Week 5 - Glug

We took a trip to Birmingham to attend a annual event known as Glug.

Before attending the event we took a trip around the city and the area that the event was located at. We sat outside a cafe, inside the Custard Factory, and I noticed the massive copper placated scaled dragon on the side of the wall in front of us. I thought the image would be relevant and inspire me a little with the current project I'm working on.

The scales on the dragon are created use leaf-like shapes and wrapped around the actual sculpture to give the dragon that life-like feel with its scales.

We took a walk a little further around the city and we came across a vintage shop, this was the jewellery display within the store. It contained a variety of rings, necklaces, etc. As well as having chokers with a high quality material, some having leather straps and others having velvet. This could help me progress in my project as the owners of the store obviously think that kind of material will sell and looks better on display than using some wired chokers.

They also had a variety of different materials, prints, designs, etc, on the clothes in the store, as well as having many clothing designs with 'scales' on them. This was made a huge impact on how I see lace, and how such a small and simplified pattern can look so detailed as long as there is plenty of it. This made me think that when I come to do doing my final design that maybe I should use a more simplistic design as I don't want to over complicate the illustration taking the focus away from the created illustration and more onto the designed pattern itself.

I also realised with the colour scheme of 'scaled' patterned they mostly use darker colours, consisting of main colours like brown, red, green, blue and black. This also made me think about the colour scheme I should use for my illustration, I was thinking of using darker colours anyway, but from a public stand point it obviously seems to be the same.

I managed to find some lacey pattern through one of the shop windows we walked past, this design is very small, detailed and complicated, but there is so much of the pattern that it looses focus of the design itself. I don't want this to be the issue hence why I'm going to use a more simplistic design.

Further into the town centre we came across an old vintage 1950s salon, unfortunately it was closed, but we managed to have a look though the window. The salon is bursting with bright, bold colours and the lighting and style of it really gives off that 50's feel!

Somewhere around the location of the event there was some street art, this was one of the spray paints I came across that really caught my eye. I feel like the colours used really draws you in and gives it a kind of candy look.

There was a variety of creative artists that visited to talk about their work and what they do. The event was hosted by Lisa Hassell a creative director who specialises in illustration and graphic arts. There was  a numerous amount of successful creative artists, each with different presentations. Each had a presentation about how they started their business and the success of it today, the highs and the lows of their company and what they had to do to reach their target and make themselves so successful.

You can watch the video of the presentations here; http://www.glugevents.com/watch/2017/emily-forgot

Also the director and film makers link to their website here; http://www.craigdoesstuff.com/

Unfortunately we had to leave early because of my peers needing to be home, and having further to travel late. So we only stayed for the first part of the show.

The link to the glug website is below! Showing the line ups, location and whats going on!

http://www.glugevents.com/locations/birmingham