Drawing development.

This week I have been focussing a lot on developing my drawings for this project, to give me more ideas and inspiration too push me further through this project and develop my samples. Inspired by imagery I found from contextual references and on pinterest, i have been drawing from maps and my routes taken on journeys. I think that by drawing using techniques I have never explored before until workshops in this sampling unit has definitely made my drawings more successful and given me more too work from in terms of samples. 

Textiles World 2: Embroidery.

This first week in embroidery focus has been on drawing in different and unusual ways to create new exciting and interesting drawings for this unit. From a drawing workshop focussed on drawing spirals in uncomfortable conditions, in a continuous line with each like 3mm apart- too mark making with materials like kitchen scourers and fuse terminals.

These workshops have been really useful, educational and inspiring to the way of working and thinking.In future, I will take a different approach to my traditional drawing techniques, pushing myself out of my comfort zone and setting myself tasks, as this creates much more interesting and unusual drawings, with unusual lines and textures as produced in this weeks workshops.



Spiral drawing made by using an oil bar resist technique, stood over a table.



Spiral drawing done with ruler meausing precisely 3mm in between lines, stood over table.

 

Mark making "map drawing" focussed on line quality and negative space in maps.

 



Feedback Week: Task One.

During this feedback week, we have been set two tasks to complete whilst not in any workshops or tutorials which will enable us to move on from our origins unit and progress into our new unit: Sampling.

Task one:

The aim of the first task set was to develop different ways of communicating imformation and ideas by visiting a musuem or gallery and during the visit ,aswell as looking at and recording the information seen, notice, observe and find ways to record some of the less obvious aspects of going to a gallery or a museum.

Mapping and Measuring are two words given to us as starting points, the focus was on noticing everything about how you make your journey, move around the space in the museum or gallery and how your eyes move around a piece of work or an object.
In response to this task, I decided that before my trip, I would plan out the route I would be taking from my house to the Manchester City Art Gallery. I did this by going on google maps and getting the route highlighted on the map, i worked from these images and parts of the map to create drawings of my route focussing on line and marks on the map in large and small sections.

As well as this, whilst at the Art gallery, I did some observational drawing of my journey through the gallery and also of the work which I looked at in the exhibits making notes on what I thought about the pieces of work and mapping the layout of the exhibit.

Overall, I think that in terms of the successfulness of this task, I think that the initial mapping and route planning which I did before my journey have created much more interesting pieces which I could develop much further with more drawings and also in embroidery samples. Although I enjoyed taking notes and making the observational drawings within the gallery space itself I think that i should have spent more time drawing the path i took through the gallery rather than focussing on the different pieces I saw, as these drawings and notes are not as interesting in my opinion as the route drawings.

Friday Drawing Day: Deconstruct/Reconstruct.

Todays drawing day was focussed on mark making and assemblage techniques making use of a fragmented 3 dimensional object (a kinder egg) in order to create a series of 2 dimensional, 2 dimensional and spacial drawings. 

Part One: Mark Making.

This part of the drawing day was all about making a series of drawings by creating  marks with only your 3 dimensional object by deconstructing it and creating drawing tools along with different black and white media such as ink, charcoal and paint. 

Mark making like this is something which I have done before and I always enjoy it, I love experimenting in many different ways to create so many different and unusual marks. I think that on the page this variety of different marks look very sensitive and unusual. 

Part Two: Assemblage. 

Part two of today was about using only the fragments from the deconstructed 3 dimension object to create a 3D drawing or a series of drawings using assembly techniques to connect the components and rebuild the object/object to produce new structures and surfaces.

I decided to make this 3D drawing my drawing out the different pieces of the 3 dimensional drawings inspired by the work of one of the artists we were shown during the presentation of the brief, who drew the many different pieces of 3D objects like a camera. Although I like this piece, I think that I struggled to get my head around what exactly this task was asking us to do which is why i only had the time to do one as it took me a while to figure it out. I think if i had the time to do it again I would be more experimental in approaching the task in actually making a 3 Dimensional drawing.

Friday Drawing Day: Narrative Through Objects.

This weeks drawing day was about sentimental objects and drawing the narrative that comes with them. The object that I chose to draw was an angraved mirror given to me as a gift for my 18th birthday.

 

Here are a few of my favourite drawings which I completed during today:

 

 

I really liked this drawing day due to it being sop personal and the sentimental value we were trying to narrate through the drawing. This is why text appears a lot in my drawings as i wanted to try to express the way the object that I was drawing made me feel or the emotions/words i associate with that particular object. I used a variety of media which allowed me to create a variety of different marks and textures in the lines I drew and I also dreq on a variety of different collected papers to give the drawings this old, sentimental feeling in addition to the drawing made on them.

 

Drawing Day: Image and cut up.

