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.

 

Textiles World: Week 4 Weave

This week I have started my second roation of the Construct world- Weave. In order to get ideas abouut composition, colour and line in my weaving I began by making a variety of compositions in my sketchbook using my own drawings and photographs along with contgextual research and snippings of my colour palette and mood board.

 

Task Three: Colour Interpretation and Compositions.

 

Here are a few examples of these compositons focussing on colour, form, line, shape, marks and texture. I think these will be extrememely useful in starting my weave to get ideas of the colour composition texture and types of yarn I want to use. I think to make these more succesful I could do more later on next week or the week after using scanned in imagery of my knit/weave samples to show the relationships I have made between my photographs/drawings/research into these pieces.

Research: Collapse Weave Anne Field.

This book my Anne Field really inspired me through its structure and composition and use of colour and negative space within the weave. The unusual weaving techniques and loose structure seen in this image is something I found rerally interesting and would like to relate my own weaving samples too, taking careful consideration over composition and colour and making use of different yarns to create different lines/marks.
 

Contextualising practice: Challenging preconceptions:The uses of time.

This lecture was focussed on different ways that time can be used in creative ways, along with  the use of history, autobiography and biography (personal histories) as well as speed and slowness as a way of reconsidering "making".

Maxine Bristow.

Bristow opposes the industrial speeds of making and focuses on the slow speed of craft, making all of her work by hand, including thousands of button holes which she stitched herself. This to me shows so much skill and creativity, compared to the industrial process of making something which looks so simple like a button hole. These pieces would not contain so much meaning and emotion if they where done by machine as they do knowing Bristow has spend so many hours making them by hand.

Bristow is also fascinated by textiles being part of this anomalous world- this idea of the slowness of craft compared to industrial processes' speed- what if furnishings like the seats we sit on every day where hand woven? Would this slow down the type of lives we lead?

Heritage and tradition in fashion.

Tradition in relation to fashion - timeless pieces? Continuity versus change. Is tradition a living thing? Could it be a way of thinking rather than an actual object? Basis of tradition within fashion - does it go anchor this idea of fashion being constantly changing? 

Although the idea of heritage and tradition does make us think that it is going against modern fashion and being much more about continuity- but is it? Although garments being made by companies such as Pringle which is all about this heritage and traditional pieces, if we where to compare the garments being made right now to ones back when the company first opened- they would probably be very different, so is it really going against this basis of fashion being future forward? 

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. 

Textiles World: Week 3

 This week within knit my main focus has been developing in sampling aswell as sketchbook work. After getting much more for a feel for colour and line in my samples, I created a variety of samples using different techniques inspired by my visual imagery ( research, photographs and drawings).

 

Knit Sampling:

E wrap technique.

 

E wrap technique.

 

Two different yarns.

 

E Wrap with wire.

 

Looking over the samples I hae done this week I think they have overall been succesful. I like the E wrap technique samples especially as I like the patterns and lines that are made with this technique especially with the wire. I feel like these different techniques could be developed so much further if given the time or if I was ever to do knit again in the future.

 

Progression into weave:

Now that I have my colour palette as reference along with an idea in my head of what look I am trying to get across in my sampling I am ready and looking forward to transferring my ideas over to Weaving. I think that my colours, lines and structure ideas work really well within the weaving process.

 

Contextualising Practice: recording, exploring and communicating.

This lecture was based on the status that drawing, photography and other forms of recording have in relation to the finished work of the designer. How does this recording affect their final outcomes? We also focussed on the way that designers communicate their ideas. 

The design process can be seen to have 2 sectors:
 Public and Private.

Private sector: Recording and Exploring.

Public Sector: Communicating. 

Drawing was the main focus of this lecture as a type of recording:

There are many different types of drawing/mapping/recording.

Christy Brown.

Brown uses drawing to create environment which has his sense of claustrophobia, which produces these strange sculptures as an outcome. This is an example of how drawing can shape the output of the designer.  

Observational Drawing: trying to explore and engage with the world around us, a slow and considered process.

Michael Taussig "I swear i saw this."
Taussig the anthropologist wanted to make a note of something which he help witness too, so decided to start creating observational drawings whenever he came across something of interest to him or something to do with his work. This shows this relationship between memory and drawing.

Photography: different from observational drawing. It is much quicker, almost instant. But does it lack the exploring and engaging with the world around us?

Could we reconfigure the design process?
Instead of the early stages of design- the recording and exploring- being private could these be public?
For example private sketchbooks being exhibited with the final outcome or these being the final outcome in themselves. 
The relationship between drawing and writing could be investigated through these sketchbooks being presented. Could a drawing extend from the sketchbook off the page and onto the wall in an installation type exhibit?

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.