Old House New Home - amazing blind!

It's been a year full of new challenges..!

In February, I had a very interesting phone call from the television company, Amazing Productions. They were working on a fab new home makeover show called 'Old House, New Home' for Channel 4, currently showing in the UK (here), and asked if George Clarke, architect and presenter, could help me print something in my studio as a surprise present to the homeowner, Emily. 

Here's George in my studio!!! 

After working out what might be feasible in the time frame, we decided that I would design a blind that George and I would screen-print. The design was to be inspired by fragments of an old 1950's wallpaper that had been in Emily's bathroom. The wallpaper would have to go during the renovation and my new design would be an updated contemporary reference to it. 

I only had a very short time span for this, but enjoyed the whole project immensely -

Here's a few extra images; printing with George; from my sketchpad; and of the blind on the print table...

Always amazing...printing!

happy printers...

The two options on the colourway were fuschia pink and silver along with a green and grey which matched the floor tiles and walls in the bathroom.  Here's the pink in my sketchbook, but after sampling, the silver was selected...

Raw linen, chartreuse, charcoal grey and silver...

upside down on my print table...

and of course the final made-up blind in Emily's house..! 

Special thanks to the fantastic production team at Amazing Productions!

It was really lovely to meet George, also Emily, and the blind was beautifully sewn up by Julia at Finishing Touches' in South Molton.

Links...

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/george-clarkes-old-house-new-home/on-demand/62968-001

(It's the first episode by the way!)

http://amazingproductions.co.uk/

http://www.juliafinishingtouches.co.uk/

We are running a new Photoshop to Screen-Printing short course in my studio in September, also a "Photoshop for Textiles" short course at West Dean College this Autumn. More Autumn Screen printing and Photoshop for Textiles workshop dates to be finalised soon...

https://sampickard.bigcartel.com

http://westdean.assets.d3r.com/pdfs/original/13622-short-courses-2016-17-low-res-pdf.pdf

National Trust Artisan collection - Extra Extra!

This morning while printing another large white Chrysanthemum panel, an email came in with a link to this lovely article on the Homes and Gardens website, Read the full article here!

I love the National Trust. So many of my notebook drawings have been inspired and informed by flora and fauna on my walks on Exmoor and in the Heddon Valley. The National Trust protects our coastline; looks after historic houses and gardens; forests, farmland, moorland, islands and much much more! Now they've initiated an Artisan and Craft collection in their shops to celebrate British Craft heritage and I am very happy to have my work included in this! 

The Chrysanthemum panel is now finished, the white flower a symbol of truth. 

Here's a detail of the print drying on my print table...

National Trust Artisan collection

Surely it's inevitable that your work reflects where you live? I moved from London to a small market town in North Devon sixteen years ago. When Elle Decoration Magazine called my work 'Modern Rustic' in 2007, that was the first time I'd recognised the rural influence on my work and I suppose it's continued along its rustic route from there on. There's no question now that my heart's properly in the country - along with my head and other body parts (most of the time anyway!).

Here are a few of the cushions that gambolled off to The National Trust's Artisan and Craft collection a few weeks ago. Look out for them on the National Trust website (exclusively) this Autumn/Winter and in selected National Trust shops..!






































...and thank you so much Country Living magazine for featuring the Copper Beech/Fawn cushion for National Trust in this month's (October) issue!

"Don't push the river, it will flow by itself" (Chinese proverb)

A few months ago I stopped drawing (which felt very strange) and took time to reflect on the past three and a half years of documenting colours in plants, birds, shells etc. and writing about them on my blog.

As far as possible I ignored the pre-conceptions that I'd had about what should be the outcome, and also what I thought others might think about it, I just did whatever I felt most enthusiastic about and let it develop. When I worried that I should have chosen brighter or more varied plants and colours, I accepted that I've always been attracted by simple forms and more muted tones, that this journey has never been about fashion or trends anyway (quite the opposite in fact), that it may or may not be the most creative conclusions I'd ever come to but it would be whatever it would be!

