Wheatfields Rug Design
A residential rug design that captures the aesthetics of a masterwork.
2020 | 4 Weeks
Color Analysis | Pattern Design | Tools: Photoshop, Illustrator, Prototyping
Student Project for Master’s Degree in Industrial Design
DESIGN QUESTION
How might I use my knowledge of color and design to encapsulate a complex image in a 2D pattern?
SOLUTION
Wheatfields is a residential rug design translated from Van Gogh’s masterwork Wheatfields with Cypresses via color analysis, compositional analysis, and material exploration.
A linocut capturing the essence of Van Gogh’s brush strokes in the cypress trees is overlaid with an abstraction of the overall composition. A simplified color palette is applied to this new composition, capturing adjacencies in the original painting and using each color with a comparable frequency.
Van Gogh, Wheat Field with Cypresses via the Met
COLOR ANALYSIS
I isolated pixels within the color range of a simplified palette to create a histogram of the color composition of the painting.
I selected 9 shades for my simplified rug palette along with 6 key adjacencies; neighboring colors in the painting that are essential to the identity of the work, and that must also be adjacent in the final designs.
PROCESS
I conducted a series of material explorations to abstract and capture the essence of the composition.
I experimented with different sections of the painting, varying line weight to capture the essence of the brush strokes. As with the initial linocut I carved these out of rubber and stamped them with block printing ink. The texture inspired by the brush strokes in the cypress trees was the most successful and evocative of the movement in the painting overall.
The composition was overlaid with the linocut texture to create the final design.
