Assignment 5

I got my tutors comments back for assignment 5 and agreed with all that she said about my work. I was rushed and did not have enough time to complete the project to the standard that I want to. I relooked at the work that I did and looked at my past projects again and decided that I needed to redo my final assignment bringing in parts and techniques that I used in past projects that worked for me. I did not have time to redo and do many extra samples but I could look at samples that I used in previous assignments.

I re-looked at the photos I took at the beach and was interested in the wash of the sea. I did some drawings.

 

From the drawings I looked at turning it into a repeat design that could be printed. When looking at my previous work I identified that screen printing was one of my most successful projects and one

that I really enjoyed so I wanted to make this part of my final work. Here is one of my design that I worked on.

 

 

I used paper stencils as it was the easiest way of printing the design I wanted as there was lots of shapes that needed. I cut them out individually and then pined then to by cotton fabric. I used a sponge insead of a squeegee as I wanted the texture that putting the fabric paint on gave.

I then quilted the design. I chose to do this as the beach means a lot to me. I was born on an island and spent a lot of my child hood at the beach and also now take my children to the beach so it has a lot of memories. This made me think of memory quilts that are handed down in families and I wanted to recreate a version of this using my feeling and memories of the sea.
In the white areas of the design I sewed fabric to give it texture.

 



Then I used wool felted to the design to add shine and swirls to recreate movement I also pined crochet string to this areas to add a contrast of textures. I gave it a hessian boarder as I felt it worked well as the beach, sand and stones. Also I feel that it would be a nice area to add any future pieces of work of memories from the beach giving it more memory of time at the beach with my family.  

 

 

 

I am glad I re did my final piece as I feel that this piece is a stronger design and reflect more my of my feelings of the sea. I feel that I it is a piece that could be added to over time and handed down to my children to add their memories, which is what I was trying to achieve in this piece.

 

This assignment has taken me a long time to pull together as over the last couple of years there was a lot going on in my life that had to be priority other my course work. I am glad that I have finally finished the course and that I produce a final piece that I am happy with.

Assignment 5

Assignment 5

Stage 1 Reviewing you work so far.

What approach to drawing works best for you?

I looked through my work and the drawings from still life and photos seem to work best for me. I am quite a slow drawer that likes to be quite precise about the drawing so this way of drawing suits this.

What materials and ways of working do you enjoy most?

Looking through my work I found that starting from a drawing from a still life or photograph and then developing the image for this point works well for me. I enjoy starting the drawing in paint and then developing the drawing using other materials from here. I generally use any material that suits the image I am working on.

Which way of developing ideas has proved most fruitful?

I feel that developing a piece of work from photocopies from phots worked well in assignment 2 and I feel that I enjoyed working on textures in assignment 3 and these also worked well.

Which textile technique appeals to you most?

Looking through my work I feel that I enjoyed printing on fabric and recreating textures using material.

I feel overall that the printed design in assignment 2 worked well and I really enjoyed this project, but I do not feel that I will have enough time to do printing in this project. If I had enough time I would like to combine this with stitching.

 

I looked through my sketch books and I didn’t find anything that I wanted to use for this project. I had a good think and I thought I would do a project on my favourite place the beach. I felt that there would be a lot of texture to work from and movement of the sea. Once I had visited the beach a few times and collected some objects from the beach I arranged them on my board to create a mood bored to give me inspiration.

 

I did some drawing from these images above.

I then looked at the images and chose this little painting to work from as it has a lot of texture to work from. I loved the movement and spray of the sea.

I

 did another drawing from this image using masking fluid. I felt that this image would make a good printed design.

 

From the painting I came up with some ideas for a wall hanging that I could develop. I found a piece from an artist called Ana Teresa Barzona her work spilled over the side of the frame and I wanted to bring an element of this to my piece also I want to bring in the transparent element to my work that I used in a previous assignment. I worked on a few samples and then put together a story board.

 

I then started on the finished piece. The sown stones took longer than I thought they would.

 

 

I can see a clear line of progression from start to the finished piece, if I had more time I would have like to experiment more. I could have work from the photograph more photocopying them and work from that. I did a masking fluid drawing and I feel that would have made a good design for a piece of fabric and so at some point I would like to develop this further.

I feel that a printed fabric design would have been better but I ran out of time and didn’t have time to develop a printed fabric this time round. I enjoyed making the finish piece but the stone were a bit arduous as it seemed to take ages!

