Self Initiated, Simplifying

Layering imagery and mark making

 

This week with my self initiated project I have been continuing to make my work more abstract, focusing more on layering textures and colour. To start more my paintings more abstract I have been cutting and sticking my paintings in different ways, so they are not recognisable. This I feel works well as it is then more about texture and colour than flowers. This I will continue with this week, but also need to simplify my imagery without loosing too much detail but enough to be able to translate into knit. 



Layering imagery and painting on top

The image below I find works well as it is busy enough that you can see it comes from my work but simplified so I can pull out techniques that may be relevant to use on the knit machines.

Layering imagery

Self Initiated, Development

stage 1 of painting

I decided to show some simple steps of a painting to understand how I would translate my paintings into knit. the image above is more simple, consisting of shades of red yellow, this I can knit using plating, hold or dropstitch to achieve the blend of colour, I could even dye my yarn so the colours do blend then use the techniques mentioned also. 

Stage 2 of painting

To achieve the next layer I can either foil, heat transfer, or using techniques on the machine, e wrap, plate, I can use multiple techniques to layer up texture to capture the chaos within my images. 

Stage 3 of painting

For the final stage of adding dark bold marks, This can be embroidery, foil, e wrap, or heat transfer, to add the dark details.

Self initiated, Development

For the self initiated project, I have been struggling to translate my painting into knit. Carrying through with the concept of chaos. I feel that I need to make my paintings even more abstract, Focusing on layering of textures and marks. It was suggested during tutorial that using heat transfer or other means of dying to get the distorted and blend of colour. This can be the base layer of colour but can use plating and drop stitch to create shapes and distort the knit. On the top of this I can work into with foiling beading and some way of layer dark bold lines.

Photoshop edit of layering images

Self Initiated, Developed

With the paintings I have produced I really like all the colours and dark marks, I find that I need to exaggerate the marks so that I can translate them into knit techniques. And also refine my colour pallet.

I want my knits to have a lot of layers as within my paintings, layering of marks is very clear. Also I think that building up techniques will portray chaos, rather than my knits being flat. I feel that I need to do some drawings more simple to show some more basic shapes that I can make on the machine. Also establish what marks I want to layer on and how, this will require testing out different ways on adding texture and detail. I will try out embroidery, beading and foiling.

Refined colour pallet

This week I have tried to refine my colour pallet, so it has not got every shade of every colour. but has a selected choice from my imagery.

Self Initiated, Floral Chaos

Full image of oil pastel flowers 

Continuing this week with working in a more abstract way, carrying on with oil pastels, watercolours and acrylic. I am finding that my work is still looking very literally like flowers, though this is not a bad thing I do not want my knits to be prints of flowers. So have decided to look more into my paintings finding what it is within them that I like most, and found that is is the expressive mark and dark bold colours against the colours. So Zoomed into a few of my paintings and this I found shows more expression and more obvious marks, which I could translate into knit.

Zoomed in section of above image

Below again is another imaged of a zoomed in section of my work. I really like the bold marks and think this will be a key feature within my work and has also been something that appeared in my previous project. I think that all the marks layered up is very interesting so maybe this would be good when translating into knit, that there is a lot layers to my knits, building up different techniques.

Zoomed in section

Locating, Self initiated

Original photos, Capturing chaos

For my self initiated project my concept will be Chaos, this concept will allow me to explore my starting point with a different approach. Making my work look very experimental and expressive.

The starting point for collecting visual research will be flowers. This I find will be best as it will allow for a lot of colour. I will take this unit into a very abstract style as this is what I most enjoy.

Start of unit paintings 

These are a few images of how I have started to interpret my imagery. Painting in a way that is not very literal. This allows me to focus more on colour and marks. The image above I feel is too toned down and is not capturing chaos very well. The image below I find is capturing chaos more, due to the bold linear qualities, and bright colours. I find that working in this more abstract way is what I enjoy most, so will push this more forward.

Start of unit oil pastel