From the sketchbook to the walls, Inkiostro Bianco designers.
From the sketchbook to the walls, Inkiostro Bianco designers.
We asked the designers of Inkiostro Bianco who participated in the creation of the Sketchbook wallpaper collection to tell us their thoughts, inspirations and the secrets that lay behind the construction of such a creative project.
Four rather different personalities, each with its own particular way of seeing the reality surrounding us. Each designer takes us on a different journey, privileging sensations or observation or even the research for a specific style.
Four voices, each one with its own timbre and nuances.
But let them take the floor now…
“Illustrating for me means applying everything my imagination creates, observing […] everything that can arouse an emotion” (Veronika)
“Illustration is like a window that the artist opens to show a part of himself” (Alessandra)
“Illustrating for me means expressing, depicting, expanding wide what you think” (Claudia)
“Illustrating means illuminating, making something clear and bright. To make us see something that we would never have seen on our own’ (Manuel)
The common line to these thoughts is the idea of something that opens up and sheds light, bringing out and giving expression to what lies within each of us. The creative and imaginative side that feels the need to express itself, to come out and be shared with others.
The fundamental reflection that emerges when applying the general concept of creativity to a wallpaper project is therefore how to bring something so intimate and the result of personal research onto a wall, and therefore on such a different “canvas”. In this case it is necessary to “think bigger, to create a work that is able to expand in space, adapt, mutate, envelop and change the space itself” (Manuel). “Starting from a basic idea you then develop a theme by projecting it into an environment. Entering it and understanding how to make it work’ (Claudia).
You enter a different, parallel world, which follows different rules from those of everyday life, but you have to maintain the link with the space that these works will occupy on wallpaper and then within a room.
For some, the notebook is virtual: “I tend to jot down all my ideas directly drawing on the computer, using effects, brushes and filters” (Veronika), for others it is physical, for others still it is a space made up of memories and recollections of experiences such as photographs, exhibitions, books, people, encounters, “I photograph details I like, sometimes they become nothing, sometimes they become paintings, sometimes they simply remind me of the moment” (Alessandra). Other times they don’t even exist: “My notebook doesn’t really exist, it is made of fragments of memory that remain there until the moment they come to life on canvas” (Manuel).
All of this represents the springboard from which to start on this journey of creative discovery from notebook to wall. What helps us on this journey is our entire background of experiences, knowledge, our passions, interests, our teachers, in short: everything that we are. These are the tools, but each person makes their own journey.
Each pattern, texture, geometry, colour can take on new and different meanings depending on the moment when that person looks at them. Style can vary according to feelings and emotions. Sometimes it is romantic and sweet, other times it is decisive, edgy, or again dynamic, energetic and evocative.
Each graphic and decoration thus becomes an expression of an idea: the relaxation and tranquillity of a flowery meadow or the dynamic colours and ethnic shapes of the African style, trees with a full-bodied line and simple, almost elementary shapes, the desire to find oneself immersed in a solitary forest, the meeting that is hidden in the gaze of other people and in diversity.
Each decoration is a page in the notebook, each page is a different journey. A different story.
A love of detail, a willingness to be carried away only by sensations and curiosity, research and incessant experimentation are some of the traits that characterise the creative spirit. A spirit that loves to ask questions and search for its own answers, not without a good dose of fear, but with the hope of arousing an emotion on the walls.
So, are you curious?
