Bag designs

Research into the character of Lily

photographic research

throughout the book there is a constant reference to the house owned by the women that Lily runs away to, it is the only place that she has ever felt safe and secure, away from her father. I think it would really help to have it as reference on the bag as it plays such a key role.

(there are more images reflecting this but I am having trouble uploading them, they should be up soon!)

Ed Hardy

Not something I would normally be interested in, but when it comes to a traditional tote bag i've found hardly any designs that stand out strongly apart from the "im not a plastic bag" campaign, Hardy uses such strong colours that in a way his bags really shouldnt work, but they do. They all seem personal at the time they were developed.

Sean Hillen-photo montage

when I looked into flashbags designs they had a lot of images where people had sent in photographs that had then been put together as one image for the bag. It gave me the idea that i could use photo montage to illustrate my own bag.  I've come across a photo montage artist "Sean Hillen". I found his work really individual to him, as all the images in the montage are of his personal opinions, theres no right or wrong way to tell the story. I think this idea could work really well in telling my own interpretation of "The secret life of bees' . I can pick up on keep elements of the story as I have said before, and place them all together.


There are a lot more of his images here; 
http://www.seanhillen.com/

http://www.flashbagsonline.com/

Flashbags are a personalised bag design company i found through a news article, they transfer an image onto a bag or purse and use a clear plastic to protect the image. The main issue i have had with the production of my bag is how to transfer the image onto the canvas. I think this idea would translate really well onto my own work as i could us a thin layer of acetate over the illustrations, this would even still allow me to work over the images with mixed media if i wanted to but would still allow me to work on the original media. 

Im trying to pick up different elements of the narrative, this is of the engagement that happens near the end of the text, the flower for the ring is a mixed media element. 

Research into current bags

http://www.timeout.com/london/shopping/features/2948/London_handbag_designers.html

This is a link to an article I read  "modern handbags in London" by Kathryn Miller that was featured in Time out. I found it particularly useful because it has current designers that are selling in the market today, and there personal views on making their own bespoke handbags. Its clear they all feature a unique selling point, with Orla Kiely its the overwhelming 50's and 60"s colourings, I think i've focused a lot of my time on creating a bag that stands out for so many different reasons, looking at these designers its clear that I really don't need to over complicate it.

"The Secret Life of Bees"

I've read This book recently- "The Secret life of bees" by Sue Monk Kidd,  think this will be a really good base for the bag, at the minute I feel like it needs more of a focus, by picking a book  I actually have something to illustrate, before I felt like I was picking up on more of a style of work than working the style around a subject.

Mixed Media pieces

Link to bees

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2RzmZ2GFOU

"The secret life of bees"

Here are some of the sketches i've taken from looking at the link above as well as images  i have found,  although i've made larger scale illustrations of them, i think a lot of the interest in them comes from the structure of how small they are with such intricate detailing

Here's a quick idea i'm working on, i've taken quite a lot of influence from  fashion designers like Vivianne Westwood,  her work uses products we find lying around all the time, she builds them up, working them all together,  making something that could never be made again- the whole idea behind this new product brief!
definitely feel like I am going down the bag route of bag design...

Batik

Following on from the idea of using different materials for origami , i've tried  Batik, which i've never used before, I worked in building up the layers with wax then water colour, it's a really long process and i'm quite pleased with this one but think it doesn't illustrate much apart from a nice pattern! i've started to work over the material sewing in other fabrics, perhaps its an idea for a bag?

Initial Ideas

I chose to answer the brief for creating a new product, I've started by quickly mocking up different ideas, this one is to build up different origami products, this thought came from a shop window i saw that had the objects on a really large scale, on the swan you can see I have used a foil material, origami always seems very block colour, maybe i can use different textures and my own illustration designs on top.