Week 6 Inspiration & Research

I read this book over the summer and I think the cover illustration had a major influence on my illustration of the Queen for the gold foil paper panel--not only the appearance of the character herself, but also my interpretation of  who this queen might be and when she might be from.  The story is about the Duchess Eleanor of Aquitaine (France) and takes place in the 1100's.  Eventually she marries the future king of France, becomes Queen of France, and then gets divorced and later marries the heir to England.  Super powerful woman, described as very beautiful, sometimes foolish but usually dignified, a little selfish, but rightfully so.  The way she was written in this book, I really identified with her throughout most of the story, so I think my Queen character is really similar to Eleanor.  She also sort of looks like Queen Mary from Reign (which is a show that I really like, which probably isn't that surprising)... This is mostly because I gave her dark hair, which was a purely aesthetic choice.  I thought it would stand out best against the gold.

There's a Ralph Lauren commercial that plays during PBS Masterpiece (Downton Abbey), at least online, but that I can't find on youtube, where he says:

Designing for me is a creative journey.  It starts with a feeling, a mood or a certain place. The style of a heroine.  Her journey, her dreams.  I create a world around her.  A world beyond fashion.  The world of Ralph Lauren.

This struck me as basically what I've been doing with these sheets of scrapbook paper, although sort of in reverse.  It got me thinking about how important a story can be in the design process.  Even in commercial graphic design, we sometimes create a character, with a name, an age, a job, hobbies, and needs, to represent the larger group of people for whom we're designing. It's so easy to get pulled just into the art or the design itself, thinking about it more and more as a technical challenge or making decisions solely for the sake of aesthetics, but sometimes it's helpful to remember that we're people, and that often the inspiration for or purpose of any one of these pieces is other human beings, not just art or design for its own sake.
I should also mention that I've been watching a lot of Downton Abbey this week, and although I don't think it's directly affected any of my work (most of their clothing is solid colours and since the show is set in the 1920's, their wardrobes are very different from anything I've been working on so far), I think it's got me thinking about characters anyway.  There are a lot of very elegant female characters on the show, and I may be picking up the mannerisms in the portraits, at least. Also, can you tell why I like all these shows?