Holiday Creativity Coastal Artwork Juliette O Designs

How the coast inspired a mixed media landscape

Whenever I have the chance to decompress and visit the coast I always find that my creative batteries get recharged and I am brimming with ideas (see my last blog to boost your creativity too) . A previous visit to Cornwall was no exception and I felt inspired to try and recreate the coastal landscapes I had seen using mixed media.

Landscapes generally have a variety of textures which lend themselves to a mixed media format and this enabled me to consider using a range of different techniques such as painting, machine embroidery, hand embroidery and paper cutting (as well as more general material manipulation) for my piece.

I studied 3D Design at university many years ago and have a habit of always reverting back to three dimensions in my creative work, even though I generally start with two dimensions in my sketchbooks. I like to see the designs interpreted with different materials and textures and sometimes I then transfer these back to a flat image for printing on fabrics, it’s quite a complicated process but it works for me!

Making of 'In Flight' Coastal piece

This piece started with a watercolour wash to represent both the sea and the sky and then I used a range of layered fabrics to represent the land. Hand embroidered stitches and loose threads gave added texture as did some frayed fabric edges.

In my ‘Coastal’ sketchbook I had created an original fish print and I used this as a starting point before developing it into a separate ‘head’ and ‘tail’ shape  Using watercolours, I painted the shapes blue in the lower half of the piece to represent the fish and then I developed the same shapes in white card on the upper half to represent birds in flight. The white card pieces were also attached to pins to hover above the main base card and cast shadows which gave more of an impression of birds in flight.

 

 'In Flight' Coastal Art piece Juliette O Designs

As you can imagine, this particular piece is very labour intensive and time consuming so I only made a very limited quantity! I am currently in the process of looking at developing this design onto printed products so do drop me a line if this is something you would like to see.

For more of my Coastal inspired products see here

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