Inspiration: Sarah Raphael's 'Childhood Cube'

Sarah Raphael's 'Childhood Cube' was in the creative gallery of the Museum of Childhood. Made in the millennium with input from primary school children, its filled with lots of little models and decorated with swirling patterns- to me, it was a playful, innocent, fun celebration of life through a child's eyes. 

Going with the idea of taking reference for my print work from hybrid imagery of my objects, this cube sculpture, with its randomly juxtaposed elements made by lots of different children and all pieced together, is another fun bit of visual inspiration. I like the crazy, patchwork feel it has due to all the separate parts being viewed at once, and I'll be experimenting with this feel in my digital prints. 

artwork reference:

Raphael, S (2000) Childhood Cube Mixed. Media sculpture/installation. London: Museum of Childhood

The Museum of Childhood

I had a great visit to the museum of childhood this week. 

When I walked in, the 'confiscation cabinets' display immediately reminded me of my Box Clever objects! Even the style of display echoes back to how my objects looked when I did my pop-up display in college at the start of the project- it made me laugh! Pocket sized, bright, plasticy and shiny, it's easy to see how such items might become distractions at school...

Display of items confiscated from children in primary school classrooms
at the Museum of Childhood

I was really fascinated by the little handwritten notes and folded, scrawled on bits of paper in the first cabinet. It brought back memories of how me and my friends used to pass secret, funny or sweet messages to each other under the table at school as well. When I  went back home, this idea inspired another paper cut stencil for my print block. I love the way kid's notes are a big jumble of words and phrases, with some bits crossed out and no worry of whether parts are upside-down or squished in. For my stencil, I cut out a jumble of words all relating to the objects in my box, and how they make me feel in this childish style. It'll be interesting to see the effect when layered up with other stencils and printed!

close up of scrawled note from Confiscation Cabinet (MoC)

my word-based stencil for screen printing next term

I also had good fun drawing from objects in the museum's main collection, where they have toys from across the ages. Things that really interested me were the constructive toys…linking to my box of things to physically 'play' around with, this type of toy is meant to be manipulated, taken apart and reassembled. There is a feeling of excitement and opportunity, as the toy has components that the person playing gets to decide how to put together. I also really liked the plastic character toys- robots, little people, ect- they have personality and a sense of humour due to their graphicy, humanised features that make them seem alive. 

montage of some of the objects I was drawn to in the museum collection

sketching at the museum

When I was making my paper collages last week, I used the word 'hybrid' to inspire how I put my imagery together. Looking closer at objects in the museum today however, I realised lots of toys are hybrids already, especially the construction based ones I like so much! Now I am thinking that for my photoshop (CAD) print work, it will be fun to try creating hybrids of my already hybrid-objects; taking parts of my drawings and photos and playing around with digitally collaging them together to create motifs and patterns. Lets see how it goes!

playing with colour/pattern/texture

Part of drawing and analysing my objects has been to look at the colours, textures and patterns, which I'll be able to derive inspiration for my work in the technical blocks from. 

Creating windings with yarn and material scraps helped me start to think about colour combinations. Lots of my objects have a plasticy shine to them, which prompted me to look for some shiny threads, and to incorporate rubber bands, wire, shredded carrier bags and other alternative materials into my initial test pieces. 

I now have a swatch book full of lots of mark-making inspiration too. It was interesting to look at little details and textures on my objects, then record them experimenting with scale, repetition, rotation and then colour. The only restriction was the dimension of the squares I could do my mark-making on! Once I got going, I really enjoyed this- it'll be a great starting point for print designs. 

Playing around drawing

Our first drawing week was really helpful to start analysing my Box Clever objects.

One tutor asked: what's the point of drawing when it's so easy now to just take photos? Well, drawing requires you to look at things and notice detail. Sitting infront of my objects made me pay attention to the shapes, colours, textures, and work out what attracted me to my collection in the first place. 

Looking at silhouette

Imagining cross sections

Slicing and silhouetting 

I enjoyed the loose approach of tuesday afternoon's workshop. It was all about playing around, which perfectly suits my collection of 'things to play with'. Having fun with my drawings emphasised the fun elements of my objects to me, with their bright colours and interactive, moving parts. One exercise was to think of an alternative use for an object, and create a drawing to show how it would work. I re-imagined the bubble-blowing wand from my box as a device to draw rainbows with. 

A new use for bubble-blowers 

Drawing an object from memory was interesting. I realised that most of my objects are quite graphic, with bold shapes and colours, so it was easier to try and recall them than I thought it would be.

