LittleLion Studio » Inspired By

Swan Lake

LittleLion — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 15:39:53 +0000

Nature, in its infinite wisdom, is by all means the greatest of all designers and among her designs (yes, nature must be a she!) is our notion of beauty which is not better nor worse than any other species’. It’s just ours.

Armed with this notion, I consider many animals beautiful in their design but some even more so. Such is the case of swans, which I find to be particularly elegant, almost as if they were ostentatiously carrying an invisible majestic tail. But they are not… or are they?

"Swan Lake" is a seamless print in which I try to translate my view by appending paisley tails to those watery birds. Persian-Indian paisley brings the exact royalty I see in swans. The originally called "mango pattern", shaped like a bended teardrop like the ones found in the Yin-Yang symbol, adorned all sorts of royal garments in Persia and India during the XVII Century and is just as largely used nowadays as its roots are ignored. So I tried to do them some justice.

As they say, third time is a charm… I played around with several color palettes but my preferred one is undoubtedly "Swan Lake III" with its vivid, golden (royal?) yellow, which if used properly can help brightening those not ideally lit rooms.

What would you do with it?

Mosaic Forest

LittleLion — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 16:16:52 +0000

In the brick and mortar world, I have been asked several times about how my images come to existence so I decided to unashamedly assume you would like to hear about it as well. This is how the process unfolds…
In all fairness, each image has its own story and a different set of steps until its conclusion but some of these steps are often shared among them, so with such focus in mind let me tell you about how I created the "Mosaic Forest" seamless pattern.

Nature is a recurrent theme in my work thus making nature photography an important source of reference and inspiration to me. Most often I refer to pictures for their color palette, not this time though… This time around I resorted to nao’s most excellent portfolio on Flickr, in particular a set of pictures featuring some exuberant rounded bushes (if you know how they are called or where they grow, please, feel free to jump in). I simply couldn’t take the harmonic rounded shapes and undulating gradients out of my head and so, armed with the poetic license of a non-realistic style, I went right to work.

I drew the pattern entirely by hand on 5 sheets of tracing paper using a marker, alternating their stacking order randomly. In so doing I managed to draw in layers which later would help making the transition from paper to digital canvas way smoother. As most things in digital design, there

are always several ways of achieving the same result but scanning those 5 drawings separately instantaneously generated an interesting combination of grouped elements to be color manipulated with greater freedom and efficiency inside Adobe Illustrator.

Next in line was making the pattern seamless, a mathematical game which gets pretty visual after a while. A pattern, as the word implies, will always land a geometrical shape. Still… I always try to make my patterns the most organic possible. After I’m done with that, comes the real fun… coloring! It is impressive how a different color way can transform an image. At the same time, it becomes so easy to turn a beautiful image into a piece of junk, by simply not picking the right combination for the color palette. This is true not only in regards to Color Theory but also commercially. Several of my images are sold in different color ways and very often the same client purchases the exact same image in all their color gamut. It is not because the clients don’t know how to manipulate colors in a vector program, trust me, it’s because they understand how difficult it can be to group them properly.

And so we got to our final destination. You may now depart (but not without first clicking on the patterns to see them in a repeat… it’s worth it!). I’ll see you in the next trip.

Asanoha, an “Ode to Japan”

LittleLion — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 05:03:47 +0000

Not unusually, throughout time we get accustomed to symbols, glyphs and patterns so easily to the point of shamelessly ignoring their origin. Our society’s immediacy can become an almost unbeatable murderer to history and beautifully crafted stories. This simple text is a small pièce de résistance.

The Asanoha (or 麻の葉, for those in the know)is a worldly renown, or at least worldly applied, Japanese seamless pattern whose name unfortunately did not become popular outside of the islands. The pattern is assumed to have been created during the Edo Period (1603 – 1868), for which it became a symbol. Due to its meaning of growth and endurance, the Asanoha was largely used in children and youngsters clothing in Japan.

As most things, the Asanoha has yet another unsuspicious association to it, that of the romantically dark story of Yaoya Oshichi (八百屋お七), a 16 year old girl sent to death by the Justice for her act of desperation to reunite with her idealistic love. Wikipedia says it best:

"In December 1682, she fell in love with Ikuta Shōnosuke (or Saemon), a temple page, during the great fire in the Tenna Era, at Shōsen-in, the family temple (danna-dera). The next year she attempted arson, thinking she could meet him again if another fire occurred. She was caught by the police and burnt at the stake in Suzugamori for her crimes.

She was sixteen years old, and the magistrate knew it, but he asked her, ”You must be fifteen years old, aren’t you?” at the judgment because boys and girls under fifteen years old were not subject to the death penalty. But she honestly stated her age, and was punished accordingly."

Oshichi’s story is magnificently told by the Kabuki theater until this day!

The Asanoha pattern is constantly being rediscovered and it was no exception with me. "Ode to Japan" is a seamless pattern I made as an interpretation of the traditional Asanoha, meant as an homage to Japan on my part. And it looks like I am not alone!
The Japanese are gifted at translating poetic ideas into design, as you can see on the "Asanoha turning into birds" textile or the all so fashionable "Washi Masking Tapes" from the Kamoi Kakoshi Company.

What about you? Where are you going to celebrate the Asanoha?

[Edit]:A reader wrote to me saying "Very interesting, but I didn’t get how is Asanoha related to the story of Yaoya Oshichi??" so I thought some clarification was called for. Oshichi, the adolescent that she was, used to wear clothes with the Asanoha motifs as most other kids did at that time (notice the kimono she is wearing in the portrait above and to the right — click image to enlarge). With her tragic death for a passionate time at such an early age, Oshichi became one of the most famous characters of the Edo Period and with her, the Asanoha pattern she wore so frequently.