Colour inspiration

I printed off some of my photographs simply to show the rest of the group, but I realised afterwards that I  liked the way they had ended up on the page as they showed the colour range really well. Here are three different colour ranges that I could potentially use, where I picked the key colur from each image and display them in stripes.



Technical drawing


I really enjoyed the process of drawing flats - its a very theraputic thing to do! In the seesion we each drew a shirt to scale and as soon as I came home I started rummaging through my wardrobe to find things of interest to draw.

Manchester Art Gallery Paper Cut Exhibition

I had already been to visit the Paper Cut exhibition on multiple occasions, but it was only on this particular visit that I began to notice the shadows that the work created. It seemed to perfectly tie in with this idea of recording light which I have been exploring, and made me begin to think about using paper cutting in my own project.



Papercuts

It was whilst discussing what had worked well within my data drawings that Mary prompted that I should use techniques and materials that I enjoy - leading me towards paper cutting. I love the graphic way it portrays an image, but I'm not sure whether it is too heavy and solid a technique to reflect my theme of recording light.



Data drawing

I really enjoyed the challenge of doing at least one drawing everyday for such a long period. My first few drawing were very rigid and straightforward, but it was interesting to see how my drawing style became more fluid with frequent practice. My ideas also began to develop so that by the end of the project I had opened up lots of interesting ideas.

Picking only 8 drawings from over 40 was a tricky matter though.....

Here I tried to pick drawing that reflected the variety of styles and themes within my work.

Primary research

Over the holidays I took a lot of photographs of varying subjects to try and explore the data theme. Here are some of the most interesting and intriguing images that I thought would be good starting points in my project.

I liked the swirling patterns of the steam,

and the way the light captures all the colours.

These images were taken at night using a slow shutter speed

- I liked the idea of recording how the light travels.

Above and below are a collection of images that I found inspiring

but haven't quite decided how they fit into my project at this point.

Chinese Arts Centre exhibition opening



Manchester Arts and Crafts Centre



Chinese Art Centre



What is design?

In the dictionary, the definition of ‘design’ is largely limited to drawing, used either by the designer to plan and ‘decide upon the look and function’ of an object, or used to demonstrate to others how an object will look before it is made. The Design Council, however, have a much more open and conceptual view of what can be defined as design, and was described quite eloquently by their former chairman as ‘creativity deployed to a specific end’. I found their discussion of what design is extremely interesting; how it is seen as a process that ‘takes abstract thoughts and inspirations and makes something concrete’ and this idea that the designing and making processes are not separate, but instead design is included all the way through the process of creation. I personally agree with the statements made on the Design Council’s website, that design links together all areas of the creative process and is key to creating work. Every piece of artwork is designed to an extent, even if this is not plotted down on paper before hand. And although design encompasses all areas of my work, design in terms of drawing is very relevant in my specialism of textiles design for fashion as it forms the entire basis to the end product - through the process of designing and altering and redesigning we are brought towards a final idea which is then created into a physical object.

Evaluation

　The theme behind this print module was journeys, so whilst this was the subject of the artwork, it also stands to sum up my whole project - my journey exploring print. Throughout the project I have had to develop my work, trying to combine research and what I had learnt about this new practice into my own work. To begin with my work very much concentrated on the mark marking element, as I looked a continuous line drawing and line within my everyday photographs, but this soon moved onto looking solely at architecture. I looked at various areas of research, but the key influence on my work was the ‘garish’ fashion trend, which I then brought back into my own practice through use of colour, pattern and layering.

The editing process was very important in helping to develop my ideas. For example, I started off with lots of motifs in my sketchbook, from birds to lamp posts, but as soon as I had settled on my architectural theme I kept that as my focus. All whilst doing my print work in the studio, I was simultaneously creating new motifs and designs in my sketchbook to help create fresh ideas which prevented me repeating myself to frequently within my work. I discovered that when I found a technique that I really enjoyed I tended to create more exciting work, such as making digital designs where I found it quite easy to create multiple designs, so I tried to let this practice influence the rest of my work to try and improve the areas in which I was lacking.

My own research was a huge factor in influencing the direction of my work. The content was inspired directly by my surroundings, using the photographs I had taken of buildings on my walks around the city, cutting up the architectural details and then juxtaposing them against each other, before using that as direct inspiration for my motif work. My use of technique was largely directed by what had recently been introduced to us, but I was also inspired by the work of my peers and took their advice on which techniques worked well together and learnt from their mistakes, such as not washing out the reactive dyes thoroughly enough.

I felt overall I organised my project well, utilising the most of my time and using workshops effectively, but I also navigated the project itself well, pushing my ideas and my processes and trying to take the most out of the experience, which left me with a body of samples which I felt rounded up my project very well.

(Can't post photos at the moment as blogger will not
allow me to upload any more images, but will amend
this as soon as possible)