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Welcome to our very first Blog, my name is Sarah Richmond and I make up one half of Richmond & Vawser with my good friend Zoe Vawser. All of our wallpaper and fabric collections are created from absolute scratch, using a combination of beautiful hand-drawn illustrations and digital software, our designs go through a long process of evolution. On this occasion I aim to set out the inspiration and evolution of my personal favourite collection ‘Tota’.
My original drawings were of tropical birds which included a simple block-colour design created using marker pens of a parrot in flight. The initial drawings were then handed over to Zoe to see what she could create with them.
Zoe scanned my original parrot and then took to work in adobe photoshop mirroring the image of the bird so the now two identical birds were ‘beak-to-beak’, the resulting symmetrical image now seemed to form what appeared to be an owl-like face in the centre.
To emphasize this illusion and work out a rough pattern repeat Zoe then redrew the image on tracing paper, and by taking inspiration from her own wedding dress added a scalloped body to further the impression of another bird within the pattern.
It was then time to re-scan and digitally fine-tune the image of the parrot to enable a seamless repeat. This involved gradually manipulating the image so gaps were filled with interlocking wings, bodies and tails. This new repeatable bird was then printed off for the next stage of the process which meant handing back over to me to add the finishing touches to our avian friend.
With Zoe and myself both being long admirers of the Indian art of Henna and given my previous experience of creating body henna artwork we decided to fill our parrot with intricate henna designs, so I got to work drawing henna patterns inside the basic outline of the printed design. The final drawing was then sent off to be scanned so that we had it in digital format.
The final step was to add colour and bring this wonderful design to life. Zoe and I did this sitting together picking out and adding colours until we were happy with each colour option. We both love colour and believe it can have a real impact on how we feel. With that in mind we’ve picked three, punchy colourways! Also, watch this space for some new metallic colourways coming soon!
Coming up with a name can sometimes be a bit tricky but this one came together quite quickly. During its creation we had been referring to this gorgeous bird as ‘the Indian parrot’ so it seemed a logical step to name our bird using the Hindi word for parrot ‘Tota’.
