Fashion Week

Fashion week began with a discussion about what "Fashion" was. I found this really interesting; I love discussion and debate - I think it's really interesting to hear other people's thoughts and ideas about things - so that got me immediately engaged with the topic. There were lots of different attitudes towards fashion and a lot of ideas about what it was all about. It was really nice to get the chance have a talk about how we felt about this subject.
The focus on this week was about shape and not necessarily on making practical garments so we were shown a slide show of different designers who worked with big, bold shapes in their work. This was really helpful because it gave us an idea of how we should be working over the week.
We were also shown two unusual garments that we analysed as a group as to what it might be for, the good point about it and what we thought didn't work.
One item was a coat made out of mosquito netting which was lightweight and dull green coloured; designed for army forces in hot countries to keep insects from biting them. It was light and loose fitting to ensure maximum movement could be obtained and so that it didn't make them too hot and dull coloured so that it camouflaged the forces from enemy eyes.
The second was a double ended jacket - so it had sleeves and a neck at both the top and the bottom of the garment. It was rather odd to look at but it had useful points such as durability; once one end started to look a little shabby you could turn in around and it's brand new again.
It was interesting to look at some more unusual items of clothing because it gets you wondering "could this be useful?", "will it catch on?" etc.
We then started to cut up standardised paper patterns to make interesting shapes to create our own, unique paper patterns. We made several different templates and then picked our favourite one to use to shape around a mannequin to create a "garment". My "garment" went through many different changes and variations  so you can see below:

This was my first design, I liked the shapes on the neck and shoulders and the hips. I thought they looked  really quite dramatic and stylised. 

I though the front chest/waist shapes on my first design looked silly  and didn't fit in the the sharp, straight  lines of the rest of my design so I put them following the curve of the waist instead. 

Although I quite liked the effect of the second design, I felt like I was starting to make a garment that fit the body which wasn't what our brief wanted us to do so I got rid of the waist components altogether. And although I really liked the hip   part of the "garment", I wanted to make a bigger shape away from them. So I enlarged the original shape and used that instead and I was really pleased with the result. 

Now I wanted to concentrate on the middle part of my "garment" because I felt like I had a good top and a good bottom but nothing to connect the two. I started off  by simply adding an interesting shape onto the bottom of where I'd left off on top creating an interesting sticking out shape. 

From the front I quite liked this sticking out bit but  from the side it looked really odd and I didn't like it. As a 3D  piece you have to consider all the angles so to fix this problem, I pinned down the flaps over the chest. This still gave the front an interesting shape but it also looked good from the side. 

I added a waist piece that kept with the sharp angles and shapes of the piece. I also really like the negative shapes created within my item. 

I felt like it this was a real garment, then the front was almost complete because it covered enough of the body be  an actual item but still made interesting and unusual shapes around and with the body. All I needed to do was a that last piece at the bottom. I also lifted the flaps of paper out so that some more angular shapes were created. 

  The back of my "garment" also went through some changes, although not quite as many as the front:

This was how the back started off looking like before I really started to work on it. 

I like the negative, pointy egg shape made with these straps at the back but I feel like the curved ends looked out of place with the more angular approach to my item of clothing. 

So I changed it to a more straight edged shape  which I feel works much better with the rest of the garment. And as an actual piece of clothing, the straps attach the top and the bottom of the item far better than the others.  

Although I liked my design, I also really liked the way the first straps crossed over and so I wanted to see if my  second shape would work crossed over. I had a go and I really liked the effect and so I kept that as my final design. 

I worked really hard on this and I was really focused towards the end of this week because I was really into the work. This surprised me because I wouldn't have said I was very into making actual pieces of clothing; I like drawing fashion illustration rather than making fashion pieces. But I really enjoyed this and I really pleased with the end result. I think it does work around and make interesting shapes so fulfilled the brief but could, with a bit of adjusting, actually been worn too (which is an important part of fashion for; how wearable the piece is).

