Towels - design influences
“It became clear that it had been the director's visits to local Cornish beaches that had inspired the story themes, centering around a main character who felt compelled to protect their territory on the sand, it made sense to look at contemporary Cornish artists for the environment, such as: Elaine Pamphilion, Emma Jeffreys, Brian Pearce, Hannah Cole and others. Careful analysis of texture, colour, shape, composition and perspective of a few selected artists in the research phase resulted in a strong art direction for the film.”
Katharine Nicholls
Rosa Mulraney I'm noticing with current projects that some students really struggle to.. they don't necessarily struggle to find interesting references, but then they struggle to incorporate them in their design work and they end up coming up with something that looks very.. much more generic and bland than their references. And I wondered if you could talk..do you remember anything about that process of kind of bringing your ..those.. because we've we've seen your sculptural references of like Henry Moore and those kind of references. And how was that something that came naturally to you? Or maybe did you have a background in, like, foundational art and design or something? I'm just noticing that some students are really struggling to bring that. They're not struggling to find the references, but they're struggling to incorporate it into the design work.
Prawta Annez I mean, first, I'm really flattered that you think that they aren't or they aren't like bland and a bit you know plain because it could tie all tie back to the fact that I had a really good high school art teacher. She was she was really she was really kind of gung ho about I don't know if that's the right word, but to kind of like researching studying artists like we would, I think we would for like probably two or three weeks of just deep-diving into an artist should make us first almost exactly replicate and replicate the images, the paintings and in the same medium as well. She would bring us oil paints so we could try it out to see how it works, to see how the paint application. And she'd also kind of left us to find it, figure it out ourselves as well. I mean, she would guide us as well, but she'd almost allow us to explore what works and what doesn't. So like how acrylics you put dark's in the light later and oil works a little bit different. So I had a heavy background of that, of like researching, studying artists, imitating. And she also really encouraged your.. like once, once you figure almost get into the or get a grasp of how the artist wants to communicate through their media. She kind of encouraged us as well to use that in our own style. So kind of study it, learn it, almost let it become kind of second nature for those two weeks and then create our own piece from it with our own personal ideas. And thinking back to that pretty much plays into probably my fascination of like interpreting artist's work… And I think those were already there. And the fact that it was a coastal thing, I think yeah, I think, again, it was probably a mixture of my art, my fine art background and the fact that it was almost, again, a subconscious leak of my four years in Falmouth kind of all bubbled into one.
Rosa Mulraney Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it? Because there seems to be, there does seem to be a gap in some students. And and yeah that confidence to steal like an artist, you know, that it's OK that I supposed to have confidence that through your process you're going to make your own, that there is a way to incorporate it and not to be afraid of it. You know, that you can mix... ironically, you can make something more unique by having these sort of mixture of specific references, which is quite interesting. And particularly the backgrounds are love in Towels that are just beautiful. And, you know, when I see a still from Towels, I know it's from Towels and I like that, you know, and it's something that I try and encourage other students to do. You want to make sure that you've really worked into your design, because when we see a still from your film, we want to know that's your film.
Becky Blair - Day Trippers
Still from Towels
