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.

Further Development

Feedback from my presentation included the idea of further distorting the prints I have created already. I decided to do this in the same way in which I distorted the original lines; compression, folding, and as I had samples digitally printed onto fabric, I experimented with draping. I decided to do this using photography as it worked for me so well at the beginning of the project.

I believe re-working my prints was successful because it provided me with a lot more to work from. I have kept on drawing throughout the project and distorting these as I go. Something I hadn't tried already was distorting my images digitally rather than physically. Alex told me about a tool in Photoshop called liquidize, where I can pull parts of the image to distort it. I really like this tool and what it does to my drawings, I think it gives some of the distorted grids a more 3D feel which I like although I hadn't anticipated it.

 I came across an artist called Yvonne Hindle. The mixture of colours in her work is really effective and looks similar to the liquidize effect I have been using. In particular I like the way she uses negative space. Sometimes my prints can be very busy and overpowering, looking at Hindle's work has got me thinking I should play with leaving some space blank.

Unit X | Digital Editing

Although we aren't supposed to produce digital prints for this Unit, I still want to be able to play to my strengths. Which is why I am choosing to digitally edit my designs before putting them onto a screen to be screen printed.
I'm not sure whether my drawings would be best as repeat prints or placement prints, so I decided to experiment with both so that I can see the designs full potential before putting it onto a screen.

Reducing to one colour edit

Quick Repeat edit

Experimentation - placing drawings together as placement print

Overall I am happy with the experimentation and development that I have created by taking a digital route. After showing my work to Louise she really took a liking to the design above, which is simply an edit of my original drawings. This would definitely be a strong and effective placement print. Next, I plan on experimenting with ways of engineering prints, possibly through using a projector or pinning paper copies to a mannequin.

Intentions | Editing

This week I finally took my drawings into photoshop and began to work on them.

I am pleased with how the designs came out, they aren't final prints but they are a step in the right direction. While editing I realised that all of the designers I have been influenced by such as Mary Katranzou and Chris Kane use digital prints. I considered just producing digitals however there are some physical print processes such as foiling that I want to try and think will be effective on my work. As a result I have decided to create some unfinished digital prints with the purpose of working on them in the print room afterwards.

As well as preparing prints for the print room on Monday I also experimented with the brushes I created from my drawings. Turning them into brushes makes the editing process so easy. Here are a few experimental prints from this week:

 

Intentions | Chris Hadfield

While I was having trouble drawing I tried to find new inspirations to give me the boost I needed. A friend told me about Chris Hadfield, a Canadian Astronaut who took the most fascinating pictures from space and put them on twitter.

His photographs are inspiring enough on their own, however I find it incredible how each one has meaning and shows a part of the world in great detail from a perspective that no one has seen before. I have borrowed his book 'You are here' from my friend and the photographs are absolutely incredible. I plan on using Hadfield as a massive influence throughout the Intentions Unit because his work is unique and I have never created anything like it before, so I'm hoping to face new challenges.
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I have been collecting other influences and inspirations for this unit on a Pinterest Board called Intentions
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Hadfield's work has really made me interested in different textures and their appearances, which has sort of lead me astray from my initial concept of windows. I'm considering taking a new route with my work, or possibly using the two ideas together? I'm going to wait and see where it takes me.

Taking inspiration from Chris' work and my own photographs of texture around the Benzie Building, I wanted to create textured drawings. One of the learning outcomes I usually struggle with is risk taking, so I decided to try drawing using different materials and processes that I'm not familiar with. The first thing I tried is paper making. I've never tried this process before and I wasn't sure if it would work. To be honest, it really didn't work. The paper I used was too good quality and didn't bond well. when I tried to use newspaper, that worked better but still didn't produce the results I wanted. You win some you lose some!

Although everybody says they used it at A level I had never even heard of Brusho, so I've been using that a lot in my work since the start of the project. I created these drawings from paints, sugar, salt, sweetener and black pepper. I really like the results because the salt crystallised and absorbed some of the colour creating whiter spaces. I plan to experiment much more with this to create different backgrounds to work on top of. 

Summer Feedback

Today we had a group feedback session on our summer work.

I felt that this has helped me a lot as the girls I was put with were really helpful yet critical and we all gave each other plenty of ideas to work from.

My main points from the crit were that I need to experiment with more media and take more risks. I knew this already but I am glad that it was pointed out because hopefully it will make me push my boundaries that little bit more. I also need to become more loose with my drawings, I tend to be too neat and detailed in everything I do because otherwise I feel like I haven't tried hard enough. However when I look at other people's work which I find amazing they sometimes say it took two minutes and was really easy. For me that's the biggest point I need to improve on.

Other than that I was complimented on my use of colour and my use of mirroring. They said that my theme throughout was strong and although I experimented with different things they were all connected somehow, through watercolour etc. 

I am going to continue with the work I have been doing already but head in the direction of Urban Influences. I really need to do some primary research to work from as this was also something I neglected over summer.