I'm very happy with the outcome :)

Yesterday dawned bright and sunny, so an opportunity to take some studio shots of the finished screen prints, The sun came in and out of the clouds but I did get a few images if a bit dark, here they are...

And then there were three...

Spider Chrysanth and Bamboo (72" x 32") - a plant in your room which you don't have to water!

Screen-printed onto natural linen, Bamboo and Ivy...

My favourite - a deep purple Ivy screen printed block repeat!

Emptied a pot from the garden to take this photo - made me smile!

In reality the colours of these prints are subtle and beautiful...

...and today, drying on my print table - a special edition of the Twine table runner in two of the amazing colours of Stauntonia Hexaphylla (leaf green coupled with flower pink)..!

On Tuesday, I'll be delivering this work to the Devon Guild of Craftsmen in Bovey Tracey, as part of 'Land, Sea, Sky' exhibition! It does feel like an end as well as a new beginning somehow. (though I hope to still post occasional colours and plants which inspire me!).

I hope you can make it to the exhibition, but if you can't, you might like to know that I'll also be showing these at Cornwall Design Fair (August 15th - 17th).

I should add that they are of course all for sale! please email me if you'd like information and prices.

(Many of my early notebook sketches were drawn spending time with my dad before he died just over two years ago and looking through them has been coloured with memories. I'd been on the edge of starting print workshops in my studio, just before he died and now with the invaluable support of Womens Development Unlimited , I'm very excited that from October, I hope to at last be starting these, and teaching people who'd like to learn to design, print and dye textiles - in fact all the things I love doing myself...watch this space!).

...from my seasonal colour sample notebook.

Selvedge Spring Fair

I'm delighted to be exhibiting in a few weeks at Selvedge magazine's Spring Fair in Chelsea Town Hall, London on 4th and 5th of April !!!

I'll be showing a Spring Fair edition of the Spider Chrysanth wall panel!

not to mention a few familiar faces...

Hope to see you there!! 

For more information go to Selvedge Magazine.

!!STOP PRESS!! 

I have a few free tickets to give away - so if you're interested in visiting, please email me at sam@sampickard.co.uk ASAP!

Colour sampling - Chrysanthemum print

From experience I know the only way to develop new work is to make a start, get the ideas out of my head and onto paper, fabric, or wherever, accept that much of this early work may not be be brilliant and keep going.

At last, after colour sampling trials this week (huge sigh of relief!), I'm finally getting somewhere.

First samples: I printed the colours I'd sampled from the real Chrysanthemum flower back into the printed flower - as in my original notebook page, with interesting results...

Then I printed colour squares behind the flower as on my notebook pages. The white seriously mis-printed but you get the idea. To give an idea of scale the squares are 25cms...

Now a change of line colour. Here the flower outline is leaf green, the infill is dusky petal orange. Subtle, and reminiscent of Art Nouveau?

I decided to simplify. Do I have to fit every colour in just because nature manages to!
Here I've printed only one colour in the petals and the leaf green. I also introduced a shadow. Inspired (as I often am) by the work of Patrick Caulfield, I thought a hard edge shadow would be achievable and dramatic.

I nearly always use unbleached linen (partly as a positive environmental choice and partly because I really love it) therefore in all the above samples I'd adjusted the colours to take into account this underlying base colour and keep as near as possible to the colours in the plant. However I did (lastly) trial print this sample onto bleached linen in Chrysanthemum bud dusky pink.

...from my seasonal colour sample notebook.

Colour from the season - Seaweed green

Every now and then I open a particular Photoshop file on my computer which contains layers of seaweed drawings (not dissimilar to the image below), because I find endless inspiration in the random piled up imagery that's very much like seaweed strewn on the shore. So when one day last week I was on the beach with Chip, I decided it was possibly as seasonal as it ever would be, to document a few of these intense sub marine hues in my notebook and share the pleasure of it.

Seaweed (aka Marine Algae) comes in all sorts of extraordinary natural forms and the three main colours are green, brown and red and of course shades of these.

The drawings were the motivation behind my 'Seaflower' fabric design. A surreal mix of Seaweed, Dahlias and Chrysanths.

...from my seasonal colour sample notebook.