Week 12

Day one

Over the weekend I had carried on with researching into my words and presenting them in different ways in order to represent my ideas. I carried on with this during the day. I looked more in depth into the mismatch idea, so as well as using the anges I looked at nuns. I felt by researching into nuns it represented mismatch as itnuns are a juxtaposition to prostitutes and I had learnt from my research that Jack the Ripper's victims were all prostitutes. So I used the resources in the library found some interesting images, some which focussed on corsets and that portrayed 19th century prostitutes, as this was the era Jack the Ripper was from. I like the route that I have taken for this project however today started off very slowly and I think that I struggled with getting ideas as I knew what I wanted to look at but just didn't know where to start.

Day Two

Today I found better than yesterday as I struggled less and I work through my difficulties just by planning out what I wanted to look at and how to present my ideas. In the morning I worked on my mismatch idea between nuns and prostitutes, and then for the rest of the day I was using the heat press to make samples. For these samples I was heat pressing red foil onto black satin, I really liked this technique because I think it tied in nicely with my overall them by using the black to represent hiding and conceal and then the red reminded me of blood so made it look quite violent and represented Jack the Ripper. I kept on using this technique in different ways, sometimes pressing the foil onto lace and then pealing it off to create and interesting texture. I really liked the samples I came up with and I plan on using them in my final designs.

 


After this I carried onto to develop the nun idea which then lead me to start designing. I did some quick designs first which I then developed into sixteen initial ideas, I liked my sixteen ideas I thought that I had a variety which I was ready to develop further.

Day Three

So today was the final day of the 3 words project, which ended with us presenting our work for a group critique. However before this I was finishing off my designs and with the samples I created the day before I added them on Photoshop to four of my designs. Although leading up to the critique it became apparent that I would not have enough time to finish off all sixteen designs. I was disappointed with this as I wanted to finish them off and then develop them into finals.

When going into the critique I was disappointed and was reluctant to show my work because I felt that my ideas and development were represented poorly. The group critique was interesting though as I enjoyed looking at other peoples work and seeing how they had represented their ideas and interpreted them. When I showed my work I felt that the feedback I got was mostly helpful, so when the critique had ended I was motivated to improve my work substantially as I felt that I could improve it greatly and make it a lot better.

Day Four

As the project ended yesterday I still wanted to improve my work. I feel that today I have been able to do this as I have taken another look at my sketchbook, I have rearranged and taken pieces out as well as developing my ideas even further and also improving my designs so they were less literal and represented my theme more clearly. I believe that I have done this as I am now happy with the work that I have produced.

Overall looking at this project I am pleased with the final outcome however looking at how I got to this stage I think I could improve greatly, as I found myself stuck at the beginning of the week I could have avoided this and managed my time a lot better which would have let me meet the deadline with work that was successful and of a high quality as my work had been of a low quality.

Week 11

Day One

Today was the beginning of our two week individual project. The project that I had opted for was the three words project, I was looking forward to starting this as it seemed really interesting. Today consisted of attending two exhibitions the first was the 'Only In England' this included photographs from Tony Ray-Jones and Martin Parr. I really enjoyed looking at these photographs as I felt that they had a clear and strong sense of occasion and celebration as each photograph was interesting to look at as I felt that it represented a story. The second exhibition was of Sarah Lucas's work. This collection of work was very different to the previous exhibition. I found Lucas's work interesting as I felt that it tried to objectify men as well as women, in a variety of different medias and methods.

I found today interesting although I think that if I spent a bit more time looking at the exhibitions I would have been able to deduct a stronger meaning from the pieces.

Day Two

I started off today by choosing my three words, I found this very difficult as I kept changing my mind. I kept switching from using Tim Walker or Jack the Ripper, in the end I decided to base my project around Jack the Ripper as I felt that I could look into many different aspects, I also found the story very interesting which I wanted to overall portray into my designing. My other two words were conceal and mismatch.

