Chuyue Zhang

Chuyue Zhang is a second year textile design undergraduate from the University of Leeds. She is following the digital textile design specialism and enjoys using various CAD programmes to generate creative works. She is most strongly interested in the interior textiles, as well as intricate fashion designs (e.g. vintage, bridal etc.) Currently, she is looking forward to taking design work placement for 2013. Website: http://chuyuezhang.com/

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Design Theory Final Assignment

I have also finished my assignment for Design Theory, a series of designs using tessellations, aiming for the souvenir mug market.

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Journal 5: Regular Polyhedra

The last journal of Design Theory was about colouring regular polyhedra - using the minimum colours to fill in the faces with 5 types of regular polyhedra, with no adjacent faces using the same colour.  Below are my colouring solutions:

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Summary of My Semester Two Textile Design Study (Second Year)

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Final Textile Designs

Finally, my textile design project (Chinese swordsmen journey) was finished; below are my ten final designs.

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New Final Design

I worked on another final design this week, in this design, I emphasized more on the blue colour palette, purple (one of the key colours in the previous design) had a more supporting role in this design.

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Fractals

Another assignment for Design Theory -  we were asked to produce a series of fractal designs: designs exhibiting self-similarity property.  Below were some examples from my work, each design demonstrated a "4-step transformation":

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Final Designs, One from Each Collection

Finally, it came to last stage, I designed two pieces for my two collections; one was based on the older swordsmen films - more natural, with realistic drawing styles and soft colours; the other was based on the more recent films, using simpler, more stylised motifs plus a stronger (reddish) colour scheme.  In both collections, the human figure part was kept as a very subordinate element, in collection 1, it was mapped on to the flowers to create interesting patterns; in collection 2, it was merged with the tree image or used in the background (intended as silhouette with line works mapped onto).

Final Design 1

Final Design 2

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Digitalisation

After drawing out the motifs and producing the colour files, I put them into Photoshop, Illustrator and NedGraphics for further digitalisation, I would like to show the digitalisation process by images in the following paragraphs:

Digitalised motifs for design1

Digitalised motifs for design2 (with textures mapped onto)

Compositions

More finalised colour ways

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Back to Work

Coming back to Leeds, I started working on my final textile design project.  I decided to draw out the composition of the design first, then depict the individual motifs, colour files, digitalise them, put them in the right placement in the computer programmes (Photoshop, Illustrator and NedGraphics) and finally change the colour way.

In this week, I just finished the first three steps, some example works were listed:

Composition

Motifs drawn for design 1

Colour files for design1

Motifs for design2

Line textures for design2

Texture and colour file for design2

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Hello London

Spent a week visiting London! Despite the weather, every thing else was so great, I visited the most famous tourist attractions, and in the British museum, I really saw some art works that were quite inspirational.  Below were some examples of them:

Some works of inspirational textures, typical motifs, interesting geometric patterns colours and compositions

I also did not forget to source interesting textures on my way, a few examples were listed below:

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On the Train

Visiting London this week! Which meant I had no chances to do many drawings with colours; but the line work continued - while travelling on the train, I drew out lots of line works on texture from my primary visual researches, some examples were listed below:

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Separated

As a designer, I believed that it was more effective to break things down into pieces, then pull them together; which meant I liked to draw out single motifs and then put them into composition.  As mentioned before, I had already tried to draw out single motifs, texture patterns and  paint single colour files, I continued to draw more single patterns of line works (as Luci suggested me to work more on this part).  Below were some examples of this and how they could be printed on fashion fabrics (still enriching my fashion portfolio for internships interviews).

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Happy Easter!

Finally it came to the last week before Easter holiday!  Following Luci's advices, in this week, I created some experimental print designs with simpler motifs, even solely used textures.  Explorations on coordinate printing, changing colour ways were conducted. 

I tried to map abstract line work onto the designs in the last image

Plain texture designs

Since I was preparing for job interviews these days, and most of them were fashion companies, I generated more fashion illustrations with the newly created designs. Good luck to me!

Fashion Illustrations

Happy Easter!

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Thanks Luci ...

Week 7 was the busiest week so far, we had to work hard to finalise the boards for the Bradford Textile Competition, and we got mid-term feedback from our tutors, it was not a week with loads of works done, but a week getting directions.

My tutor Luci had given me the following suggestions:

Things went well were the explorations on textures and floral images, the abstract line was a great strength, but yet had not been taken into designs too far; perhaps it was considerable to bring in more abstract lines.

The explorations on human figures were less successful, but the ones used in the competition piece were better developed.  Should follow Chen's abstract style more (even try to be more abstract than him), the early ones appeared to be distracting.

The fabric swatches needed to be more well presented, and also should continue to source wider range of textiles.

Be clear about the market level designed for, high end? Then look at more designs from brands like Designers' Guild, Sandersons, Timorous Beasties etc.

The subordinate motifs (especially the backgrounds) should be further simplified, otherwise the designs appeared to be a bit too busy.  Could also consider doing some designs for cushion, sofa covers that go with the curtains (the idea of designing for a set).  Try coordinate printing for these, and experiment with both block and half drop repeat.

Thanks for the valuable advices from Luci! Wish to carry on better.

As I was applying to some fashion companies for work placement, I did some mocks of the prints on dress, appeared not bad to me!

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The Bradford Competition

In week,6 I mainly focused working on the development piece for the Bradford Textile Competition.

First, I simplified the human figures and tried to make them more abstract.  I took loads of pictures of other people and myself (myself in exaggerated movements), then draw them out using marker or  ink with brush pen in simple lines, just showed the gesture.

Human figure motifs I developed

The flowers and textured background part were similar to the ones of week 5’s, but I continued to produce more visual research motifs.

Line works and silhouette of flours, colour files (water colour on tracing paper). colour reduced files and motif for background pattern

The flower paintings (colour part) were inspired by the artist Karin Johannesson who used interesting gradient change in colours when drawing flowers.

Karin Johannesson 

In the CAD software, I experimented with composition, scales, layering and colour, trying to find out the best design can be for an end product, also, the interior illustration was made.

Two ideas on composition

Some subordinate designs (colour explorations)

Final design and product illustration.   

Apart from working on the competition, I also continued looking at some artists (in books and on pinterest), I looked at abstract artists depicting texture and figures, generally, three ways to be abstract are: simplifying, making complicate (usually by layering) and using distortion (usually with unrealistic scale).  Hopefully next week I can look at the artists more in detail and apply some of their techniques in my further visual researches.

I kept sourcing fabric swatches as well, including curtain fabrics (with printed designs on), plain fabrics (I would have an interest to print onto) and fabrics with interesting textures can be used as curtains.

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Balanced Composition

We were asked to divide a rectangle into 5 unequal proportions, colouring each in black white or grey, making sure the adjacent rectangles were in different colour and achieving balance.  Mondrian's works were suggested as guidelines for this assignment.

Mondrian's work and designs inspired by him

My design of balanced composition

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Mid Term Summary (image based)

Same as last semester, we had a power point presentation to talk about our design ideas, the images below were from the power point document, acting as an image documentary of my study process.