surface by Asmita Singh

Surface Design and Printing Techniques

Surface Design and Printing Techniques Asmita Yadav

Third Semester Project, 2011 Textile Design Guide- ROMANIE JAITELY

Contents 5 Form 7

Understanding repeat

Colour distribution

Borders-Thin and thick

F inish borders

Buta and butis

Treatment on the unit with three

references

25 Printing techniques 25 Block printing 26 Colour separation 27 Rogan printing

Understanding surfaces and textile prints Surface design was a course which helped us critically think about the prints. Earlier we just looked and visually appreciated the prints based on the colour and form. But after the end of this course we have been started looking at the technicalities of it like, repeat unit, motifs, buta butis. We have now started finding the repeat unit in the prints and appreciating how smartly is the unit repeated

end. Print design has gone way beyond just floral prints. For the foundation of understanding printing surfaces, floral prints are the best as they are very flexible, intricate, pliant, conciliative and able to adjust according to the situation. So to have a proper understanding of repeats, jaal,

instead of appreciating just the colour.

butas, etc. we start with flowers and then end

We always say that textile is all about flowers,

can take liberty to a larger extent in terms of

garden of flowers. Its true that Textile design

starts with flowers and leaves but its not the

up forming different forms as with flowers we direction and form to suit the space.

Form Choosing the form In the first class of surface design we were asked to roam in the gardens of NID to sketch out the detailed drawing of the flowers which attract us. We were asked to compose the plants in such a way that flowers are not alienated from the leaves and plant. The sketch should include the natural characteristics of the flower, its joineries, falling style, buds, and individual characteristics of that plant.

My composition was good enough

natural freshness. So I finally jumped back

explaining all of this. But then too I

to my first drawing and studied its branches,

searched for something better than this and

joineries, falling of leaves, orientation of

landed up doing the composition which was

flowers. The plant which I choose is named

more rigid than the earlier and lacked the

as â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Nerium Oleanderâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;

Types of common repeats â&#x20AC;˘ Straight repeat

â&#x20AC;˘ Horizontal half step â&#x20AC;˘ Vertical half step

Understanding the repeats Taking the Xerox of the part of the composition and marking the registration points helped in making repeat. We firstly tried the straight and half step repeat marking the registration points far apart which made the surface very loose and spaced. To make it a bit compact I made the registration points a bit close which landed up with lot of overlaps.

Since my composition already contained too many overlaps, I kept them minimum so that i dont face problem while colouring them with flat colours. To keep few overlaps and remove directionality I zoomed in my composition and took a part of it due to which the composition lost its naturaal effect. So I finally went back to my original composition and tried to improve on it.

Colour distribution While trying out straight, horizontal and vertical half step, I finalized my surface to be in vertical half step as it was less directional and linear. On the other hand straight repeat was becoming more stripped and linear directing upwards.. After making my single repeat I still found my surface was becoming a bit directional because of the orientation of the linear pointed leaves. So I took some liberty and changed the orientation

of it without removing its natural character. And I also removed some leaves to reduce the overlapping without removing the effect of bushes as shown below. While doing this adjustment, I realized that if we would have not taken the flowers and took some rigid form then this type of difficulty would have been impossible to eradicate.

Colouring the repeat in black and white showed us whether the repeat is balanced by the negative space around it. The fifty fifty balance between the negative space and the positive space is the perfect â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;jaalâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; or net. Sometimes to examine carefully about the distribution of the space, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not enough to make form colourful. Perfect result can be found when we reverse the colours and make the negative space black and positive space white. The use of black and white colours at the first step is because they are the most contrasting colours thus showing distribution very clearly. The next step involves the use of three colours to check whether flowers and leaves are distributed properly and the surface does not appear directional. We need to properly place the three selected colours (red, light green, dark green), so that the surface overall looks like a net and none colour stands out or dominates the other.

Creating the surface Now we have the repeating unit and only thing we need to do is put this into the repeat (we can do it manually or use software called printing suite).

Characteristics of this surface • Repeating unit should not be recognizable. • The positive space and the negative space

should be balanced. • Surface should look complete i.e. it should

not appear like something is missing anywhere. • Surface should not become directional. • Colours in the surface need to be balanced.

Borders The main function of the border is to mark the end of the surface. It unconsciously makes us look inside the surface and defines the boundaries of the fabric. If we don’t have a border than our eyes will look outwards and can even go beyond the fabric which should not be the case with the good design. In borders we need to pick some elements

• Thin borders

Its width may be around inches or less.

from our form or unit and make borders out of it. The borders need to look like a continuous flow. It should not contain too many elements and should not be in a straight line like given below. The speciality of borders is that, it’s never complex and packed. It’s loose and flowy and looks like a one unit. The borders are of two types.

â&#x20AC;˘ Thick border

Its width is four to five inches.

Finish borders Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s the final thin border around the thick border to give the feel of the finished border. The fine and simple detailing gives the border more beauty and helps in even concentrating more to the surface that the outside. If we define the boundaries of anything then it looks more royal, balanced. The finish border should be simple, a bit abstract in form and can be geometrical form of the main border. The finish border should be very simple and less complicated. Now we can also make the borders more interactive and beautiful by making the main border and finish border combine together. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not enough to give a fine thin border around the main border. We can mix the two borders together by giving a fine line between the two.

Borders are not only to put at the boundaries. We can also create the surface by using borders. These borders can be placed closely to make like a jaal or can be placed at a distance to make stripes.