I do like my finished piece but I would have like to have more time developing the background as I feel that it was a bit weak. I feel if I had more time I would like to work on it a bit more and make it tidier.

 

 

Assignment 4 - Review

I have finally finished Assignment 4. I found the previous post in drafts that I wrote back in January. A lot has happened since then that stopped me finishing my assignment. I have finally started a full time job so it has taken me some time to get into a routine and fine the time to get on with this assignment but it is finally complete.

Here is my review of how I found this assignment.

I have enjoyed researching the artist and found this approach interesting, but it is the actual writing an essay that I find difficult. So that took some of the enjoyment out of the assignment. But the was the assignment was set out did help me to understand the artist work.

I was familiar with most of the artist it was just Leon Basket, Anni Albers Magdalena Abakanowicz and Judy Chicago. I found it was interesting finding out about new artists.  I really did not like the work of Judy Chicago. I am really not interested in the feminist ideas and was not interested in the ideas behind her work. I was really inspired by the work of Magdalena Abakanowicz and want to read more on her and her works.

The questions really helped me. I found having a structure gave me direction and help me to investigate the piece more and understand the works and the context they were designed and to find out more about the artist as well.

I really want to look at Magdalena Abakanowicz work more and she has inspired me to look at the producing larger pieces in the future.

I was really lucky when choosing my final pieces of work to be able to see the piece instead of looking at them in a book or on the internet. I chose to look at two works by Alice kettle that are on display in Winchester that were in very different situations. While there I was lucky that Grayson Perry's Walthamstow tapestry was on display and he was the other artist that I was considering looking at. So that made my mind up. It was a lot better as I got to see the size of the pieces and the texture of the stitches and also the environment the piece was in such as Alice Kettle Altar piece that is in a small chapel. I am so glad that got to see a piece of work by Grayson Perry as I find his work interesting and witty.

Assignment 4 - Project 1

Well again it has been a while since I added an entry onto the blog. I have been busy with Christmas and job hunting. So finally Christmas is over, I have a few days before I get back into the job hunting full time and the school runs start again so I have managed to find a spare few hours to look at this assignment. As usual I am starting my assignment a little late so I doubt that I will get it to my tutor by the deadline date!

So I started off looking at the internet and doing a little research on the ten artists in part one of this project: Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh, Leon Bakst, Ethel Mairet, Anni Albers, Lucienne Day, Magdalena Abakanowicz, Zandra Rhodes, Judy Chicago, issey Miyake and Tracey Emins. At first I wasn't sure how I was going to tackle this task, but the other night, I came up with the idea to do a spider diagram to put the main points and historical notes and images for the artist that I felt were important. This way I felt that I had a quick reference on one page on the artists for me to refer back to.

After doing this exercise I have now moved onto stage 2. It took me a while to decide which artist I was going to write about. There were artist that I defiantly did not want to write about like Judy Chicago. I was drawn to Magdalena Abakanowicz (found her Abakans really interesting), Lucienne Day and Tracey Emin ( I find her work uncomfortable but intriguing). So I have decided to write about Lucienne Day and look at images by Tracey Emin and Magdalena Abakanowicz in stage 3.

I can not get to the library till probably Monday so I will do some internet research and look through the books that I have until then. I will also do my short list of 6 Artist of my own choose for Project 2 and choose the images for studying ready so I can also find the books I need when in the library on Monday.

Assignment 3 - Review

Firstly do I feel that my finished samples fulfilled my expectations and fully explored the topic of reveal and conceal, light and transparency. Yes I do feel that my sample fulfils my expectations, although I would have liked to have worked on the tree sample a little more and push the idea examining overlay the image, using different coloured lights. I feel that I did explore the topic reveal and conceal fully but could have examined light and transparency more. In all my sample I made sure I was always thinking about the brief and whether my sample was about revealing, concealing or light and transparency. I do feel that there is a lot more that I could explore on this topic. I am really happy with the other two samples that I produced. I think the concealed sign really worked well and I would like to do more work on this in my sketchbook at some time as I love the way the letter are concealed. I feel the seaweed sample is really fun especially the netting technique used for the seaweed. I would like to explore the way seaweed can be more transparent when exposed to light.

 

When choosing the materials, I was thinking more about the effects that I wanted to achieve and whether the sample was reveal or conceal then I looked at the quality. 

