Drawing and Contextual Research

This week I started drawing from the photographs I collected over summer. I like how the drawings have turned out however I want to create a larger library of work that I can keep developing all the way through. 

Below are two images that originally are separate drawings, however I then took them into Photoshop to edit them together. I have found that taking my drawings into photoshop allows me to enhance them without losing the textural quality they have.

I personally like the contrast of the messy distorted drawing with the clean and precise lines of the black and white image. Pairing these together relates to my concept as before something is distorted by glass it appears clear and detailed.
I have always liked collaging as a creative direction and I love experimenting with placement and layering of images. I took to Pinterest to find some more inspiration from artists, but also from designers so that I can get a sense of where these types of prints might fit contextually.

I am very fond of the work of Tracie Cheng. She places thin and detailed line drawings on top of rustic painterly backgrounds, which I think works perfectly. I want to experiment with layering in this way with my drawings.
I also found these garments from Clover Canyon. The reason I like these is because the black and white lines and geometric shapes are placed with much more graphic and colourful images. Again I want to experiment with this in my work and also play around with colour.
In terms of contextual direction, I aim to design garments for High Street consumption. I'd like to design for this market because I like the idea of creating something that can be worn in everyday lives and isn't over expensive.

Summer Work 2015

One of our tasks for this summer was to come up with a concept/theme to start working from. I found an artist called Russell Tomlin. He is a photographer who is fascinated by water in its different forms. Particularly flowing water.

Russell's work inspired me to think about distortion as a theme. I further researched the topic and took a liking to distortion through glass, as it is unpredictable and unusual. I feel I could take this concept into different directions throughout the project and create very different prints and designs using the same visual research.

As part of my summer work I teamed up with my friend Lucy Fraser (@lucyfraserart : Instagram) who attends Northumbria University, on a collaborative photography project. Taking pictures of everyday objects through a shaped glass provided us with distorted imagery to work with. I really like the photographs, in particular the most abstract ones.

These are some of our photographs inspired by Russell Tomlin.

We also took inspiration from Kalliope Amorphous who distorts images of people.

Researching artists before we took photographs allowed us to plan what we wanted to achieve during the shoot, which made it more succesful overall.

We generated a vast amount of photography to use as visual inspiration in the coming project. One possibility to explore is to take my research in two directions, into faces and also into abstract shapes. I think it will be interesting to see how these go together or can be used separately to create prints. Although we collected a lot of photography I plan on reworking this and continuing to use photography throughout the project.