Ella Cheung/WAYS OF SEEING & TALKING PATTERN
For this task, I was working with a photo that I took of a Koi Fish in a river. Using the term ‘ways of seeing’, I wanted to completely take the Koi fish out of its natural environment that you would envision it to be in. I focused on the irregular patches on the scales and painted them in different colours while distorting them and playing around with the composition. I made colourful backgrounds digitally with lots of layering to bring the koi fish pattern outside of its body for a fun twist. I also tried to make a print capturing the movement of multiple koi fish swimming. The colours I used were directly taken from real-life koi fish and the vividness really symbolizes them well. I also used colours like pink and blue on some prints as an experiment as another way of seeing them. I really enjoyed this process of working from the shapes I saw inside the koi fish alone. The digital look is one of my favorites and it is so bright and bold with the layers of colourful patches being the main attraction and the thin outline of the koi fish body shows that print coming through in random places which is similar to what a real koi fish would look like but inverted.
To improve and develop, I would add some of the river ripples into some of my digital prints to add a further layer of texture and outlines.
7th December 2020 @ 7:35 pm
It was so enjoyable to observe your “Ways of Seeing” and “Talking Pattern” tasks because I think Koi fish is a very suitable subject to be represented and analyzed in order to obtain some modern and realistic patterns derived from its skin.
I really appreciated how you decided to draw whole Koi fishes in some works, while concentrating on a more accurate design representing Koi’s scales in others. This has enabled you to work with a compelling texture such as Koi fishes’ scales and redesign it following your creativity and perception.
I think you really got the point of these two tasks by overlaying different kinds of media and tecniques as well as your digital backgrounds, but also by extracting shapes and colours from Koi fishes generating certain designs which would be absolutely suitable for digital print.
Moreover I found really interesting your idea of taking the Koi fish out of its natural environment and trying to isolate it in order to give it more importance and emphasis.
The work I admired most among yours is the sixth one where you managed to create a beautyfully designed background using traditional Koi fish colours at the same time overlapping it to two drawn Koi fishes. It is absolutely wonderful how this contrast between the background created by irregular coloured shapes and spots and the Koi fishes in the foreground works perfectly in the design.
To develop your work further I would suggest you to spread the research you did on Koi fish’s texture and shapes in order to realize some designs that can resemble a camouflage pattern, this would be a great idea for your prints.