Fashion Collaboration

I have to admit, going into this project, I was very skeptical. Having to fill a box with idea's for fashion and textiles in 2036, wasn't really sounding like my cup of tea. The brief was so vague and then in tutorials we were all being told completely different things - everyone was very confused. Would it be marked? Would it not? Nobody knew, and it kind of just seemed like toy day in primary school, a little end of the year fun; which is not what everyone wanted when they were trying to get a proposal written and finish off any other loose ends. I just don't think many of us were that excited about this very short collaboration.

Saying that however, it actually turned out to be a lot of fun. I found it quite difficult work with the fashion students as they did have a lot of other stuff on, so it ended up being myself and Laura (my new partner in crime) doing a lot of work by ourselves and then bringing it back to the fashion girls and seeing what they thought.

I wrote out the context, in 20 years time the ice caps are melting at an exponential rate and it was time to act! The Amphibious Age was coming, and the human race had to adapt. A little far fetched I know, but the brief did say we could do anything! In the end, when we were all the groups presented their ideas, it seemed that no-one had designed for a happy future - the next 20 years are looking bleak!

I had so much fun working with Laura, we melted plastic bottles between PVC and then used sublimation printing on the top of this to act as an underwater camouflaged armour, that is also making use of all the plastic that is being endlessly dumped into the ocean - that's what we were going for anyway, haha!

I would like a chance to collaborate with other courses again, just maybe for a little  longer (two weeks seemed very rushed, especially when everyone had so much other stuff on). 

Putting together the final collection

Putting together our final collection was really fun. I'm so happy with what we were able to produce as a group, I think we all did really well! We didn't achieve everything that we set out to, but we had a good try! We were working on fabrics and surfaces that I would have never thought of working on before - this project has really opened my eyes and working with the other girls was a great opportunity. I'm so proud of what we managed to accomplish in the four weeks.

here is a link to the video that we made as part of the final collection also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJGu1L_s7uw

The Gym

 In the first week of the project, myself and Marie visited Style Gym (we discovered that one of our print technicians also works here, so she put us in contact). We took photos to the put our designs into context later, and to see what sort of space / surface they would fit into. Here are my context designs.

Photoshop work

I've been working digitally a lot for this project, as we have then been using the sublimation printer to transfer the images onto neoprene and other sports fabrics. I've had a lot of fun doing this, I struggled at first, working onto a dark background is something I would normally do, but I produced some things that I feel really fit the brief in the end. 

Glow Sticks!

After a tutorial with Kit, we realised that the colour palette on our mood boards did not match the colours that we had been working with on the cork in the print room. Our boards were very dark, whereas the tiles were more day glow, very light and airy. That's not what we were going for. Myself and Emily went into one of the spare studios and played around with glowsticks for a while - such a great way to spend the afternoon! The way light can be captured amazes me, you can feel the movement in the photographs which is what we were going for. I will then be working with these in photoshop to come up with some designs for the sports club brief! hopefully these will fit our original colour palette a lot more.

Working together in the Print Room

After each preparing some screens, we then took to working onto cork tiles with opaque binders. I'd never used either of these materials before, but I would like to use the binder a lot more in the future, when printing. We were working with the idea of working with a sustainable and soft surface that can be used on the walls and floors of the gym and also be easily replaceable if they became damaged.

Initial Ideas

After the first meeting we had, our tutor mentioned that we had a lot going on and it was unclear what our goal was - we decided to refine it down a little more and just focus on drawing from architecture and playing with light for the time being. One thing that we thought would fit quite well was photographing and filming glow sticks - the colours were neon just like we wanted, adidas use a lot of light in their stores and in their adverts. Plus, who doesn't love messing around with glow sticks? It definitely made for a fun afternoon!

Group Project: TEAM ADIDAS

At the start of BA2b we were given a new brief in which were put into teams and given a brief from a selection of companies; they ranged from designing a new look for the interiors of Stagecoach buses to working towards an interiors range for Comme De Garcon, an avant garde fashion line.

My group was given a brief from Adidas (just pretend but you know) to design a range of innovative fabrics for the interiors of a new sports club. Coming into it, I was really excited - I was getting to work with three other girls that I'd never worked with before, but I knew that they were all hard working and dedicated. After the last group project at the start of second year, I had been quite wary when I found out we were doing another one this term too - I didn't really have the best group last time. It was reassuring to know I was working with people that I knew would also be putting the effort in. We started brainstorming straight away - thinking about what we thought of when we thought of the brand and what we normally see in their adverts and on their social media. 

At first we wrote down all of our ideas and realised we would have to really zone in on just a few... After all, we only have 4 weeks! We decided in the end to create work inspired by modern architecture with quite an industrial, geometric feel to it - using neon / glow in the dark schemes, using ideas of light and movement also. Here are my first few mood boards for the project. 