Todays drawing day was all about collage and narrative, it was split into two tasks:

Task One: Collage from observation.

In this task we were asked to make some templates of shoes which we brought in and other peoples shoes which where then used to collage onto using a variety of different papers.

In my collages (shown above) i wanted to focus on texture,detail and form within the shoes I was representing. I'm quite happy with my pieces as I like the way the paper that i have collaged onto the templates looks and adds a depth and texture to the piece. If i was to do these again I think I would spend more time making much more detailed pieces maybe of part of the shoe rather than the whole shoe. 

Task Two: Pattern and/or composition development. 

From these collaged templates, we were then asked to use collage techniques to "abstract" these collaged pieces. The focus was on shapes and combinations of colour which we liked in our pieces then arrange them to create compositions. These could focus on pattern, narrative, repetition and where focussed on exploring space on the page considering negative space.

I think that this drawing day has been informative and useful to me within my practice. I have never experienced using collage in this way and I enjoyed having the chance to create narrative through composition and collage. I think these skills will transfer through to my work in the origins unit in my textiles world: Construct when i am composing imagery and text in my sketchbook swell as in samples. I think I am becoming more aware of being aware of composition and the way it can change a piece so dramatically. Also, negative space is really important in things like this, as they are in my samples within construct. 

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: 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. 

Drawing in the studio.

Object Drawing.

"Make a compositon and draw it."

Alongside my chance card drawings which i have been working on from the photographs taken during the map the city task, I have been doing some still life drawing of objects given to us during studio practice.

I think that by doing these compositional drawings of drawings given to me, I learnt a lot about composition and still life drawing, which I have never had chance to do a lot of in the past. I really like some of the different lines and shapes I have made in representation of the object itself and the different types of media
I have used. In comparison to my other drawings I have been doing from the photographs I took in Manchester city centre, I don't think that these are quite as succesful despite me enjoying doing them. I feel that the photographs I have got will allow me to develop and expand ideas through my textiles world, whereas I don't feel like I could do much expansion from these object drawings.

Chance card drawings.

From the photo's taken around Manchester city centre earlier in the week, I have responded to these images by drawing in different ways instructed by 16 chance cards I was given in the launch of this project. These chance cards included tasks such as: " make a drawing onto a sheet of folded paper" , "make a cut paper drawing" , "make a light drawing on a dark background" and "make a drawing using only 20 lines". These where left to the individual to interpret the instruction in whichever way they felt best. 

These are just a few of the drawings i have completed in response to these 16 chance cards:

Make a drawing using dust:

Using the dust of a white compressed charcoal stick and my fingers, I created a drawing inspired by the windows, glass and lines of the new school of art building. I love the overall look and feel of this drawing and the way it isn't a direct representation of the image it was inspired by it is much more abstract and focussed on the actual marks and textures made using this technique.

Make a drawing using indian ink and different sized brushes:

Inspired by the lines and angles of this image captured of a building in Manchester, using black Indian ink and various sized paint brushes I drew a representational image of the building. I really like the three dimensional look of the drawing and the way the ink with the various sized brushes has varied the lines or brush strokes and created different textures and marks on the paper. I also find the repetitive lines really interesting. This chance card could be developed in a really interesting way if given the time experimenting with the different marks that could be made inspired by different imagery.

Make a folded paper drawing:

By folding my piece of cartridge paper into squares and ensuring the folds where really clean and crisp, when folded back out i was able to make a drawing using a charcoal stick and rubbing it over these folded lines. I was again inspired by the lines and marks of the windows of buildings in this drawing. I particularly like the way when pressing a bit harder on the charcoal stick there are darker areas of lines against the white background.

Make a drawing from shadows:

When taking this photograph in the northern quarter, Manchester, i wanted to capture the shadows of the steps on the building as I thought they where really interesting. So for the " make a drawing from shadows" chance card i decided to cry and create these marks of the shadows on paper. I used a scouring pad dipped in Indian ink to create the unusual marked lines. I find the marks made with this technique have worked really well and the overall composition and idea of the drawing a success. If I was to develop this idea, I would definitely be more aware of trying to capture shadows by camera in unusual ways to then draw and work from.

Make a drawing on layered sheets of transparent papers:

Working from a variety of different photographs which i captures around Manchester centre, i created drawings on various different pieces of tracing paper and then overlaid these in a certain way to create an interesting layered drawing and composition. I really like the way this works and the way the drawings overlay yet fit together. The overlaying and drawing has created some interesting marks and lines which i always find very interesting in my work.

Make a drawing on a found or ready made object:

This piece was created by laying my paper onto a textured surface in the art studio and sketching over the paper gently in lines with a pencil. the grooves and marks of the surface are then captured in the drawing creating lovely edges and marks.