Buta and butis These are the elements of the main unit which comprise of some flowers, a bud and leaves. In butis or butas the elements should be inside oval, circle, or tear drop shape. The elements should not look like they are forced inside the shape. The element should look natural and if we look at the whole motif it should look that it is taken from that shape without physically having the outline of the shape.

Butas are the bigger form of the motif and butis are the smaller version of the motif. While doing explorations and the discussions following concepts were cleared about butis and butas. I thought that the butis comprise of only a flower but I was totally wrong. I thought that the shape of motif was a coincidence based on the type of flower.

But the form is forced into the shape in such a way that it does not look odd and looks as if natural. The butis should not have too many

â&#x20AC;˘ Now with the help of these butas and butis we are going to design the surface. â&#x20AC;˘ The spacing between the two butis should

elements so that it looks congested.

be according to the size and shape of the

â&#x20AC;˘ The simpler is the form more natural is the

butis.

buta.

We can also mix two types of butis together to

such a way that the surface as a whole does

make the surface more interesting.

not look directional. In this the motif faces

Here is an example of the surface created by

in all possible directions thus does not have

the butis put into the repeat.

a specific direction. This is called seven point

We also have an arrangement of motif in

repeat.

Treatment with the form

Steps in treatment of the form

To fill the colours in the form, we cannot

• Taking an inspiration which has adequate

choose to fill what we like because that may

number of colours to fill in your form. You

not attract the other person. Something liked

can’t just take a painting having two colours.

by one person may not every time be liked

It should have at least three colours to fill

by the others. So to get rid of this problem we

the flowers, leaves and the background so we

normally don’t treat the flower in whatever

can’t take an object as our reference as it has

way we want. We take an inspiration from

no background.

anywhere we want. It may be in the form of a

• Our objective is not to create a painting

painting, landscape or anything.

taking inspiration from other painting .but we aim at extracting the colours and technique of

If we just put flat colours on flowers with

the painting rather than creating a landscape

different colours, after some time it looks

as made in the painting.

boring and monotonous. So to make the

• Two things to look before starting

same flower look different every time we treat it with different mediums and techniques. And this is done by taking an inspiration or reference from a painting and then treating the form in the same way as done in the painting. We extract the colours, colour distribution, technique and texture from our reference and implement in our form.

1. Technique and texture. Go as close to the

colour as possible. 2. Colour distribution in the painting

(percentage of different colour). Firstly I looked upon the textures and tried few explorations of it. After getting the exact colours and texture, we need to decide which colour to be in leaves, buds, flowers, and background according to the distribution and

percentage of colour in the painting. Along with this we also need to think that our form does not get milked up with the background. At the end our aim is to make our form stand out, so we canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t mix up the colours of background with the form. Here is the first references which need to be replicated in my form. Below are some of the explorations deriving the technique from the above painting.

In this I tried the technique of outlining the form with white colour as in most of the folk paintings kept the main form with blue colour and background with red. Now we select one surface and try to limit ourselves into limited colour palette. First we try to limit ourselves into six colours and try to get the same effect of the painting. We will try to go as close as possible to our sketch using the software of colour reduction. On the side are the units in five colours and six colour reduction.

This painting was totally different from the

rather than smudgy feel.

earlier ones in terms of colours, textures and

In the second, giving texture to both back and

techniques. In first exploration I made the

foreground without outline led it close to the

outline around the form which made it rigid

reference as shown below.

Colour reduction in six colours

Colour reduction in eight colours

Third inspirations was digital one, so totally had a different experience too. The painting below is done with dry pastels.

The drawing on the previous page( with dry pastels ) is reduced to six colour digitally.

Treatment on unit without any reference Treatment of a unit using a collage to try a totally different look to your unit using colours and textures, and effect because of different type of papers. It also helps in understanding the contrast between form and background.

Printing techniques In the course of printing techniques we did block printing and Rogan printing. Along with demonstration we individually did a sample which was a very good experience. Along with studying techniques we also got an idea of colour separation to make blocks.

Block printing It was an interesting technique which is slowly getting extinct because of the labour involved and lack of skill in new generation as they want a faster way to earn money. Since block printing has been continuing from years, it was my pleasure to do a bit by myself. It wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t possible to learn the whole technique in a day but we touched the surface of block printing. we were giver a piece of cloth and were asked to try out the blocks available and make your own print which may be the combination of two blocks or the combination of colour to generate a creative print which is different from the original block. How we can create n number of designs with limited block was the main exercise of this course.

Colour separation We were given a botanical drawing and had to make a colour separation of the composition from it to make a block from it. Below are the different layers of block which is to be created by the block maker on wood • chattha - it’s the base painted with yellow . • datta - green on the parts of stem and buds.

• Green line in the stem gives dimension to the

stem • Red strokes in the flowers which gives

dimension to it • Orange strokes give flower a chrome look. • rekh - outline of the block is given by black

5 29

Rogan Printing Rogan printing is an art of cloth printing practiced in the Kutch District of Gujarat. Rogan printing involves using a thick bright paste to paint on plain cloth. The paste is prepared by boiling the oil of safflower, castor or linseed and pouring it into water. This paste is mixed with chalk, coloured pigment and a binding agent to form a thick dye. The painting on the cloth is done using a stick, a rod or a metal block.

Acknowledgement My sincere thanks to all the people who have contributed to and worked to guide me all along the journey of this course. thanks to my batch mates and friends who guided me. sincere thanks to our cordinator and faculty ROMANIE JAITELY, GITTO, AARTI. it was awesome working with our seniors in first half of our course, as they also had the same course as we had, but a bit advanced. seeing thier worked helped us a lot in visualizing our prints.