Drawing Continued

I took inspiration from various artists while I was drawing from my photographs. Tracie Cheng remained an important inspiration to me for line drawings and backgrounds. I also came across Satsuki Shibuya, who paints very delicate looking artwork with watercolours. I have taken a liking to her work and the mark making she does.

I chose to use watercolours for some of my drawings as a response to Satsuki Shibuya's paintings. Although I am yet to decide on a colour palette, as I was drawing there became a strong presence of blues and pinks. I am happy to make use of these colours for now as I can edit colouring in Photoshop later if I wish to do so.

My favourite aspect of these drawings is the very hand drawn presence. The way the lines fade and the mark making really gives each drawing some texture. I want to keep some texture in my work as I am conscious of losing it during digital steps of designing. 

Distorting Grids and Lines

I have been drawing, photographing and collaging to build up an idea of where I want to go next. This research has lead me explore further into my concept of distortion. Tracie Cheng and Clover Canyon inspired me to concentrate on distortion of lines and grids. I have line drawings from a photograph of a jumper sleeve compressed into a wine glass which I see as quite effective when placed with other drawing material, similar to Tracie Cheng.

I found huge inspiration for the distorted lines idea from 3D designer Noa Raviv. She creates distorted grid like structures for fashion which I really like and share similarities with the drawing I had already. Although her designs are much more high end, I think I can take aspects of her work and incorporate them into a flat print for more everyday fabrics.

With Noa Raviv as inspiration I generated some new visual research to work from, by placing lined fabrics and paper grids into glass jars and vases. I have used different methods of distortion such as compression and folding because they all produce a different result, even with the same fabric. I plan on drawing from these photographs using inspiration from Tracie Cheng and other artists.

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.

Unit X | Visual Research and Drawing

Taking inspiration from my chosen artists, I began to draw from my photographs. Finding media was particularly easy as I only need black, white and grey colors. I started with some basic line drawings with the intention of getting me going and finding a direction to go in. However, my drawings turned out a lot better than I had anticipated and they are visually strong on their own. I particularly like how the bends in the bandage appear slightly three dimensional regardless of it being a completely 2D drawing.

I originally planned to develop my drawings a lot more before I started designing prints from them. However during our group tutorial with Louise and also a Tutorial with Susan, they liked the drawings already and thought they were strong enough to be made into prints as they are. 

From this, I decided to layer and photocopy some of my drawings to see how they might look placed together.

Although I like the layered images I think the drawings might be better on their own or next to eachother rather than layered. When they are overlapped some of the quality of the drawing is lost and becomes a bit too much. However I do really like the two tones of grey together, which happened due to my drawings being on tracing paper. If I was to have these drawings as individual motifs placed together, they could work well being printed in different grey tones.

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.

 

Intentions | Colour Palette

This week I got stuck in a rut with my drawings. I hated everything I was creating and nothing looked right. I tried doing more research and I couldn't get going. 

I decided I was using way too much colour. I was stubborn to change as I liked the large range of colours but it is just too much to work with. I decided to go back to my original drawings in order to pick out a colour scheme. I painted colours from a couple of images and decided on a photo with a black, grey and turqoise colour palette.

Once I decided on a more refined colour palette I found it so much easier to get into drawing. I've learned that too many colours throws me off and that deciding on a palette needs to be the first thing I do in order for my drawings to be successful. Now that my drawings are working I can begin to experiment and take risks before taking my images into photoshop to work with.

 

 

Intentions| Visual Research

I came to a decision on the direction I want to go in for the Intentions Unit. My summer work left off going in the direction of Geometric and futuristic prints which I find really interesting and want to continue. Keeping this in mind, I was drawn to look into the idea of windows - their shape, structure and the idea of reflections. As I used a lot of mirroring in my summer work I think this will link perfectly.

Because my theme for the Unit is Urban Influences I took pictures in the city centre, and have been editing them a little because the originals are dull and in some cases too dark. I have been struggling to come up with a colour palette I like. I have experimented with a few but the colours are random and all over the place, they don't particularly compliment eachother. I feel like once I have chosen a colour palette my drawings will be a lot more successful.

 

 

From my photos I have been using the mirroring app like I did over summer. I have fallen in love with the images that can be recreated through symmetry. I want to base my drawings on the edits rather than the original photos so that they will be more abstract and not so literal. I want to do some line drawings rather than drawings with more depth, I think it will be nice to just have the image in black and white and to keep the structure the main focal point.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



Print | Week 7

We had a peer review this Tuesday in the studio. I found the review really helpful and I got really good feedback on my work. The only criticism I recieved was that I need to cut my samples to the same size. I also got mentioned for having good relations with my colour image. This took me by surprise but I was really happy because this is what has been worrying me the most. I have obviously been being too picky and judging my work to harshly. I now know to stop focussing on it so much.

I have also been doing more work on hand designs. After being shown examples of watercolours last week I decided to experiment with it myself. I created watercolour backgrounds which were similar to the gradient tool I have been using on photoshop. I like the designs I have made and so I will take aspects of them and put them into my final designs. My peer review also said that my hand designs inculded strong ideas. 

I tried to continue using the bold and varied colour palette I have been using, similar to the techniques Beatriz Milhazes uses in her work. When doing my final designs I am going to experiment more with layering and overlapping in the same way that she does.

Print | 100 metre drawing interpretation

Our task for this week was to do our own interpretation of the 100 metre drawing we did last week with the vinyl. My idea didn't end up being 100 metres, however I really like how the drawings I did turned out. 

I used around 200 cotton buds and arranged them into a regulated rectangle form. Once I had taken photos I rearranged them into different positions and drew them, similar to what we did last week. I also experimented with picking a handful of cotton buds up and dropping them onto the page and drawing the outcome. 

If I were to do these drawings again I would experiment with different tools and possibly different drawing media, such as pastels or pencils. Here I used mainly black and white ink.