Dissertation

This week has been slow with practical work due to writing my dissertation. I have found doing research into textiles and wellbeing really interesting and came across a very interesting theory of colour called chromophobia. This has inspired my practical work because I am very aware of my bold colour use and how it could be seen as “too eclectic” or perhaps unprofessional, but chromophobia is the idea that Western society has made colour seem “foreign” or “childish” or “unprofessional”. Reading about this social phenomenon helps me feel more confident in taking risks and challenging these concepts of colour. 

I have also found that doing my essay on wellbeing has been quite relevent to my self-initiated brief because of the gratification I have got from helping someone see a whole new colour. ot only has it contributed to my wellbeing, doing a project to help someone else, I also feel like it's may have helped improve his wellbeing taking time out to consider how he sees colour. 

Finally it all seems relevant to my new live brief based on the Gawthorpe Hall Archives, which is full of amazing intricate hand embroidery done by people who will have used embroidery for the same wellbeing purposes we use it for today. 

Developed Colour Drawings

Although my work is quite similar to Michael Kidner’s work I have decided that I will not participate in that live brief. Although looking at his work has been quite helpful when creating my own: 

 I’m not sure my work would be totally appropriate to that brief. I also really like the look of the Gawthorpe Hall project and think this would be a more inspiring project to take up. I feel like if I took up the Michael Kidner brief I would just be creating work I was going to create anyway. It makes more sense to me to take up a live brief that inspires me to create new work instead.

 

In light of this, I have continued my sketchbook in order to create a little book of colour. I absolutely adore doing these drawings, although they are quite time consuming. My latest drawings have explored using watercolour one way and brighter lines drawn the opposite way. I love the colours produced by the watercolour and the bright contrast of the inks.

I think these would be really interesting to reproduce with the idea of cutting holes into fabric and then laying or stitching threads behind. 

I have also done some drawing that play around with the idea of shape as well as colour: 

I really enjoy these drawings and see a lot of similarity between these and Victoria Snape's: 

Like my more recent drawings there is a geometric look that has been disrupted by a hand drawn element. 

I look forward to taking these drawings into fabric, I will experiment with aplique, hand and machine stitch, making sure I pay attention to the white space surrounding and colour matching.