Unit X | Research and Artist Inspiration

After mind-mapping ideas and doing further research, we decided to use bandages, rope and drape of fabric used in martial arts uniform as a starting point. Bandages are regularly used in several martial arts to wrap around the wrists and ankles for support. Rope is used in a similar way in the underground, illegal side Muay Thai - a form of Thai kickboxing. I think that this is an interesting idea to develop into drawings.
Furthermore, James Long uses different yarns together in order to create their own fabrics, so making our own ropes from various materials could be a good direction to go in.
I began my visual research by taking photographs of loose and wrapped bandages.

During our tutorial with Tom, he said that they do not want us using digital print during this unit. My specialism is digital print so this obviously put me a little out of my comfort zone. Nevertheless I have experience of screen print and I know all of the processes. At first it was daunting but as I develop my ideas with the intention of being screen printed I am more excited to be going into the print room, especially to dye all of my own fabrics.

My group have made a joint Pinterest board so that we can easily share our ideas and show each other what we're pinning. Link is here. While researching I found various artists that caught my eye. They all have a parallel line drawn element to their work which I think would work really well with the bandage concept. These inspirations will also make it easy to keep with the black and white colour palette of our collection.