My First Fabric Collection: Gathering Inspiration
This is the second post in the series My First Fabric Collection. Get started with post number one: Why Immersion in 2024?
1912 For Model T Torped, car portrait, painted 2021
If you have been following along on my art journey, you know that I gather inspiration from a lot of different places. I love to travel and often paint landscapes based on my own reference photos. I also have a love of realistic paintings and enjoy painting things like climbing gear and historic car portraits and machinery. My first major task for the Immersion course was to start gathering inspiration. My ultimate goal was to develop a fabric collection by the end of the course. Since I gave myself about a year to prepare for the course, I had already spent a lot of time thinking about what theme to focus on.
For my final project to create a fabric collection, I wanted to focus on early automobiles from 1890 to 1920. My first real museum job was at the Marshall Steam Museum, which had an operating collection of antique automobiles. I have painted a number of historic car portraits and I thought this could be a fun theme to explore with an eye to creating patterns. While I was interested in the design of the actual cars themselves, I also wanted to touch on aspects of society that the automobile influenced. This included themes such as urban planning, architecture, fashion and leisure activities, in addition to the machines themselves.
I had a few different avenues for gathering inspiration: books, Pinterest, and the Forney Museum of Transportation.
Books
Car: The Definitive Visual History by D.K. Publishing
I love books and I love the library, so one of the first things that I did was get a number of visual histories of the automobile out from the library. I wanted to see different models of the earliest automobiles. Early automobiles were diverse. Inventors and entrepreneurs often worked independently from each other to develop the first horseless carriages. This experimentation happened in many different locations across the United States and the world. The earliest automobiles were often a combination of elements from other already existing technologies: bicycle or carriage wheels, lanterns, tillers to steer, gauges, and more. Early inventors experimented with electric, steam, and internal combustion engines as methods of powering their early machines. The type of power your vehicle utilized in turn influenced the design of early vehicles. Some vehicles were small, others were large. Some had three wheels, others had four. Some might only fit the operator, while others might have room for passengers. Some could even be shaped so that the interior would mirror an entertaining space such as a parlor. Many had all of their mechanical components open to the elements. It was easy to see the evolution of the automobile through the books I was able to get out of the library. I loved finding large coffee table books that would have pages full of thumbnail photographs of different automobiles and then full spreads where they would break down a vehicle in detail, outline all of the innovations it represented.
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One of my favorite things to explore while working at the Marshall Steam Museum was their small archive of early automobile magazines and advertisements. Pinterest turned out to be a great place to find similar inspiration and I started an Immersion inspiration board there. The more I went down the automobile advertisement rabbit hole on Pinterest, I found myself drawn to art deco themes and the idea that the automobile represented the intersection between ingenuity and glamour. I loved the blocky nature of many early advertisements, how they arranged the automobile as part of a larger composition, often one that highlighted the automobile as a requirement for a life of luxury. I started to think about how I could pair automobiles with other subjects such as luggage or fashion. Even the colors of the advertisements could be luxurious. I loved the deep maroon, browns, and vibrant blues. From these advertisements, I started to think about color palettes and what direction I wanted to pursue first. In my imagination, I was picturing dark purples and blues, offset by light creams and golds. In addition to advertisements, I also saved pins related to vintage luggage, museum objects, and early 20th century fashion.
Screenshot of my Inspiration Board
Forney Museum of Transportation
The most influential part of my gathering inspiration phase was taking a visit to the Forney Museum of Transportation located here in Denver, Colorado. I knew that I wanted an opportunity to take a lot of different pictures that I could pull from later as I started to draw. I initially planned for this museum visit at the very start of the course, but life got in the way and I did not end up visiting until around week three. This turned out to be a blessing in disguise. One of the most interesting comments I remember from those early lessons was how Bonnie often finds inspiration in the mundane things such as patterns on the ground or the way the petals might fall on a dying flower. While I still found myself taking pictures of the cars as a whole, or details such as lights or wheels, I also found myself drawn to very simple details. For example, I noticed that all of the cars had different style tread marks, which themselves are patterns. Early wooden wheels also often had hand painted line work. I also found myself drawn to the mannequins and their clothing, accessories, and luggage. I took over a hundred pictures on my visit, and having the experience of the course now, I think there are hundreds of pictures I didn’t even think to take.
From these three areas, I had enough inspiration and ideas to keep me busy through the duration of the course. With the benefit of hindsight, I have an even better sense of how to prepare for my next collection. Most importantly, I would spend even more time in this inspiration gathering stage. I would spend more time brainstorming ideas and directions around a theme and most likely explore other avenues for inspiration than the three I mentioned above. I avoided creating a physical mood board during the course since I did not feel like I had the time or the space to have one, but I think for my next collection it could be a valuable resource, specifically for saving interesting textures or physical items for inspiration.
Next up on the blog: Developing a Workflow and Accountability
Introducing: TREAD
Hey you! Can’t wait to get to the end of this six part series? My first fabric collection: Tread is available now on Spoonflower. One FREE way that you can support me is by favoriting those patterns that you like.
TREAD is a collection that celebrates the roads we travel and the marks we leave behind. This collection is inspired by historic automobiles, vintage fashion, and art deco designs.