L5 Inspirations

During the first group critique back from summer. Discussing each others work I found was very exciting to see what everyone had chosen to start with and also very useful in terms of being able to continue with new ideas.

Acrylic of St Ives

Other students during the critique suggested to establish a colour pallet, though there is one continuing through my work, just to really pull out colours from my imagery. As some of the colours of really beautiful and rich. It was also suggested to continue doing more paintings in the style I have using Acrylic, though shall do that but will also try this style with Goache to see how that works too.

Watercolour of Rivington

Layered fabric on above 

What I found most useful was that they noticed that to translate these paintings into Knit it may be difficult as they aren't very textured, so to make a start on getting my mind into knit, I feel I need to capture some textured quality from my paintings and imagery, so that this process will become easier and more affective. This I think will be really interesting as there is a lot of textures in my imagery and paintings that with a view finder could work really nicely. I am thinking that my work will good in knit as I will be able to create big chunky constructions with knit to recreate the wave affect. I feel that the style I want to achieve will look best slightly larger, as artists that I have been researching have all be work on large scale for example paintings being bigger brush strokes.

Layers of plastics and fabrics 

Close up of above 

An example of what I was told was working well was the acrylic paintings and recently had started trying to recreate some textures a little more three dimensional using plastics and layer up materials. This other students had said was working well and had potential. I was experimenting with this idea as I'm wanting to create very textural work for this topic as focusing on water/ waves etc.

L5 summer

L5

Erin Fitzhugh Gregory

During my research over the summer, I have found myself being interested in documenting what I see as a whole landscape as oppose to restricting myself starting with objects.  I have always wanted to practice the skill of painting landscapes and feel this is the ideal opportunity with going on holidays and seeing some beautiful places. These two artist I have posted are two different style though similar in some ways, like the thick strokes of colour, though one obviously bolder. This style I have always enjoyed so have been painting a few landscapes of my own like this, trying to capture the colours as accurately as possible.

Susan Schiesser

As I have been painting in this style I feel as though it may look even more exciting on a larger scale, closer to the amazement of the large sea.

During my holiday in Cornwall, looking at the sea is amazing and all the colours of the water. This is something that I think could be captured beautifully. Also whiles looking around in many galleries their, there was many different styles of paintings all of the beaches and seas, all interpreted in different ways.

Unit X Post 3

Wires from Blackpool Illuminations 

When creating my samples for weave I wanted to create something very bold and with block colours. Then I came across artist Wayne Thiebaud, who inspired me with his bright and colourful painting. Within his paintings you can extract stripe qualities, I find that this work fits well within my own work, so concluded that painting or interpreting things in this style has been very useful.

Wayne Thiebaud

Below illustrates the way in which I cut my photos into stripes and organised them to make patterns, I feel that doing this was very useful, as it created a vivid image in my head of how I could translate my photos into patterns within my weave.

During the many weeks of unit x, weave as a group have had many tutorials and critiques, to help us look at our work and see what is working well and not so well for everyone. I really feel that these have been useful, I think that sometimes within my work and I can get caught up in what I am doing, and ignore some of the elements that have been working well at the beginning. Therefore these tutorials and critiques help me to look at my work as a whole, and see what links I can make from the start of the unit to were I am currently working.

Striped Photos 

During this unit I came across a hurdle, as I was not achieving the look that I was hoping for, so I took a trip to Maplins and purchased some thick bold wires, finding that when I brought these into my work I was gaining the bold statement that I had hoped for. Though when I started to do this, I soon realised that my work and techniques were looking very similar to Artist Designer Elizabeth Ashdown, with the hooped thick threads though my weft. So to move away from this, I brought back in some of the old techniques that I had used on my older samples, which captured the marks and textures from my photos from Blackpool, such as the 'warp rib' technique, capturing the circular marks within my photos of light bulbs. Bringing these techniques into my work, rather than getting carried away with what looks pleasing to the eye, brought the meaning and everything from the start of the unit back to the final samples. 

A Final Weave Sample

During Unit X, I believe that I have gained a good understanding and knowledge of weaving. I have enjoyed the unit overall, though I feel that my starting point was not amazing, and focusing on wires did not really give me a good bases to collect drawn research from, so I could of done with looking at everything from a different perspective, such as drawing in a larger scale and cutting the detail marks from these. I really enjoyed my chosen colour scheme, as I think it is very bold and vibrant, I found this very fun to work with. 

If I was to start this brief again, I would  go out and collect more research, as I really feel like this is what has let me down. I still have many ideas to continue this topic on,  and have lots of things to experiment with when weaving. For example,  even thicker wires and bolder colours in my pallet, I also think it would be interesting to make my own wire by adding thread to them on the sewing machine. This would make the wires themselves more colourful and interesting,  rather than them being just a single plain colour. I think this technique for me has a lot of potential, which I feel very positive about.

A Final Weave sample

Due to the fresh look of my samples, I feel that they would be best suited for interior, preferably in a kitchen, as they are very clean and vibrant looking. The samples I have created, I do not feel, shout out a particular area of context, though if in the right use could be used as fashion, or perhaps fashion accessories and garment edging.

Unit X Post 2

After being many places and gathering research to start my project, I first started to create my colour palette, I find this helpful as a starting point, and at this time we were starting to think about warp designs, so thinking of a colour scheme was a good idea as this helped me in the decision process. 

Colour Pallet  

The quality that really enticed me to this area was the chaos which was of all the wires tangled together, but yet the order in the block colours of the cords themselves. I found it very hard to translate my photos into drawings focusing on texture, and then to translate this to weave, but did what I could and found that actually slicing up the photos into strips really helped, and taking the qualities directly out and onto the loom. I felt that I did really struggle with the drawing in my sketchbook but found it easier drawing with the weaving. 

