Practice: Inspiration

My vacation works inspiration was mainly sparked by a few artists i came across whilst on Instagram. 

The first is that of Diego Farias. He is a collage artist based in brazil. What i find engaging about his work is his use of female form within his works, I find it interesting that he covers the eyes of remove them from the faces of the photos of models he choses to work with. It is like he has almost removed their personality so they become just bodies or beings. In his series called 'visual' he has explored this theory along with what I perceive as an exploration of sexuality or perhaps even gender roles, you can see these here http://diegofariasarte.tumblr.com/visual . This theme relates to my CP3, as I continue to look at body image, so I plan to research deeper into that along with looking at identity based on personal image.

Another influence on my inspiration was that of a friend of a friends drawings. Once again on Instagram I came across songwriter Charlie Smith. He likes to illustrate his lyrics and I really admired his drawing style. Very scribbly line drawings, many of which were of females which related back to Diego Farias works for me. I asked him of his inspirations and he gave me the names of Micheal Lentz and Egon Schiele. I found Micheal Lentz work to be very inspiring for me. not only were his drawings quite erotic, but also, the figures lacked identity which seemed to engage me. Lentz has quite a gritty attitude to his smudgy artworks - something which I may have made a connection to my next inspiration which is photography by Australian brand Hopeless Lingerie. I will use the photography to draw from and also to influence an attitude to my work.

From these influences I shall start drawings and illustrating using similar techniques -  for example, scribbly line drawing can be easily translated into print design and also embroidery. I will also use collage as inspired by Farias. From there on I will develop my print designs and experiment with embroidery to create rich samples. 

I shall also begin to research body image and identity for my CP3 unit. 

Unit X: James Long - Evaluation

After attending the briefing for this unit a few months ago, I was rather excited to work in a group and meet new people. I really enjoy commertial projects aimed for the fashion industry and James Long looked a great brand to look at and work for. I had also never worked on menswear before, so I was rather excited to get stuck in. As I had previously mentioned, I have quite crippling social anxiety when it comes to univesity and a strong self doubt in my own work, so I had found it very difficult to go into the studio and work with my peers whilst working on previous projects during the year. This is something that my tutor Alex Russell and student support were fully aware of and also something I seeked doctors advice and medical attention for. So although exciting, I was also rather petrified of working within a group of people i had never met before.

During the first few week we had a strong group of six - four textiles students and two fashion students. During this time we found it a little difficult to get off of the gorund for agreeing on ideas and themes as we had a few strong personalities in the group. After our meeting with Tom, he suggested working with vintage tennis and one other theme -  mechanical. After a group discussion, we decided that mechanical may not be accessible for us to get primary research for - something that the fashion students didnt quite understand the need for primary, but as textiles students we needed primary research and photographs to draw from. From this, we settled on vintage tennis for the fashion inspiration and rust/decay for the textiles inspiration. After this, myself, Katie and Alex travelled to the Norther Quarter to purchase a macros lens for our phone cameras and to take photos. It was a freezing cold day, but we soldiered on and got some great shots.

 We began to draw from these images as a group during worskshops and came up with some good illustrations for print designs. Hayley was the main print member of the group and began making samples quite quickly as her workshop was soon after the initial two weeks. Alex was the quilt member of the group and she created some really interesting designs using black mesh and stitching that i think would have worked really well as a placement design on sweatshirts. 

The group would tend to meet on mondays for the workshops, wednesdays and thursdays for our tutorials. After that it was easter and during this time, a group member had been accepted onto the placement she had been waiting on and left the unit, so from then on we were down to five of us.  

Our workshops and sessions with Sarah and Natalie were really helpful and gave us a better insight into what we should be working toward during the week. It was also good to see where the other grouos were at with their work and how they were developing. 

I chose 3D textiles as my disapline and found my workshop a little uninspiring but maybe I had a different idea to what 3D textiles was. We experiemnted with hairpinning - which had quiet an interesting effect. I also used a special foot on the domestic machine that pinched the fabric as it sews to give a ridged effect. Somehting that could perheaps have been applied to my samples, however my workshop was scheduled quite late in the project and the groups samples had already gone a totally different way to what I had learnt.

I fully enjoyed being back in the print studio after a while of being a little too anxious to go in there, but I put on a brave face and felt comfortable in there after a couple of hours. I was quite impressed with the experiemental samples I had created and felt like I had made some inovative samples - something James Long is very supportive of is inovative ideas. Tom had mentioned bonding fabrics a lot during the first briefing, so I attempted to bond some mesh to a faux leather and the effect was quite interesting. I then also foiled over the sample making it tie in quite nicely with the theme and other group samples. My samples were overlooked though and I felt I had perhaps done somwthing wrong, however, no one in my group comunicated this with me at all so at the time I was none the wiser and carried on with my tasks.

