The Modern Masters Finale'

The picture that I chosen to replicate was called ''Midsummer's Eve'' by Edward Robert Hughes which was painted with wstercolours in 1908. Much of Hughes’s work was based on Shakespearean themes. Midsummer Eve is reminiscent of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare’s play about the miss matching of lovers on a magical midsummer’s evening. Traditionally, Midsummer’s Eve is a night when young girls dance around fires and make wishes for their true loves to come to them. It is a magical spell-casting night. Furthermore, it is the shortest night of the year and the lighting of the painting suggests that although it is not dark, it is late in the evening. The sound of this painting really inspired me as I love fairies, Shakespeare and the Pre-Raphaelite period.
  The Pre-Raphaelites was a group of English painters, Poets, and critics, founded in 1848. The group's intention was to reform art by rejecting what they considered to be the mechanistic approach first adopted by the Mannerist artists who succeeded Raphael and Michelangelo. They believed that the classical poses and elegant compositions of Raphael in particular had been a corrupting influence on the academic teaching of art.
   As a designer I am really inspired by the way other artists and designers present their work such as painting, printing, sketches and detailed textile pieces. During this project I have used watercolours throughout my sketchbook to represent Edward Hughes love for watercolours. I have also used watercolours for my fashion illustrations because I think they look better using type of media, but most of my work is done this way. I also love the dress that the young girl is wearing in the painting because my style is very feminine, soft, floaty and fantasy. 
   During this project my aim was to produce a garment for my model to wear in my photo shoot. At first I decided I was going to paint a back drop the same as the background in the painting, but in the end I decided against this idea because it would be expensive and very time consuming, So I then chose to do my photo shoot in my garden to see if I could recreate the painting using a natural environment. When I had done my photo shoot I was still not happy with the background so I decided to cut my model out of the photo using photo shop and then placed her in the Midsummers eve picture using that background.
   I was extremely happy with my photo shoot because the weather was good and the pictures were taken at midday so the lighting was perfect too. When my image was finally edited in photoshop I was really pleased with it because it turned out even better than I imagined. 
   For this project I thought about my client profile a lot. I decided that the person I would be creating my garment for would be female and aged between 8 and 14. I have aimed it at young children because they're most interested in fairytales, fantasy's and dressing up. 
    I have enjoyed this project and feel I have thought about things a lot more such as the health and safety during the photo shoot, having things done in time to meet my action plan, my client profile and doing a powerpoint presentation.
  The thing that I could improve on are making decisions more quickly because I feel that I really took my time debating weather or not to make my own back drop for the photo shoot. This then delayed my photo shoot which I then did towards the end of the project during my own time.
   Overall I really enjoyed this project as it was very different and I gained more skills such as better time management, having the opportunity to organise my own photo shoot, other skills in photo shop such as cutting and blurring, and making sure the photo shoot was safe by thinking about the health and safety for my model. 

This is my final modernised image of the Midsummers Eve painting.