuals I heavily borrowed from Eugenia Loli’s collage of Spring Crop at the Rosseland Crater.

spring-crop-at-the-rosseland-crater-web__880

Looking bad at it now, it is really a bit too similar…

When I found the Mulan quote, I was reminded of the image above. Because flowers don’t grow on the moon, and if they do, it must have been an ‘adversity’ for them to grow despite the conditions and they would indeed be really rare and beautiful flowers.

adversityflower-a1I started off with this. 

adversityflower-a2-1And then played with different placements. The white stripe was accidental, but I thought it looked quite cool. 

adversityflower-a2-2Because vintage means sunbursts.

adversityflower-a2And what if the background was white?

adversityflower-b1Let’s not be too similar to the reference image. Mulan, represented by a vintage female character, dressed in a suit? She looks like she owns it.
adversityflower-c1Instead of a suit, how about man’s ancient Chinese robes, just like in the movie? Replacing the head with a flower, to represent Mulan, the flower who grew in adversity.

Eventually, my classmates favoured this design and suggested that I should add some stars in the background, so I did.
adversityflower-a2-2This is the design I chose for silkscreen printing.

Use that big brain of yours to think your way out! Look for a new angle! – Tadashi, Big Hero 6

bigbrain

bh6-a1 I attempted to use exaggeration to prove ‘big brain’, but that didn’t work out well. Also, the patterns in the background are my abstract representation of angles… Which no one got / accepted except me. (It’s okay, I get it.) bh6-b2

Using patterns to help convey angles. And an eye to convey ‘look for’. But evidently, for either designs, they don’t seem to be working to communicate the message.

Girls stop using YOLO as an excuse to be a hoe. – Ted, Ted

tumblr_m81gr9ujtx1r8yu2mo1_500

hoe-a1Well, a literal hoe. And a rope, to represent bungee jumping. Extreme sport, YOLO, get it? Ok I know this one is really bad. Obviously I wasn’t inspired.

hoe-b1

Another weird thought process. Cookies for whoever who can solve this riddle.

I still think that I could do better for the rest of my designs (it was all still scrub, except for the Mulan one), perhaps I was really boggled by the challenge of movie quotes and ‘metaphorical visuals’. At this point, it was a lot about finding a suitable movie quote and having an inspiration to make a design out of it.

In the next post, I talk about my experience with silkscreen printing before moving on to the process for my final designs!

 

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Shi Teng Wong

Galvanising unorthodox ideas is my anthem.

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