Memory drawing

Imagining the objects in motion across the page helped me think about the quality of movement associated with the actions of playing- I wanted to capture a joyful, impulsive feeling. My drawing turned out quite smudgy, but I think it has a sense of energy and freedom.

Thinking about movement

Taking components from the drawings I was producing and combining them together helped to generate further ideas. I like the effect of layering up silhouettes and line drawings in varying scales- they'll be useful to refer back to when it comes to my Print design block.

basic pattern development

Box Clever

Taking inspiration from the idea of 'playing around', that came out of my Rough Guide research, I put together my box of things to play with for our second project: Box Clever. The week of drawing I just did was all based on the objects I collected for my box...so here's a view of what's inside!

My objects

Close up

I wanted to collect things that made me happy, and made me want to pick them up and play with them! My box in 6 words would probably be: fun, bright, crazy, energy, interactive, playful. I chose a clear plastic box, as I wanted the contents to be visible from the outside, intriguing people and inviting them to open it up. From the curious glances directed my way when carrying my box in on the tube each morning, I think it has had the desired effect. 

Everything and the box

Some of the objects are actually toys I shared with my brother when I was younger. I have many happy memories of us setting up brio train tracks all over the house. Lots of the things in my box move, or are meant for movement. They can be blown or shaken or wound or stacked. It felt important to me that the objects weren't just static and still- the whole idea of 'playing' involves involvement! This made it quite interesting to begin drawing from my objects, as I was thinking about how I could manipulate and respond to them as I drew.

Everything IN the box

I decorated the outside of my box with some sparkly streamers and stickers. This has given it a bit of a celebratory, child's party-bag kind of feel. I like that the box unfolds in different layers as it opens- suddenly you are faced with a whole spread of quirky little things. I've had fun putting my box together...now hopefully I will have fun deriving design inspiration from it!

We all love to play

When I was at the Museum of London last week, I passed through the 'Pleasure Gardens' Gallery and overheard a sweet little conversation that helped feed into my 'Box Clever' collecting. The space is filled with mannequins clad in elegant Georgian dress and when I entered, there were two little girls running around very excitedly. 

"Which dress would you wear?"
"ummm....THAT one! but with THAT hat. Which one are you?"
"This one looks like a princess-"
"-Over there, he's her Daddy"
"Oh, this one is me by the way. Actually, no THIS one is me!"

I couldn't help stopping and listening to them as it was so cute. 

"Mum, why can't we touch anything?"

As I'm basing my Box Clever collection on the idea of things to play with, it made me realise how touch is so important to playing. In the next room of the museum, there is a walkway of recreated Victorian shops, and it seemed the one most people really stopped to look at was the toyshop. Whatever age we are, I think we all love to play. We love things that are tactile, that we can interact with, that have moving parts and make us smile. So that is what my box has ended up being full of. Fun things, slightly silly and crazy things, things that you can shake and blow and press and twist around- things that I hope those two little girls would have enjoyed having a laugh with.  

My box- overview (October 2013, author's own)

Door to door

Here's a little more on my Rough Guide research! To help capture the sense of movement, interaction and playing I felt as I journeyed from door to door around Chinatown and Soho, I created this little gif, mapping some things I saw on my route. 

A snapshot of my observations (October 2013, author's own)

It's the first time I've made a gif animation- but I think it works well as a quick, fun way to be reminded of the feel of your research. It would be interesting to carry this simple style of animation further along in the design process to experiment with colourways for patterns and prints, too. There is an inspiring post about animating colours on 'The People's Print' blog at the moment, actually. Here is an example of one of their animations. I love the dynamic feel it has; your eye can't help being drawn across the pattern with the transition of the colours.    

Colour pattern animation
(thttp://thepeoplesprint.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/blog-post.html, Accessed October 2013)

As I mentioned before, all the strong, bold colours really stood out to me when wandering around my given research location. Continuing to explore these colours in my sketchbook has been helpful, as our upcoming technical block work takes its basis in our initial research, so I'll need to have a colour palette at the ready by then.

Sketchbook exploration (October 2013, author's own)

Along with the different colours of the doorways I was obsessed with, even  the deliveries and piles of rubbish were surprisingly colourful in Chinatown!

Looking at the way the boxes were stacked continued to remind me of the idea playing a game, as with the intercom buttons before. Some of the stacks were not that different to a game of giant Jenga- knock one part and the whole thing could topple! I realised I wanted to keep exploring this concept of playfulness for our follow-on project, 'Box Clever', where we have to collect a box of objects to inspire our first week of drawing. But more of that to follow!