Locating- Week 7

I was quite pleased overall with the samples that I created in the print room this week. They all turned out quite well although one of them that I added iridescent foil to did not come out as well as I had hoped. I think this was because the lines I used for my motif were not as thick as they should have been. Next time I get a screen developed I will ensure that my motifs are thick enough. My favourite sample that I created was a one that I added white flock to. I have decided to enter this sample into the combined processes section of the Bradford textiles competition. For this I have created a board including my main sample and an image of my design in situ. Here are some images from the print room and of my Bradford combined process sample.

Reflection- Creating Our Fabric

We decided to create our own fabric from scratch. First spraying it with silver spray paint to give it a unique shiny feel. After this we all used it like a big canvas. Each of us putting our own individual marks onto the fabric. Using brusho, paints, crayons and inks we created a full length piece of fabric we were using as the base of our shirt fabric. I was really pleased with how our fabric turned out when we draped it on the mannequin. Because i feel that there was a time after creating the fabric where all 3 of us thought we had ruined it. After printing our fabrics and then creating our large one we cut out diamond shapes and appliquéd them onto the fabric in certain places where we thought they fit with our engineered prints. 

Reflection- Sampling

Before we created our final fabric we had to create lots of fabric samples so we knew what it was going to come out like.  These are samples that i created using brusho. It was quite hard to achieve the same effect twice using brusho so each sample i created looked different. But by creating so many it gave us an idea of what we could create for our final piece of fabric. 

These are the fabrics that we had already sourced for our project 

PE Task 2

I started my project by gathering lots of visual research, not only from textile artists but also looking at gallery artists and designers. By gathering this visual research it helped me create my body of drawing work that would inspire my embroidery samples. Throughout this project I decided not to narrow my options down to one topic or theme. I continued to look at all of the visual research I had gathered and use the imagery or themes that inspired me most to influence my embroidery work. The main themes that I drew my inspirations from where graphs and charts that showed data, constellations and block lines influenced by the work of Tom Hackney and Mondrian.

One artist that I was particularly inspired by was Emma McNally. I think what first struck me most about her work was that it was all black and white. I thought that this was quite striking because I'm always more attracted to black and white work than coloured pieces. I also knew that I needed to keep a neutral colour palette for this project so I thought her work would be perfect for me to draw inspiration from.

I found this piece of artwork by her really inspiring because its based on constellations which I had already been researching before I had looked at her. What I found really interesting about this piece was how some of the white in the drawing is so crisp and clear and the other white is soft and blurry. I think the contrast between this crisp and soft white on such a dark and deep background creates so much depth within the piece that makes me want to keep looking at it further.

Whilst researching graphs and data I looked at different ways of gathering and collecting data and one person that really caught my eye was Etienne-Jules Marey. He was a scientist, physiologist and chronophotographer. He captured movement by taking and recording consecutive photographs. I found his work so interesting by the shapes he has captured through his photography showing the clear steps of movement that we over look until we see this broken down into steps.

Another theme that inspired me whilst researching data was the use and importance of straight lines to depict so many different things. I think my initial spark for this inspiration was looing at bar charts and line graphs but this led me to look at artists who used lines and blocks in their work. I first looked at the work of Tom Hackney who created his pieces based upon chessboard and moves made throughout a chess game. His work then reminded me of the Artist Mondrian who based his artwork on aerial views of the streets of New York city. I find both of these concepts very interesting and they inspired me to create embroidery samples incorporating stitches of different size, width and length lines to create patterns.

Tom Hackney

Mondrian