The stress was turned up a notch just before the presentaion after a tutorial with Natalie. She seemed confused as to why a few of my samples hadnt been used in the final ideas and only then were my drawings and samples recognised and it was suggested I was made head illustrator for all pen lines on the line up illustrations. Which I was quite thriled about as I felt I wanted to make a good contribution to the group after so many disregarded suggestions. We did get the group file complete in time for the presentation to our best ability. The presentation was very critical but also constructive - but this is more than likely just how it is in industry, so it was good to see how critical people can be about what you present. 

Although I wasnt around all day for the exhibition set up, I made my best attempt to show up in the morning to shop my support and help as much as I could before I had an important interview later on that morning. I feel as though the commincation broke down after this towards myself so have found it a struggle to get images of the final line up for my own file. It became apparent that I was unaware of a lot of the meetings the group had. This is mainly due to no communication of these meetings but also, due to my forementioned anxiety, I am not usualy one to go into the studio and work - I usually do this from home, so it would be unlikely I would bump into the group, however this could have been avoided if I were told about these meetings so I could have attended.
To my knowledge, as a group, we saw eachother a two to three times a week, usually on a monday for workshops, wednesday as a planned meet and thursdays for tutorials. I sometimes felt we could perhaps have met up more so I could keep on track with the work and know what everyone is doing, however this seemed to be happening anyway unbeknown to me. I believe this may explain why some of my work was overlooked and probably made me look unentheseastic.

To develop this further and learn from this unit, I wish I was more confident and assertive with my ideas and samples. I often found myself too afraid to share ideas to the group which in turn obviously made me look uninterested. If I had been more confident, I may have been more self assured in my abilities in fashion design and this in turn would have helped Nicole out a lot more as after the withdrawal of one fashion student put a lot of pressure on her. I also would have used more computer aided design in the final line up and been a lot more creative and 'let go' a lot more with the designs. I also would have focussed more on the brand we are designing for. I feel the designs are not quite 'James Long'. I think this because they are quite brightly coloured and clean looking. Tom mentioned in our feedback that the sample were quite feminine and clean - however it was he first time some of us had designed for the male market. The most helpful aspect of this unit was the confidence I gained in using the school of arts facilities without feeling anxious anymore. I should hopefully now be alot more confident to walk into the studio without having panicking and this in turn will help me flourish in third year.

Unit X: James Long - Presentaion to Tom Norcombe & Exhibition

Today was our presentaion to Tom from James long, at 11am we placed our neatley headed samples on the table and offered him the gorp file we had worked all week on. He was very impressed with the samples themselves and liked our use of print techniques, foils and fabrics. however, he wasnt so much impressed with our group file - mainly that of the illustrations and the technical drawings. He mentioned the illustrations were not communicating the samples very well - something that perhaps could have been avoided if we had perhaps used collage or even photoshop to create our illustrations, then worked back into them to give texture and to make them pop. To a degree, I agree with Tom. I feel that with the illustrations, we could have used more interesting media other than just felt pens. However, this is someting to learn from for the future an now that we know this we can use this knowledge to benefit ourself and make better designers for ourselves. He also suggested we made our file a little more creative and interesting as there was a lot of white negative space, but i think we may have been afraid to let lose a little and to keep things quite clean.

Although it was a nerve racking experience, we learnt from it and tried to imprve on the points tom made before our exhibition the following thursday. 

On the morning before the exhibtion, me and Nicole met up at the London Scottish House to see the exhibtion space. The other girls were attending a lecture so were coming later on. Sarah suggested that we needed to add extra support to our file where the samples were pinned in, so in reaction to this me and Nicole headed toward the Union to buy some card to support the file. Unfortunatly at this pint i had to leave Nicole as i had a job interview, which the group knew about previously and were to meet nicole after the lecture. I was a little stressed i couldnt help set up, however, the girls did a fabulous job doing so. 

Unit X: James Long - Technical Drawings

Being one of two people in the group capable of drawing technical drawings (prvious studies in fashion technology aided me with this), four of us met up on the weekend to finish the line up colouring and start the Technical drawings. Me and Nicole mainly drew a majority of the drawings, but Hayley also helped us once the line up had colour and print drawn onto it. 

