Collage Flowers . . . with a Hint of Hippy!

my kitchen in the '70s

I’ll begin by getting a confession out of the way!

I was born in the ‘40s so I was an undergraduate in the Sixties and I can remember exactly where I was when I first heard about the emergence of a new ‘group’ with outlandish haircuts and an exciting new sound -  the Beatles.

I loved the Sixties but – and here’s something else I don’t usually admit to – I absolutely adored the Seventies! The fashions that we now make fun of, the music – much of which has stood the test of time, Women’s Lib and above all the colour – it was all so vibrant and liberating after the drabness of the Forties and the rather staid, 'comfortable' Fifties!

Needless to say, I think everything has gone downhill ever since.

But on the other hand, I keep coming across revivals of the ‘hippy’ style and think to myself, how could we have lived surrounded by all that frantic pattern, coloured as if by some maniac, hell-bent on using every single hue in their paintbox! And yet we did and it was wonderful – at the time.

My own modern ‘flower-power’ designs are a little more restrained while, I hope, still capturing something of the essence of that era.

Here’s a collage birthday card I named ‘Birthday Fizz’ because it seemed to have an effervescent quality about it.

I’ve recently found out how to take a section of a design and ‘tile’ it in paint.net – the wonders of the internet! So this is a really multi-purpose design that is well and truly earning its keep!

Floral Purple Aqua Pink Orange MacBook Pro Sleeve by helikettle
 

It’s fun to be able to experiment with different background colours and although I don’t like some of them, one thing I’ve learned is that ‘there’s no accounting for taste’!

Flower Power Purple, Aqua Pink Orange Necktie by helikettle

Flower Power Black Pink Orange Messenger Bag by helikettle

I’ll be using this design to create about one hundred products during the course of this week. Hopefully, if the new Zazzle ‘grouping’ is working properly, you can explore them as I add more by clicking HERE

I made this one a few days ago and it took a long time to cut out and stick on all those petals.

But when I’d finished, I wasn’t sure that I needed all those little flowers and luckily, thanks to being able to edit on the computer, I was able to create various versions without losing the original.

I think I know which one I will actually use – what do you think?

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Experimenting with Originality

In the UK, we've already had Mother's Day, some weeks ago. But I've been busy and forgotten to put away the cards that my family sent me. The one above is the sort of thing that is very popular at the moment over here - the word that comes to my mind to describe it is 'minimalist'!

It's been standing on a shelf where I see it every time I sit down to a meal. So I've been thinking about it quite a lot, wondering how a style that looks almost like a child's drawing could have become so popular, in fact so 'chic'! I like it but it's not my style at all. Nothing about me is 'minimalist'; I'm more of a 'clutter and collections' person.

But after writing a blog post about 'copying' - Is Your Art Original? - a couple of weeks ago, I've been wondering whether I could deliberately adopt a different, more fashionable style, stopping short of  meticulously copying someone else's work.

So I decided to experiment. I'd already had an idea for some kind of row of flowers in a 'window box' floating round in the back of my head for a couple of years but had never got around to doing anything about it.

I had lots of small but pretty pieces of handpainted paper left over from recent collages that were just right for flowers. So I decided that collage was the way to go.  I began with the 'trough', trying to keep to nice, clean lines, nothing fussy - but couldn't help embellishing it with the hearts! 

Birthday Flowers by helikettle

Next, I positioned the big, deep pink flower, followed by the three smaller blue ones, intending them to be supported on thin but dead straight stems as in the Mother's Day card design. The two orange flowers came next and that was all I had planned to do.

But I really didn't like the 'gaps' and began filling them in, working more instinctively and less 'thought-fully'. By the time I was happy with the flowers, there was no way that rigidly vertical stems would suit the design - and far more leaves crept in than I had planned for!

It seems, then, that even when I set out to change my style to something more 'modern', my own personality took over and produced something completely different. Yes, there are traces of  'influence' - the shapes of the flowers and leaves, for instance. But, unless I've missed something, I think the likeness ends there!

The objective of my little experiment was to try to pin down the extent to which I'm influenced by being constantly subjected to other artists' designs that I really like.

My conclusion is that yes, I am influenced but that my own 'style' probably always prevails. In this case, and almost certainly others before it, I ended up with something new, a slightly different style from my usual collages, even though it might still be recognisably 'me'. And I think that's a worthwhilestep to take to avoid becoming 'stale' - or copying oneself!

It isn't a question of which is the better design - people's tastes are so different! But I was quite pleased with my 'window-box' and I used it to create a mug, a tote bag, some stickers, an iPhone case and an apron on Zazzle, as well as greeting cards.

Someone else must have liked it too because the apron received a Today's Best Award and I've had some lovely comments on my store wall!

Floral Coffee Mug for a Mother by helikettle

'Do not worry about your originality. You could not get rid of it even if you wanted to'. Robert Henri

It seems he's right!