The first thing I did after selecting my three words was to create a mind map, this allowed me to discover ideas that related to my three words. Once completing this I had I began to create my concept board, I struggled with this a lot as we were not able to use the internet so I used the resources iin the librabry however found that there was a lack of resources that related to the subject I wanted to explore. I gathered a variety of images some from books and then others from television programmes and films, I looked at 'Ripper Street' and 'Plunkett and MacLean'. I also read up on stories of Dick Turpin the highway man. I wanted to research into the highwayman route as although different to Jack the Ripper I felt there were some similar attributes, such as they were both criminals from the same era, I also noticed the way that highwaymen hid themselves with capes, hats and masks and I found this interesting as it related to my second word, Conceal.

AS i had collected imagery for my Jack the Ripper and Conceal words I needed to find images that represented mismatch. This lead me to looking into angels as the opposite to Jack the Ripper and Criminals would be angels. I found a book that included many different images of angels which I used in my concept board along with my other images.

Day Three

Today consisted of completing two workshops the first was working on the stand. I really enjoyed this as I was able to represent my three words through fabrics and shaping them on the body. I felt that I came up with some interesting ideas that I will develop further. Although some things that I would have liked to have done better would to have worked less around the neck area and focus on other areas of the stand and also to have focussed on manipulating the fabric a bit more to come of with a variety of different shapes and techniques.

The second part of the day was drawing our three words. This included a series of different exercises. At the beginning I struggled quite a lot in trying to represent my words through drawing, however once I had started to think less and focus on what those words made me feel I was able to represent my words in different ways with different medias. However I think that with the drawings I created I would've liked to use them in my research and development but I feel that they are not strong enough to use, therefore if I did it again I'd like to think more of the emotions these words presented rather than the literal meaning of them.

Week 10

Day One

Today I started creating my prints as I had scanned in my drawings, however before I could start designing them we had another group meeting to see the groups progress over the weekend. Everybody appeared to be on track for our group presentation later this week. However I had heard that the colour scheme had been changed, our original one was supposed to be Grey, black, Red and Lavender. This had been changed to Black, Red, Lavender, Pink and Light Blue. In our group meeting I bought this up as an issues because I believed that the additional pink and blue would make our collections appear to be more spring summer, as well as this these colours did not go without theme. After pointing this out to the group we changed back to our original colour scheme, Luckily this did not affect anyone's work dramatically and we were able to move on with our work successfully.

After that I carried on with creating my prints whilst checking in with the group so we could discuss the prints that would work best with the designers creations.

 

Day Two

As I had created some prints yesterday I started to edit them and add them to the designers eight designs. I found this to be time consuming although worth it as I was deciding which points work best as well as the scale of them and where they should be placed on the body. This meant a lot of trial and era coming up with the right prints for the garments as well as showing the designers which prints I thought would look best with their designs.

Towards the end of the day I had placed my prints onto 16 designs, I was pleased with how most of them looked however with trying to meet the demands of the designers it was difficult as the prints I created did not always go with the designs. This meant changing them and rearranging them in order to make the designs look as a collection.

Day Three

Today was the last day of our group project which meant that we were to present our work to the tutors and the group. After watching the other groups I felt that my group could've worked better together as towards the end of the project tension started to build up and it was difficult to present our work successfully.

After looking at the past two weeks if I were to do it again I think that I would put myself forward to have been a leader, as this is what our group lacked. We needed a leader that would've made quick and decisive decisions, which would've helped to push our ideas forward as although I was pleased with my prints I felt that due to a lack of clear direction from myself and the group everyone's individual work did not work fluidly with each others.

Week 9

Day One

Today was the first day of the two week project. The brief was to create an A/W collection for next February. My group was given the task of designing for the Comme Des Garcons label. In this each memeber was given a seperate task that they needed to complete. The group consisted of; three designers, two print designers, two accessory designers and two promotion. My task was to design the prints for the three collection alongside another member.

So on the first day of our group project we started off by having a group discussion deciding on which direction we would like to take the project in. Previous to this we had been given two quotes, we selected the second one which was: 'All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.'.

Firstly the designers split this quote up into three and decided they would use that as a starting point of development, I however used the whole quote as a reference as I believed that my prints would be able to connect the three different collections together. So as my independent initial research I looked into the meaning of the quote discovered that its meaning was about communism and used that as a starting point. I that that this would be an interesting starting point for the project as I would be able to create bold prints that would represent the meaning.

