Development and Refining

Looking back at my more woven drawings I have found that I actually find manipulating straight lines to look wavy far more interesting than creating wavy lines myself. These samples are the ones I am happiest with, I feel they look more professional and refined and even hand themselves over to a fashion context. 

These experimental samples are the first ones I feel appropriate to be used as a final sample and I aim to create 5 more using this one as inspiration. 

Experimenting and Inspiration

I have now had lots of inductions onto lots of exciting machines and have had fun experimenting to find out how each one can help me translate my drawings into textiles. Also continuing with my drawing and accidently photocopying one of my pieces black and white has become visually very interesting to me. I have now focused on combining the coloured lines with the black and white. 

I have particularly enjoyed using the Irish, Embellisher and Cornelly machines to create interesting backgrounds and have tried to focus on creating interesting pattern surfaces that reflect the waviness of my drawings. 

Although I quite like some of these samples I feel like focusing on created a textured surface isn’t as relative to my drawings which have a more graphic, line quality about them. 

Having looked at my drawing I have found that I find the lines breaking up other lines very interesting and have experimented with weaving my drawings to emphasise this. 

I have decided to try and translate these woven drawings into samples. So far I have attempted to do this with built up backgrounds and woven in shop bought ribbon. 

This week we also got given a talk from Emily Woods from Cabasa Carnival Arts. This is a textile profession that I had never really considered before but encompasses all the aspects of textiles and life I enjoy. Not only does she produce amazing, brightly coloured one of a kind pieces, she is also working in the community, to help minority groups have more cohesion and celebrate themselves. I applied for Textiles in Practice at MMU with the view to doing an Art Therapy MA so being involved with community projects on such a practical level would be ideal. They also take part in festivals and parades which is something I’ve always been interested in working in but previously found no obvious link to a career in textiles. 

Starting Samples

Having created some much more interesting drawings carrying the feel of a “collection”, for the first time on this course I feel comfortable with my drawings and am actually proud of what I have produced and am looking forward to making more. As a result of this new found confidence I have attempted some pretty amateur samples. 

The only embroidery based unit I have completed so far is a quilting project in Unit X last year, so my knowledge of embroidery techniques and machine inductions are very limited. However I’ve had a go and have been given useful feedback on my current samples as well as a timetable of inductions into the machine rooms so that I can more accurately translate my drawings into samples. 

I also need to start thinking about my context in order to help my decision making processes. So far I feel my work would be best suited to Fashion or Interiors. In either case I think they’d have to be for very unique or one off pieces as I have a very bright colour palette that would become quite over powering in large doses. 

Here are some artists that I’m looking at for inspiration: 

Vivienne Westwood: 

Park B. Smith: 

Slow Progress

Unfortunately, I have been quite ill this week, and feel like I really haven’t hit my stride with drawing. In an attempt to be experimental, I tried to develop some bigger more close up recreations of the wavy lines using a mixture of paint, crayon, ink and collage. I feel these drawings came out a bit too eclectic and although studying the colours within the pictures more carefully has proven helpful, I feel the drawings I have created are a bit sloppy and not substantial enough.

After this I have taken a different approach back in my sketchbook mainly using inks to create the vivid colours and some of the lines. I don’t feel I have really produced enough work this week, so I’m motivated for next week to be more productive. Having spoken to my tutor I feel like I have more ideas for producing more interesting and refined drawings and hope to be ready to start producing samples after Monday’s tutorial. 

PDP Tutorials

Having had my PDP tutorial, I am very excited about this project. I have lots of bright colours to work with and have been advised to do drawings and try manipulating further my images I have photocopied. I am going to experiment with lots of different media to try and recreate the effects created by the manipulated photocopied images. 

Although I feel like I still have a very random collection of drawing across my two sketchbooks I feel like focusing on a few different images will help me refine my drawing and hopefully find a media that works for me.

 I think it might be interesting to try recreate the lines with collage or inks. I’m looking forward to having more drawings so I can start thinking about fabrics and techniques that I might use. 

Sound and Vision: Week 2

After having struggled a bit last week with mark making and finding a medium I enjoyed, this week I have felt a bit more confident working a bit more illustratively. I particularly enjoyed the theme from retro mood board task, really enjoying finding psychedelic patterns, 60s ephemera and presenting a colour palette with yarn wrappings. 

I really hope to take this work forward creating more drawings using the bright colours and swirly patterns. 

I feel like I have really enjoyed this project, and feel a bit more confident with my drawing. It is useful to know that I can turn non visual stimuli into illustrative drawings, which may come in handy getting “unstuck” in future projects. 

And although I have not really found my favourite medium to work with, I have enjoyed using the photocopier to manipulate my drawings. 

Sound and Vision: week 1

For my visual research weeks I have chosen the Sound and Vision project. This involves turning something audio into something visual which I think I will enjoy, being quite a big fan of music but will challenge me as well. 

Our first task was to listen to one song and create 15-30 drawings based one just that song. I chose a song called ……. By Dervish. This is an instrumental Irish folk song and these were some of the images I produced:

The next exercise I tried was called “Colour Fields”, we had to listen to a song with contrasts and create a colour palette and a composition using that colour palette that represents the song. I chose “Sea of Love” by Catpower. 

Finally I tried an exercise where we had to create our own graphic notation in response to a piece of music. I chose the instrumental piece “Music for a Found Harmonium” by the Penguin Café Orchestra I mainly responded to the “deh-deh-deh” sounds of the violin.

 

This week I feel I have struggled with the exercises, due to the abstract nature of the mark making and still haven’t really found a media I’m fully comfortable with, much like my summer sketchbook it feels a bit scattered and not really part of a collection.