Final Piece:

front

side

back

Fashion Designers

Erdem:
http://www.erdem.co.uk

I really liked a lot of his stuff so much that I couldn't pick just one dress as my favourite but here are a few I love (but seriously check out the website because there are loads more stuff that I just can't fit on here!!):

I love how feminine his work is. He is definitely very big on floral which I really like and he's not afraid of using bright, bold colours and patterns but at the same time can create some really beautiful, subtle pieces too. I like how he keeps the shapes simple and elegant; I love that a lot of his work is fitted so that it accentuates the curves of the body. I find that lots of his work feels fresh and youthful yet classy and elegant at the same time. His work is really pretty and so lovely to look at because it just seems to flow over the body. It works with the body. Sometimes I find the designers alienate me because their designs are so out there and couture but I really connect with Erdem's work because a lot of it is my kind of style - if I was rich enough I would totally be buying vast amounts of his clothes! - and I can see myself wearing it (which I feel is what designers should be doing - creating beautiful clothes that people want to wear).

Meadham Kirchhoff:
http://www.meadhamkirchhoff.com/
(this is their actual website - interesting video - I really like it - but doesn't seem to give you any other info)
http://www.britishfashioncouncil.co.uk/designer_profile.aspx?DesignerID=215
(found this and it tells you a bit about the designers and shows their previous collections as well - found this more useful than their website for research)



What I love about these guys are that they seem completely indulgent, opulent and mix everything together. It creates this crazy visual impact and although I don't like all of their work you have admire the guts they have to make it and show it. You quite clearly could not actually wear clothes like this in actual life but there's something so wonderfully playful and wild about their work that I still like some of it. I can definitely see how their work could influence high street fashion; the colours or certain styles; they'd just have to be very simplified!! I find they they seem to create their own world within these clothes and you just have to go with it and enjoy the ride. I picked images from the shows I liked; there was an overly cute, pastel coloured, little girl collection and a Disney princess, high court French dress collection that I really liked and thought were interesting. There are other collections on the second website so have a look if you're interested but these are the ones I liked - thought the other ones were weird and a bit messy.

Life Drawing - Week Six!

Life Drawing - Week Six - Colour!

This week we had to use a range of different coloured oil pastels to represent the body with - but we weren't allowed to use skin tones! I went on the basis that purple/ blue/ green would represent the darker tones, red/ orange the mid-tones and yellow/ white the highlights. So on my first attempt I was trying to draw with line and then working in on the shadows. However, as we were not given much time, I spent way to long on the form and didn't get chance to even get started on the tone.

15 minute sketch

Therefore, on the second go, I didn't use much line. Instead, I used the technique I used last week with the charcoal; shading in the darker areas and then building into it from there. I feel this worked a lot better and I as able to work much quicker. I decided that this week, like last week, was more about the expression rather than the complete accuracy of the piece. I quite like this piece because you can tell that it is a human form even though the colouring is completely crazy. I know there are several things wrong about the piece but I feel that is quite a good effort considering that oil pastel is really hard to rub out or change.

30 minute sketch

Having worked out what technique to use and the idea behind what we were doing, I felt a lot happier. We moved our easel positions so that we would get a different view of the body and began a new sketch. I'm quite pleased with the outcome of this one but I wish I'd been able to complete a little bit more of the rest of the body. I think the bright colours create a weird effect but it's definitely very striking.
I didn't really like using the oil pastels; I find them quite blunt, clumsy instruments to use and I don't like that they don't blend together very well. But it has been interesting using them to create this images.

20 minute sketch 

Textiles Week

We started Textiles week by doing some warm up drawings in our sketch books; similar to the ones we did in Illustration. Then we moved this onto a larger scale out of our books like we did in Illustration. However, this time we used old pieces of envelopes as the base and we used a range of coloured inks, pastels, oil pastels, collage, masking tape and pencil. We had two still lives set up for us; one with bright coloured fabric and wooden, painted toys and the other had more organic objects such as skulls and dried plants with more earthy coloured fabric. The emphasise was on looking at shape, composition and colour rather than focusing on the actual, individual objects themselves. We kept changing the position of the paper (upside down, sideways etc.) so that our pieces didn't become too detailed and tight. I really liked the way all the pieces turned out and I'm really pleased that they were all quite different - one focused on colours, the other on line and the last on shape.