Day Two

Today started with the group having a meeting in the morning discussing the areas that we would be researching. I started looking into communist iconography and I started to create some initial prints. For this I used an image of some dead flowers with drips falling from them, I placed this onto a garment in Photoshop to see what it would look like. I felt that the print was interesting however lacked as the colours were clashing and were not the colours from the groups chosen colour scheme. Although overall looking at them I felt that they were an interesting starting point as they  had inspired me and pushed me to come up with some more interesting ideas.

 

Later this evening as some of the images on our concept board were of dripping ink and images that representing melting and floating, I started dipping the nib of a paint brush into black in and then into water, this allowed me to see how the ink floated delicately in the water whilst mixing into the water, I took images and a video as I thought this would inspire me.

Day Three

After creating three prints yesterday that I found unsatisfactory I researched more into the groups designer, I looked at previous collections, noticing their use of print and colour. I found that they used a lot of large bold prints as well as prints overlapping each other. I wanted to create some prints that I thought would be similar to this Comme Des Garcons style but also included my individual style.

I looked at my communist research and took some popular shapes and symbols and see how I could represent them differently. For this I drew out the Hammer and Sickle as I knew this was a popular symbol that represented communism. I also used the dripping of ink affect as this related to my previous researche and the quote, I used the inky effect in my communist drawings and I also included it in the drawings of dying flowers because this related to the quote as well as to the fact that the collections were for A/W. These drawings were a good starting point for me as I was able to develop them over my SDS days, ready for when I returned back to the group.

 

Week 8

This week and over the weekend in preparation for the assessment on Thursday I needed to finish off my sketchbook, create my garment and do a photo shoot. So over the weekend I finished off my concept board, I then started designing, I came up with 5 designs that I felt represented my four key words. I then edited them in different ways on Photoshop, to see the variety of colours and styles I could have them in, I did this until I decided on my favourite one. So ready for Monday I began to finalise my final design so I could start creating the prototype. I made the prototype fairly easily as I just used the fitted dress block pattern which I did not need to adjust very much, only to lengthen the skirt in order for it to be below the knee. Also I did not need to create a prototype for my body piece as it was to be constructed in a similar way to my accessory. After this I then spent the next couple of days creating my garment. I chose to make the dress out of a silk organza because I looked at other fabrics and found that they did not have the same texture and aesthetic I wanted to create. The organza was coloured cream but as I wanted to make a dusty pink colour I soaked in wine, I did this after speaking to my tutor as she told me about the use of soaking the fabric in wine or herbal tea. I tried both techniques but found the wine worked better as the colour was stronger. SO when I had sewn the dress together I soaked it in wine for about 5 minutes then hung it up and let it to dry. I found the colour came out really well and it looked like my final design. I then started creating the body piece I found this to be the most time consuming part to the garment only because I needed to cut out 80 shapes and then fold them. For this I made my print which was similar to the print I used in accessory week which was taken from my photo shoot in week one, however I changed it by taking out the blue parts of it and having less green, as I wanted the main colour to be pink. First I printed this onto 3 A1 acetate sheets, but after cutting out the shapes and Realising that each sheet would give me around 12 shapes, I went and printed a further 3 sheets and found that I had enough for my garment. I ended up cutting out around 80 shapes all the same size apart from four which were smaller. After having all of the shapes I folded them into the right shape, stapling them to keep in place and then I started layering them up and attaching them together with staples as this was the most efficient method.

After finishing the body piece and having the dress soaked and dried I was ready for my photo shoot on Wednesday morning. I did the shoot at Ravensbourne as I just used a plain white background, I chose to keep the setting simple as the dress had different layers and textures in it. After doing my photo shoot which was straight forward to do, I started editing them. The editing phase lead down a way I didn't expect my photos to come out like as similar to my garment I added different layers on top of the photos, such as I overlaid a black and white layer and then a layer which was of the pattern I used for the body piece. I changed the opacity and colour burned the layers so the photos were visible but had a pink hue to them. I liked this effect as I felt it portrayed the theme of the project and gave them an interesting mood. However after this photo shoot I still had some ideas that I wanted to explore so I had organised to do another one on Friday morning, which although was after my assessment I may still use as they show the garment in a different way. However on Thursday in time for the assessment in the afternoon all of my work was complete, all I did was print off my photo shoot images, first onto glossy paper and then onto acetate to see what they came out like. I liked both copies even though they showed the photos in a different way.