 

Once I had chosen my image /ideas. I then referenced back to my sample and found the techniques that would give me the effect that I was looking at achieving and then looked at what material I wanted to use.

 

I really enjoyed this assignment and as usual wish I could have dedicated more time to explore the subject more. I enjoy the process of creating images using different technique and fabrics. Also exploring what I can do with different fabric.

 

I am really enjoying this course but it is unfortunate that I have had to rush some of my work because of other commitments. I am hoping that I can spend more time on the last two assignments and do a lot more work in my sketch book as I am still lacking in this area.

Assignment 3 - Stage 4 & 5

I then Started on finding some images that I thought would work for the reveal and conceal theme, here are some of the photos that I took.

 

I took the photo of the church as I like the refection in the glass and I thought the post was interesting.

 I thought the flaking paint would be interesting for revealing, I thought the different colours and shapes were interesting.

Then I came across these sign, The paint was cracking and flaking off and the dirt and moss was concealing the words.

 

I was looking into the garden and the eucalyptus tree at the top of the garden jumped out at me. It was beautiful against the blue sky and I felt the as a silhouette is would be a wonderful image to use.

 

I also had some old photos that I took of seaweed on water breaks.

So I chose a couple of images and came up with some drawing and ideas.

This sample was more about the silhouette, I wanted to use the idea of Reiko Sudo if cutting into paper and the burning hole samples. I chose a transparent fabric so that light can shine though and create a shadow against the wall. I also chose a light weight fabric as it will move when hung and the image will sway like a tree does.

 

 

Here is the silhouette that the sample creates

 

 

 

I then look at the sign and wanted to look a concealment and the way the letter are conceal by the moss growing on the sign. I used different technique that I had learnt from the workshops to create the final sample.

 

 

 

Lastly I used the Seaweed photo that I had of seaweed concealing a water break on the beach. I used the netting techniques to create the seaweed as well as sewn water soluble fabric and a little platted laminated fabric for a bit of structure.

 

 

 

 

Assignment 3 - Experimental workshops

I wasn't sure which workshop I wanted to do so I just picked any to get me started. So I started with workshop 1 - netting techniques. I started of with simple weaving threads. I then did another and added beads to make it more interesting. I then moved on to using ribbon and a thick fabric to see what interest I could create with this.

 

 

Netting is a great technique that can conceal a background with interest. There are many pockets that can be look through or concealed.

 

I then looked at workshop 5 and dug out my laminator. I chose this workshop as I felt that the transparency that could be created would be interested.

 

 

These are my first sample I was just looking at transparent and thicker fabrics together.

 

 

I then trapped some found objects, I loved the feathers.

 

 

I then experimented with cutting laminate up and sewing it together. I just tried to do a scattered feel.

 

 

I looked at images of stain glass windows and the effect of stain glass windows when light was shined through and then did this sample.

 

I then looked at trapping gather fabric in the laminator, a gather fabric has become 3 dimensional and I thought that it would be interesting to make it 2 dimensional again and see the lines created. Then I moved on the cutting holes in the laminate and pulling the fabric through.

 

 

I then moved onto Workshop 6. I really enjoyed this workshop. Some of the samples were more successful than other. I used many different techniques to create a different effect with the fabric.

 

 

Above I used Painted Tyvek fabric that was melted and then sewn onto fabrics, trapped treads between transparent fabric, sewn water soluble fabric, sewn paper that is cut to reveal what was underneath, and the last sample that was sewn and then the layers of transparent fabric was melted.  

 

In these samples I experimented with melting plastic bags.

 

In these samples I weaved ribbon, again melted fabric and trapped scraps of fabric to create a new fabric.

 

Lastly I looked at workshop 7 Deconstructing fabrics as I felt that these techniques would work well with workshop 6. I decided that I would chose a number of different techniques to deconstruct the fabrics and try it out on different fabrics to see how the different fabric reacted.

 

These first sample have been melted with a heat gun.

 

 

These samples were melted with a soldering iron. I was able to have more control of where the burn happened.

 

These samples were created using a hole punch and sand paper. The sand paper soften some of the fabrics.

 These samples are fraying the edges and using a cheese grater to distress the fabric.

 

These were distressed using scissors. I found that on some thicker fabrics the scissors soften the fabric.

 

I pulled threads out of these fabrics.

 

 

I then looked at overlaying some of my samples to see what effects were created and using like with some of the samples:

 

 

Here are some of the experiments I did with light. They did not come out very well as I was using a torch.