line

colour

shape

In the afternoon we did some mono-printing. I loved doing this! I really liked the effect of drawing with  a continuous line and in my left hand - I love the quality and looseness of the line especially as I'd chosen elements from the wooden toy still life for my mono-prints so I wanted something that felt quite young and playful - so I used this technique for my mono-prints. I really like how each print is unique - I think there's something really lovely about that. I like my three bird prints because I think they're really simple but they're really easy to look at; they're pretty and uncomplicated which can be a really nice escape from all the angst you get in art sometimes. I quite like the two fish heads print; although I am a bit disappointed with the orange background; that was supposed to be more subtle but I added too much ink on the board. I'm quite glad I made this mistake because it taught me to be really careful about how much ink I should use and it made me realise that when mono-printing you can't control exactly what your work is going to look like. Which is, in some ways, is really exciting and fun for you as an artist but can also make you feel quite nervous about adding to work that you like as they are although but you still need to continue with. I don't feel that the other two pieces were as successful. I don't like the composition of the piece with a bird and a fish on it; I think it looks a bit messy and not well thought out, and I don't think the colours sit right together. I don't like the orange and blue together on the last one either. Although I do like how bold and different it is to the others but there's just something about it that doesn't work for me.    

The next day we had to use inspiration from the shapes/ colours/ lines/ composition from the previous day's work to create two banners. However, during this session we had to include fabric and stitching. I really liked the pinks, vivid blues and dull yellows in one of my pieces but I liked the lines and shapes of the birds so I decided to combine these two elements in my banners. I love the colours together on the banner and I think the background works really nicely compositionally however, I don't think the two banners work well together yet. I think I need to work more into it with the stitching and printing and drawing with line because the two banners seem empty in a busy way. I think all it needs is a bit more work into it and it'll be really nice. I really like the subtle pink stitched bird (although it took me ages!) - it adds interesting texture and detail to the piece - I would like to include more of this in my work.

As I was waiting for the banners to dry when I first painted on the vivid blue ink, I started two other smaller pieces. I'd seen other people using brown paper and newspaper and thought the effect was interesting so I wanted to experiment with it myself. I wanted to keep some of my original work in the piece so I added blue fabric and decided to use the fish head image and mono-printed that on the work in different places and positions to get the feel of our earlier work coming through. I was really pleased this effect but I thought it still looked a bit lacking in colour so I added some red/pink ink to link back again to the original work and stitched on some interesting loose shapes in thread (in dark blue - again selecting a colour from my earlier work). I thought the ink would be quite bright and vivid but it came out quite dull which to begin with I was quite disappointed with but as I carried on I really liked the effect. It made the picture feel aged and almost vintage which I loved. I really like these two pieces; I feel like they have been  very successful because the colours worked really well together, I like the composition, I think the texture is interesting and I love the effect of the mono-print.            

I didn't really think textiles would be something I would be particularly interested in (although I was looking forward to it and I do like lovely patterned cloth) but I found myself really enjoying the week and have ended the week thinking seriously about surface design as an option. I really like that surface design can be quite illustrative and although I still want to specialise in Illustration, I'd love to spent some of my time working on some surface design within Illustration. 

Graphics Workshop

We had a talk from a Graphic Designer today, Jesse Boyce. He's a co-founder in the company Lethal. What was really useful from his talk was him telling us about different ways you can present your CV to show off your skills as a designer. I'd just thought you typed a straight forward CV but he showed us ways in which you can show your style and personality such as adding drawings, interesting layouts, colours, fonts etc. This is something I'd never even considered I could do for my CV so it really opened my eyes. It will really help later on when I am applying for jobs to get me noticed and remembered and then (hopefully!) employed.
I also think his talk showed me that Graphics isn't really the route I want to go down. I enjoyed listening to what he had to say but his kind of work didn't really appeal to me. I thought it was good but I don't think I would like the process. I really want to draw and collage using inks, charcoal, pencil, pencil etc. I'm really not into using the computer at all really. I don't mind using it a little bit and I think it is a good skill to have, definitely, but I'd rather draw. And he said that he mainly worked on the computer.

