Drawing day: placement and composition.

Today's drawing session was based on getting a sense of composition and placement within our drawings, with focus of negative and positive space along with making composition out of objects. The objects we where asked to bring in where two pairs of our own shoes, which we drew both singular along with in compositions with other peoples shoes. We were given different instructions to draw in response too when looking at these shoes, such as a l minute continuous line drawing, drawing from touching the shoes with eyes closed or drawing the negative space with gouache.

Drawing from touch. eyes closed.

Continuous line drawing, 3 minutes.

Negative space with gouache.

Composition drawing, 5 minutes.

These 4 drawings are some of my favourite pieces from the drawing session. Overall, I found this day really informative and interesting. I liked the way we were instructed to do certain instructions within a short time frame, as it made me focus on the quickness of drawing something and helped me to not be too precious about my drawings which I sometimes am. Although drawing shoes isn't something ill probably progress with again, it is the concept of compositional drawing and drawing certain objects which I definitely will develop within my own work like my drawings I'll be developing alongside my textiles world unit. 

Textiles World Week 2

This week in my textiles world : construct (knit rotation) I have been focussing on getting together a colour palette from my images and drawings and also getting more contextual research to inspire my knit samples and weave later on. I think that getting this colour palette is really important in any project, as it gives a focus and constraint in a way to the project, rather than the work being hundreds of different colours and shades. 

Task One: Mood Board.

To get an idea of colour, line, surface and texture i put a mood board together using a few of my favourite image relating to how I would like to develop my knit work. This task has definitely helped me to realise that my knit should be focussed on composition and making lines/squares within the knit itself using colour and texture to represent the lines, structure and architecture in most of my drawings and photography.

Task Two: Colour Palette. 

As a development from my mood board, I was then asked to use parts of this to make interesting compositions with a variety of colours/shades in which i then painted out into squares. I also added a few bits of yarn in some places which i thought matched some of the colours in these, however i think that i should have thought more about the texture and quality of the wool and wether it would represent what i would like in my knitting and weaving. For example wool is quite fluffy and course, so probably won't represent the clean lines of the architectural drawings/photographs I will be working from.

From these compositions and painted colours i then painted out a number of squares of colour to show the kind of colours I  will be working with in my construct project. This will be a great reference when choosing yarns to knit or weave with along with my mood board, drawings and photographs, and should ensure that my colours aren't all over the place within this project. 

Drawing Day: Colour Task

This weeks drawing day was focussed on colour and mixing colours. 

By having an activity like this to do, I think I have learnt a lot more than I previously knew about colour and mixing colours sensitively and slowly to get so many different shades and tones. These skills will definitely assist me in my textile world development work and development in my drawings, by introducing a colour palette my work will be based on.

Textiles world: construct.

After a meeting and review with tutors regarding the drawings I have been doing in response to the 16 chance cards and my own photographs in these first few weeks of the course, we agreed that the textiles world I will be most suited too is construct- knit and weave. I have always been very interested and intrigued with knit and weave as practices within Textiles, and i think that my drawings show this, through the use of lines, colour, structure and repetition within them. 

First Rotation: Knit.

As we have been split into two groups within construct, my fist 3 weeks will be spent on Knit. although i have done a bit of knitting by both hand and domestic machine before at Art Foundation level, I'm looking forward to refreshing and updating my skills within knit and learning many more techniques and experimenting with these for my origins unit of work. 

This first week we have been focussing on getting familiar with the basics of knitting and learning a few techniques such as casting on, plain knit, tension stripes and knitting with two yarns. These technical samples will be placed in a technical file alongside details of the technique, tension and yarn type so that i can remember how to do things in the future if i ever came back to knit. 

Initial Research.

Faster By Mark Fast.

This collection by Mark Fast really caught my eye when i saw it, as i really like the way in which the garments are structural and focussed on the form of the body. The tight fit of the knit makes it stretch over the body and i love the way the spaces in the knit allow us to see through the structure. In a way they are almost skeletal.  I think this work caught my eye because my drawings are very focussed on line and structure and mark making in medias like black ink, charcoal sticks, pencil and fine liner pen, so i think that my work within construct will be focussed on this idea of architecture, form and repeating line. Wether these will be focussed on Fashion I'm not entirely sure. 

Jessica Gore "Don't pull a loose thread."

Installation work like this has always interested me and inspired my work, the concept of this piece being accidental yet creating such an interesting piece is what makes it so appealing to me. In terms of structure again, the loops and the gaps alongside the tightly knitted sections work really well and i think the idea of having ladders/dropped stitches in my samples would work really well alongside my drawings and photographs as they could represent things like the glass windows against the concrete greys/blacks of the buildings. 

Initial knit techniques.

Here are a few examples of a few pieces of knit using different techniques I have done while learning some techniques this week. I think that these will work really well when I develop my work next week thinking more about colour and relating to my drawings and photographs I did at the start of my origins unit.