Wires from Blackpool Illuminations 

I really liked the order within my work, and this structure came through in my drawings too. I had started weaving and leaving strands as I liked the effect of this and it reminded me of typical passementerie, but this is not what my work was about, so I moved away from this and thought a more controlled and considered edge said more about my work and style. I thought of having tassels but cut very sharp and straight, however when playing around with ideas I found that I much preferred having a continuous pattern running through my weave and having the wires appearing through, creating something lovely outside the weave, a continuous pattern.

I wanted to capture the chaotic nature of the piles of wire through my choice of yarns, so using a flat and slightly shimmery yarns, and incorporating wires in my own work. I have been using these methods, but have not been seeing the results I had hoped for. My samples are more toned down than they should be, and the wires seemed to be too thin and fragile for what I was tying to achieve. Also a few of my samples were looking too similar to tea towels, due to the lack of stability in them and the softness of the yarns. So I needed to get thicker wires, and some bolder, more vibrant yarns, and avoid the typical checks. 

Lights within the illuminations

Simple translation for weaving the pattern

Here I am showing how I have continued to translate the research I had gathered at the beginning of the project, these sorts of  marks I have brought into my weaving create very structured pieces, taking into consideration the linear marks both vertical and horizontal.

Warp Decision Making

When deciding on what warp to make, I wanted to go with colours that were within my colour pallet, these were all mostly vibrant colours, but I wanted to achieve a less saturated look, so I selected more toned down versions of my original colours. This meant that I could experiment with brighter colours in my weft, and not be overwhelmed by the brightness of the warp. So far with my weaving it has been successful, but I am certainly finding out what I like the look of and what I do not. I am finding the method very time consuming as I have been used of knitting, and find that with knitting you can produce samples very quickly, but with weaving, not so much. This is good as it means planning out what you are going to do next is more important, as it is going to take time, but I am finding that if something is not going well, I am not fast enough at it that I can get enough samples done, and refine them.

Unit X Whitworth

When visiting the Whitworth gallery in Manchester, we was to focus on the portrait exhibition and focus on textures. I thought there was many different variations of mark making, some more effective than others. I particularly like the painting below and the marks were very expressive and dramatic, but from a distance this all fades away and looks very smooth. 

Though I did love the more talented detailed pieces, this painting below really caught my eye, The bold shaped and bright colours. this I realised was a quality that I wanted within my own work, Bright and vibrant that catches eyes. 

From the Whitworth gallery I documented the marks made within the art there and have used it within my own work. 

Unit X Week 1

Blackpool Beach

During the first week of Unit X we have been set to go to archives. Tuesday we took a trip to Blackpool and visited the sea front, the big disco ball sculpture and the illuminations centre where the illumination sculptures were designed and made. Out of this trip I did not really have a good idea about what to actually focus my work of, but was most interested in the wires at the illuminations, I was fascinated by how hectic the wires were and how many bundles of them there was, all very colourful and all tangles together.

Silk Museum

Also during this week we had the opportunity to visit the Macclesfield silk museum. This was really interesting, fascinating seeing a mill as it was when it was in use. I thought it was good to see how big the machines where and how much they have changed today. It also helped me to understand weave a little more as when we went to look their, I had not actually done any weaving yet. 

Wires from Blackpool Illuminations 

As the wires mostly interested me from the illuminations, I am going along with the bright flat colours similar to these, so thought as I can not get amazing drawings from these, I could look at other things relating to the bright colourfulness of Blackpool like the sweets and tack.

PE Task 2

Overall I have thoroughly Enjoyed the Sampling unit, I have enjoyed experimenting with new techniques and ideas.I feel that during the sampling unit that the context of my work has been more visible and the artists I have looked at have helped me work in a more professional way, provoking new ideas.

Final Sample for Mixed Media 

     

    

Anne Kyyro Quinn

During Mixed Media I was focusing on natural things like flowers which I collected images of from the Manchester Museum during feedback week. During these three weeks I wanted to achieve something that was not too three-dimensional but had relief. Artist Anne Kyyro Quinn inspired me along with Artist Giles Miller as there work is very neural colours and there work seems to be mostly made up from the same pattern/ shape but repeated. I wanted to capture this within my own work and feel that this has worked because from one single image of a daisy I have created something that can repeat. I thought that working with the laser cutter was very time consuming and had problems with that my design was to detailed and became very fragile when cut out.

Final Collection for Print 

  

Kim Parker

During my time in print I was again focusing on flowers, but in a a completely different way. I really enjoyed print, more than I thought I would, I learnt a lot of new techniques I did not know about and feel it has a lot of potential, like working into the prints afterwords with other areas of textiles for example embroidery. During this rotation I was working with my prints in mind to be for interior. I was particularly looking at artist Kim Parker as I liked the composition of her work, it is very spaced out motifs, I really liked this and can see the link between this and my own prints. During print I did not have many problems, I managed to get the hand of the process well though found it tricky when mixing my colours. Some of the colours I mixed did not show up in my fabric very clear and others were too bold, so this is something I would need to be aware of next time.

Final Samples for Knit 

Hannah Buswell 

For the last week of Sampling we where able to choose what area to go back into, I chose Knit and have really enjoyed it. I took a different direction for this as I felt I had out done the flowers and needed something new to work with. I focused on 'Street Beat' and with my photos I have been making block colours with intarsia mostly, on the domestic machines. I have been working with the idea for my work to be wall hangings on a larger scale, but have taken influence from designer Hannah Buswell who's fashion pieces are very bold, using very bright colours. One thing during this three weeks that I have found tricky is using thinner yarns, I wanted to create a look of translucency but due to not being able to manage the thin yarns or even thin wires I could not get the desired effect.