After the talk we had a a voluntary workshop. I decided to join it because I thought it's a good idea to take all the opportunities you can. The brief was to make the union jack our own. Jesse Boyce talked about how he thought the flag looked like a explosion to him and I liked that idea and thought about ways I could make this more apparent in my flag. I thought about ripped paper and different colours and line in order to try and express that. However, in the end I just felt like my piece was a bit of an imitation of the flag and someone else's idea. I thought it lacked originality and was uninspired. I was left feeling quite disappointed with myself. However, a good thing that came out of this session was that I did some interesting pieces.

I thought this piece was really interesting. I like the way
she's used the diagonal lines of the flag but changed and
added some of the angles and lines. It feels very clean and
colourful.  

My work 

I really like the media that this has been made in. I think it manages
to stay really simple but it's interesting too. I love the depth you
get and it makes you want to touch it and look at it. 

Photography Week

This was a week I was really looking forward to because I've never done photography before; I've taken pictures, of course, but not studied the art of image making. I didn't feel like I really "got" photography so I was also a bit nervous because I just had a feeling I wouldn't be very skilled at it! 

We were introduced to photography by Andy who showed us how to set up a 35 mm S.L.R camera. He taught us how it worked with the mirror and the shutter and told us about the different exposures, aperture and how to focus. We also put film into the cameras following a demonstration by Andy which I really liked because it felt like we ere really getting an idea of how to set up a camera. I liked that it was hands on learning.
After learning about the camera we were allowed to roam free around the college with our camera partner to take photos of anything that was interesting to us. The only rule was to take at least 2 portraits of our partner using a different aperture for each photo. It was really nice being able to go out and take photos although I wasn't really sure exactly what it was that I wanted to take a photo of or what made a good photo so I was a bit nervous but also excited.
After lunch it was Photograms! This was so much fun. I just tried as many different objects in different compositions as I could. I liked using transparent objects such as the glass bowls and plastic bottles because you it didn't get white a completely white silhouette; there was more detailing with these objects which I thought was really interesting and at times really beautiful. I thought this was a really simple, but lovely process and I really enjoyed the whole day.
On the second day we went out into Chesterfield Market to take photos with a digital camera. I found this more difficult and awkward because I was photographing people I didn't know and the set up was random because people moved in way you didn't want or moved so quickly your moment was gone. I felt a bit lost because I was even less sure what I was looking for. And I didn't like using the digital camera as much; it felt too instant and easy and modern. I really liked the process of the 35 mm S.L.R camera; it felt more deep (if that makes sense). I also find that I'm a lot more comfortable taking photos of fewer people or landscapes or nature. So maybe this was a good exercise to take me out of my comfort zone.
When we got back from town we had a session in a computer room to edit our photos in Photoshop.
On the third day we drew with light - this was awesome. So much fun! And I thought the pictures themselves were really interesting and lively; I really like the effect.

After drawing with light, Andy showed us some of the work of Thorsten Brinkmann (http://thorstenbrinkmann.com/) and told us to use this as inspiration for our own work. It was important that all of the body was covered up and that we thought about the poses our model were in and what kind of feel we wanted to give off. We were also supposed to think about props.

Above is my work - I dressed Alice and I wanted to go for a mysterious, perhaps a bit seductive in a bizarre way (hence the jug - was thinking about the stereotypes of milkmaids - and the colours - red = passion and lust, black = mystery and purple = intrigue). This was fun because it was different and odd.

 

Below is me dressed by Alice :)

I have really enjoyed this week. I've loved learning more about photography and it's been a really good week. I feel like we explored a lot of different approaches to photography and I think this was really good because we got the chance to find out what we can do with photography. I don't think I'll specialise in this area but it's been great to have a go at and it's something I'd like to do more of in my free time maybe.