Our line up illustrations were hand drawn because James Long prefers this - as previously mentioned in the first briefing with Tom. Personally, i wanted to touch up the hand drawn designs on photoshop, but after many suggestions of doing so from myself, the group were adament that everything were to be hand drawn with no competer aids. I feel if we had used photoshop to enhance the drawings and clean them up, print them and work back into them with texture on top, they would look a lot more professional, however at this stage there wasnt a lot i could do to persuade the group. I am all for a hand drawn illustraion and i firmly beleive that it gives a signiture to the work using your own hand, however, enhancing it with programes like photoshop and illustrator does give it the extra 'bang' that gives it a professional finish.

I have a good knowdlege of photoshop and am quite quick at doing so, so it was my responsibility to clean up and straighten out the technical drawings. Below are a few of my own attempts at technical drawings of the mesh panel polo shirt, piped shorts, bomber jacket, sweatshirt and mesh shorts design.

 

 

Unit X: James Long - Textiles Samples pt. 2 & Line Up

Just before our presentaion to Tom on May the 9th, i wanted to quickly contribute some more samples to the group, just so we had more than enough choice. i decided to experiemtn with the sublimation printer as it is something i hadnt worked with before and i am a keen digital print designer, so this is a quick and easy way to apply digital design onto fabric. I used two of the macro images i had taken during the beginning of the project and adjusted the colours and shades on photoshop to match the colour palette we are working with.

From these i used the heat press to apply them to a range of synthetic fabrics as you can see below. During one of our sessions, natalie suggested we started to use beading on our samples so i have worked into these with beading also and it gives quite a pretty outcome with lots of texture.

Above: Sublimation onto white foamy mesh.

Below: Sblimation onto textured fabric with appliqued mesh and beading - one of my favourite samples from the sublimation experiments.

Third below: Sublimation on white scuba with bead detail. i really like how clear and deatiled the subliamtions are printed onto the fabric and is deffinatley somehting id like to work more with in the future.  

I can see these samples being used on things such as tshirts, jackets and panels within these garments as well as all over. they would make interesting placement print ideas also. i feel these designs really emulate the rust and decay theme quite well because of their smokey deatils and scattered beading - everything is quite orgaincally placed much like rust and decay.

Unfortunatley, by the time i had completed these, i was a few hours too late for them to be used in the line up which we worked togther on after a session with Sarah and Natalie. We needed twelve looks so, together we placed all of out garment designs on a table and decided how many of each garment we needed and then picked which ones to chose from the selection. once again my designs were mainly overlooked bat a pair of shorts - and i am unsure as to why, however, we got the task completed and began to wok on the illustrations for the line up.

 

Unit X: James Long - Group File

For our presentation to Tom Norcombe from James Long, as a group have to create file explainign or design journey. it must include things like intial ideas and themes, muse reserach and development, initial garment designs, textiles ideas and samples and final line of twelve designs. i was finally recognised as the illustrator of the group after trail and error from the ither members of the group, thus my job was to draw any functional details we had researched, the sleeve and collar samples nicole had made from the textile designs and also the lines of the final line up. Which i was persoanlly thrilled with and finally felt trusted enough to have a responsibilty within the group. i finally felt like i could make a valuble contribution to the group as not a lot of my other work had been taken note of and i could tell one of the tutors may have picked up on this too when during a tutorial she asked why we (as a group) hadnt been using a few of my samples.

Below are my drawings along with Nicoles fantastic sleeve and collar samples. i am very impressed with the sleeves as they involve a lot of different techiniques. she used two cords of piping on some and two samples from the other girls work and also a ribbed cuff and they look great. 

 

Unit X: James Long - Range Building Workshop

Todays workshop was to help us to start beginning to think of how we can apply our samples to garment designs. I looked at my garment and fastenings research to see how i could use my research in designs. i looked at the idea of using cable knit as thin panels runnding down the arms of a jacket. I drew matching shorts to accompany the design and Sara suggested to me to continue developing the design by changing it slightly and adding more of the cable texture of the sweatshirt. i also extended the idea of the mesh panel from under the arms side to all the way to the centre fold. the shorts developed by getting shorter, and adding cable knit ribbed pockets. Below is a design development working from left to right.

 Above is a photo (upside down i know) of a few rough designs out group came up with during the workshop.

  

Above here is a photo of our designs further along during the workshop. Here we have began to add colour to them. My designs are to the left of the photo. I feel i began to create a good range of ideas and have tried to apply my samples to the ideas and few of the other girls samples to the designs.