In the afternoon I felt that the critiques went well and I got positive comments, however felt like I would've liked more constructive comments in order to allow me to prepare my work to the highest level for the final assessment, which I will prepare for next week.

Overall looking at the past couple of weeks I feel that I could have planned my time and used it more efficiently, as although I finished all of my work I would've liked it to be in a better quality for the assessment.

Week 7

This week I focussed on developing my work so I could start working towards my final product of the project in order to meet the deadline next week. The week started off quite slow for me because I felt stuck with the direction I wanted to take the project in, but after looking through my sketchbook, my ideas became clearer. But with my sketchbook I had quite a bit of work missing so throughout the week I worked to finishing off my work from the previous weeks whilst playing with ideas of what I wanted to create. When looking at my book I looked at my mood board and I went to one of the first pages which was a spider diagram that featured key words related to me that I had branched off of, I chose four words that related to me which were: Ruined, Trapped, Soft and Feminine. I then Created some fabric samples that I felt represented these emotions. I used different fabrics like silks, organza, PVC and cling film. Also after looking artists like Karla Black and Kyle Thompson and to reference my photo shoot in week one I smeared chalk onto the fabrics to see what affects I would get. After this I definitely knew that I want to use chalk in my final garment and I had decided upon a colour scheme which was to be pink because throughout the development of the whole project the two colours I have focussed on the most are dusty pink and a pale green and I felt that the dusty pink related to the feminine and soft aspect of my project.

Then after my sketchbook was up to date on the previous weeks work I started developing the work I had done, this included exploring my chosen words in more depth and trying to exaggerate the emotions. This then helped me to create a concept board that explored these ideas and summarised them.

Also this week, my group spent the day learning about creating a fashion film, I found this day to be interesting especially learning about how and why fashion films are created, we were also shown a few examples and then we needed to create our own concept and show this on a story board. I had made storyboards in the past and shot a music video which I found helped with this task, however the storyboards I had created were different to the one my group needed to make. I enjoyed making the storyboard and trying to show the concept through a series of stills.

Week 6

This week was my accessories week, I enjoyed this week more than I had anticipated as I found it really interesting as I was working with different shapes and where I could place them on the body.

 

The week started by me brining in an object that has meaning to me, this object was a bracelet. I wanted to present this object in different ways so I photocopied it, then changed the scale and colours and repeated it, I then looked at the bracelet in more detail so I focussed on one particular element which was a shell. I then reproduced this shape and made it 3-D, however because it was quite a boring shape I changed the scale of it enlarging it and shrinking it then overlapping these shapes onto one large image of it, which resulted in me having one 2-D large shape that was very different from my original shape, but as it was 2-D and I needed it to be a 3-D shape I folded it in different ways, so that this final shape was interesting to look at as it has different layers and each edge is different creating an interesting aesthetic.

Then to develop this I created smaller versions of my shape and then placed them onto to images of models that I found in some magazines. This helped me to see what my accessory might look like when worn on the body. When I did this I found myself placing the shapes mainly on the head and shoulders to work more as a body piece which I think I preferred doing, other than designing accessories like shoes, jewellery or handbags. But after creating four small designs I then developed these further into more designs which either had the shapes in different places or took a section of the shape and presented it in a different way. These designs then allowed me to progress into creating my final design and to actually make it. I made the body piece out of acetate as this a strong material and is also transparent , as my design used a see through material, I was also able to print onto the acetate, so I made a print which was taken from my photo shoot in order to link the project together by using the same colours and to create another interesting aspect.
 

I believe the final product to successful as I am pleased by it and I feel that the use of the acetate works well especially the parts with the print as they add another layer to it and make it look textured as well. Overall I learnt form this week that although I had never really thought that I would want to go into accessories I have found that I really enjoyed working this way, as I feel that nothing went wrong as I was working effectively and efficiently as I did not run out of time and was able to perfect the accessory, also after this week and having a presentation from my tutor I think that it is a possible pathway for me to explore further.