Michael Kidner Live Brief

For my live brief I chose to do the Michael Kidner Brief. 

I chose this because his work is very bold, colourful and geometric which is similar to the work I have been developing in my Self Initiated Brief.
I began by looking at his work for inspiration on colour and shape. A few of his works only make use of primary colours. I wanted to take this into my work as my self initiated brief projects are made up of a larger number of colours, I wanted to limit myself to just the three. The print I have created is made up of shapes inspired by Michael Kidner's works which I have lifted and placed onto grid lined paper, in order to keep structure.

Collage was my main process during this brief. I felt the need to do this physically rather than on photoshop so that I could keep a textural feel to my work, which I think was successful in the end.
The brief said to consider scale, which is something I don't always do. This is why I printed my design on the wide format printer so that I could see it on a larger scale. This was very useful when it came to making my scarf visualisations.

 As my work is usually intended for fashion, I can see my design being used on a silk scarf in particular. Overall I am happy with the work I have produced in response to the Michael Kidner brief, in particular the use of bright primary colours together.

Print Designs and Bradford Textile Association

I took the drawings I created last week into Photoshop and tried to generate some motifs to design with. These were really easy to put together and blended how I intended successfully. I am happy with how the black and white line drawings look in contrast to the colourful mark making, and I think they give a similar feel to the Clover Canyon garments I looked at previously.

I found it difficult to keep in mind my fashion context when designing prints, and I felt that some of my designs weren't suited to be used on clothing. I am also concerned with my colour palette as I think the bright pinks and blues are becoming too over powering. Many of the designs I made are repeat prints, I feel I need to explore more print placement designs instead to hopefully help me develop further.

I attempted some fashion collage illustrations with my prints in order to try and inspire myself to create print placement designs, and also to try and get an idea of what shape I am going for. I have been conducting market research during Julie's fashion workshops, and in particular I am drawn to garments that have drape. I like the idea of my prints being distorted even after the print itself has been created.

For the Bradford Textile Association live brief I decided to take one of the prints from my self initiated project and adapt it to a live brief. I wanted to submit something more traditional and elegant for this brief, which is why I reduced the colours to black and white. I found it interesting to see how changing the colours of a print can alter its whole vibe.

I decided to put the black one forward for Bradford because I like the proportion of black to white. I haven't often done this with my work and I feel like it really works well with this print.

Unit X | Fashion Collage and Muse

We've had several workshops since Easter with Sarah, which have been focused on fashion illustrations and collages. The first thing we had to do was pick a muse to aim towards and take inspiration. The muse we chose is the lead character of the film 'Stick It'. She is a boyish personality with a lot of attitude and opinion, but also has feminine features and is pretty. This is the mix that we have been trying to achieve in our collection. 

I started by sketching different images of her facial expressions to work and collage from.

 The next step was to collage together some illustrations, trying to locate where different textures might be on a garment or what different pieces might be made of. I particularly tried to work on print placement and scale, using the photographs from the projector work really helped with shape too. I think these went quite successfully considering I've never done them before and felt a bit lost to start with. I realized the trick was to not think about it too much.

Locating | Fashion Illustrations

Part of my self initiated brief for this Unit stated that I wanted to develop my fashion illustrations and make them more outgoing and playful. Because of the colourful and lively nature of my prints I feel like this is the perfect opportunity to create crazy illustrations to go with them.

I began with photographs of my friend's faces and altered them in an app to give perfect complexion and increase the size of their eyes, overall making them look strange. I found an artist on Pinterest called Niky Roehreke, who's collage work inspired me to collage peculiar hair onto my faces using marbling photocopies. I loved the results because of how ridiculous they look.

After showing these in my weekly tutorial it was suggested that I also add block colour features like eyebrows and lips to make them even more bizarre. At first when I did this I wasn't sure if I liked them or not because they really were strange, however I have definitely warmed to them and think they go perfectly with my print designs. They are particularly suitable for my high-end print collection.

I then experimented with poses to see if they looked better. However, with the addition of the heads the weirder seemed a little but too much and looked way over the top. Because of this I decided to go back to the original basic standing position with arms by the sides. I feel like this works better because it doesn't take attention away from the faces and also shows the garment well.

 There is a more cartoony-like feel to my illustrations this time, which definitely goes well with the print collection as it is very colourful and reminiscent of pop art.

