MATS Week 2 - Home Decor

Week two - BAM! Man this is flying by! This week's home decor inspiration came in the form of suzanis. These are gorgeous embroidered textiles from Uzbekistan. Right away I thought I really wanted to do something celestial. This changed to doing the zodiac- which eventually led to whistling goats. So how did I get from point A to point G? I was working hard on making the zodiac work- but it felt like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole- and the results were not feeling fun, quirky, or effortless. So i took a deep breath and simply changed direction...

NOT AT ALL!! More like I freaked out, stayed up way too late scouring the interwebs, and made furious doodles in my sketchbook. I was not going to be able to sleep unless I had a new direction. Then I met this dude:

How could I not be inspired by mr. Markhor the wild goat of Uzbekistan?! I quickly began doing some large/medium/small ink paintings of forms inspired by suzanis. I wanted the large ones to feel very loose and have a real "inky" quality to them. From the get-go I envisioned my plates being sold as dessert plates in Anthropologie- they do not shy away from quirky, hand-painted work. Here's what I ended up submitting: 

While I was first making these I had the plants and markhors different colors but once I unified them with the blue everything else fell into place. 

Since I didn't want to have these plates on my website (I kinda feel like unless they are actually made into plates- they should be presented as an illustration- therefore could be used for different applications) I merged them together and created this:

now someone could look at it and see wallpaper, fabric, plate, or any other application. Thank you whistling markhor for making this week's assignment really enjoyable!