Locating | Marbling

Marbling turned out really well and I came up with a few possible colour stories. I liked how although I moved the inks the way they spread wasn't down to me and there was a broad range of drawings as a result. 

As marbling is a predicted trend forecast there are a lot of designs out there that include marbling. I want to make my designs different and not just remain a simple marble print. I researched ways in which I could edit them and came across a few collage artists that I've taken a liking to, one of which is Justine Khamara who uses small pieces arranged in interesting and regemented ways. Her circular pieces drew my eye because I could replicate the pattern in order to look like an iris.

I have tried some collaging techniques myself and have gotten a little carried away. I didn't expect the outcome to be so strange or look so weird. However I actually like the obscurity. I have never created something I would consider 'weird but wonderful' so I think it would be a good idea to give it a try. This also gives me the opportunity to work with a lot of colour, which is again something I want to experiment with as in the last unit I struggled with using too many colours at once. Now the plan is to get my drawing scanned in so I can start photoshopping some designs together.

 

I came across an artist called Piafries on Pinterest this week, and I really like his work. It looks unpredictable and organic, similar to marbling techniques. I especially like his use of colour and virbancy in his work. The colours appear random but also really compliment eachother and so a probably thought about previously.

I attempted to copy his work which didn't turn out as well as I'd hoped. The colours don't bounce off eachother in the way that his do. Although I wont be using the rough acrylic paint marks in my work, I am going to continue to be inspired by Piafries use of colour.

 

Unit X | Final images

After playing with my images on photoshop over and over again, I have finally produced 2 images which I am happy to print for the exhibition.

During my experimentation, I decided that having 4 animals in one print was perhaps too much and looked too busy. Because of this, I changed my number to three and in order to create another poster I needed two more paintings to work with, so I painted the zebra and the macaw.

Working on both posters was quite difficult, as I needed to create the right combination of animals and in the right places. Eventually I did manage to come up with two designs I am happy with. I wanted my designs to be large scale, so I started with the biggest size available to me which is A0. I was prepared to go smaller if necessary however the A0 prints came out okay, there was no blurring. I am happy with my prints, but if I could have been specific with my paper I wouldn't have chosen matte as the colours did dull down a little. 

Yet I am very pleased with how my work looks and I am excited to put it up in the exhibition.

I wanted to see how my prints looked together get a general feel of how they are going to look in the exhibition, so I tried hanging them up in the studio. I was thinking about mounting them on boards as they might look better, but in the end I decided I prefer them hanging as paper. Also A0 boards would be extremely hard to carry to and from the exhibition, whereas with paper I have bought a tube to carry them in safely so that they don't get damaged. Overall I really like how my designs have turned out and I am very pleased with my work.

Unit X | Layering

I've been experimenting with layering different images together to create the feel Bryan Holland's work does. Using newspaper and found images, I have made collages using an image transfer technique that I learned at A level. Painting over an image with white acrylic paint and then placing it face down and applying pressure puts the image onto the other page. However some parts may not be transferred at all, others will be done lightly and some parts appear more bold. I really like the effect this creates as it gives a worn feel, as if the image is a lot older than it is. I want there to be an older feel to my work as it can then give the impression of old circus posters in a similar way to Bryan Holland. I was going to use image maker however that would copy the image perfectly, and I want a more distressed feel. 

Another artist that inspires me is Robert Rauschenberg. He creates work with a damaged and distressed look similar to what I am trying to create. His work is generally worn everywhere however I am trying to also include some less distressed elements in my work, particularly the animals. I specifically like his use of running paint, I really like how this looks.

Unit X | Development

Yesterday in our workshop we had the chance to experiment with Projectors and acetate. 

I really liked playing around with different drawings together. Me, Abi and Zoe all had drawings prepared on acetate and it was really interesting layering them up on the projector. I really like the look of the different styles which brought me back to thinking of Bryan Holland and his work. 

After the workshop I experimented by layering my acetates with other papers. I really like how these look and the collaged element really adds something to my work. I also want experiment with taking my work onto photoshop and editing in different ways. I am thinking of possibly doing parts separately then collaging them digitally so that they can be used over again in different combinations and compositions. I feel like this will give me more contol over my work, as I can delete, erase or undo any aspects I am unhappy with, which is something that can't really be done on paper.