In the Print Room

I feel like I had a pretty productive morning on Friday - I got to uni at 9.30 (despite having only got out of bed and 8.45... I was up late last night photoshopping) and worked solidly through till 1.30. I feel like I've come up with a few nice pieces, although I will be working into them a little more later on.

When I got there I wasn't entirely sure what I was doing, my plan was to paint onto an open screen with procion dyes and then push these through with the print paste, but onto paper rather than fabric. However I had no idea if it would actually work, thankfully though, we have the most wonderful technicians and Yasmin told me that this process actually works a lot better on paper - win for me!
Originally I only had 3 pieces of A2 card, but Yasmin also recommended using watercolour papers, as they are absorbent. The uni shop has a range, so I bought a few just to compare the results. 

Bockingford watercolour paper - 190gsm
Waterford *hot press* watercolour paper - 190gsm
Waterford *cold press* watercolour paper - 190gsm
Somerset print making paper - 300gsm

dyes 0.5g/5ml water
charcoal - turquoise - violet navy - cerulean blue - tan brown

Lecture today with Charlotte Abrahams

Oh my goodness, what I fantastic lecture. This one, I felt, was very different to any that I've been to before - Charlotte is a writer, who just happens to work in the design field (but also has to do other jobs to "pay the bills") so her talk was filled with so much inspiring work from artists and designers that work with the concept of wallpaper.

It really helped me change my focus, and brings me away from the idea of wallpaper having to be repeat, and that they too - just like in the fashion world - could be bespoke pieces or mass produced on a roll. It was a real eye-opener, and will really influence my future practise.

From about the age of 15/16 I've known that I've wanted to work in interiors, mainly with the idea of designing wallpaper (that's just been my ultimate goal, even though I was never entirely sure if that could be someones actual profession - obviously, now I know it can, and that's fantastic!)

I really like the idea that wallpaper design could be a piece of art in it's own right, and isn't just about a print on paper and it doesn't have to be for a mass production market. It can be completely individual, lone standing and still utterly beautiful - whether that is in a single drop hanging by itself, or in a large piece that fits across a whole wall. I'm certainly very inspired by this morning's lecture - I'm booked into the print room tomorrow and I can't wait to get experimenting with this new inspiration!

Photoshop work

I'm not really sure what I want my final outcome to be for the new project yet, which I'm thinking right now is a good thing. I normally have an idea straight away in my head, but not this time and I'm liking it. I'm able to be a lot more experimental than usual, which is nice.

I put some of my smaller drawings into photoshop (I'm planning to put my large ink paintings in too, but I need to get to the larger scanner for that), so my birds and small abstracts and just started messing around really.

Obviously, I know that the competitions that I want to enter will require me to submit a design appropriate for a wallpaper and then a design for fashion in repeat for Bradford. For this reason I came up with small and large scale designs in Photoshop, that could work for either brief.

I just had fun, working with what I had. Considering I only had scans of 5 birds and then a few ink splats, I feel like I managed a lot - the possibilities are endless!

Birds

Birds are something that I have always enjoyed drawing, but I've never felt I could work them into the different themes that we get set in our briefs at uni. As this one is pretty free however, I've decided to get back into them.

Sticking to my current idea of English Beachscapes, I've decided to bring he birds into this as well by focussing on British birds of the coast. 

Here are some quick ink studies that I made of the Pied Wagtail.

Getting aggressive with inks

I spent the last few nights creating abstract paintings with quink and indian inks. I wanted to capture the essence of a stormy ocean scene, inspired by the photographs I took on my day out in Cromer. I managed to fill an small a5 sketchbook as well as an a3, so I was happy with what I had achieved. 

As well as the inks, I used bleach in my paintings (I'm pretty much obsessed, ink and bleach will always be my favourite technique) and for this reason I prefer painting with quink ink because the bleach takes out a lot more of the colours, leaving this lovely burnt brown and goes to white when used on my Winsor and Newton inks.

I'd like to scan these in and make some really interesting repeats for the new project.

The two projects that I've decided to enter are the Bradford Textiles Print for Fashion and one for Wallpaper design.

A day in Cromer

On Wednesday, myself and my house mate hopped on the bus and spent the day exploring the beautiful coast in Cromer. The beaches here are lovely and it was a truly wonderful day. After having a little wander, taking plenty of photo's, we went to one of the local pubs for a pint and to do some painting. I thought that painting in a public place would put me on edge, but it was actually the most relaxed I'd felt whilst painting in a really long time!

My favourite thing about the beach this time of year is the way the low sun shines on the cold, damp sand to reveal the reflection of the beautiful scenes of Cromer's town. The colours were so fantastic, and the way the church shimmered on the shore was just magical.

New Project

So we were briefed on the new project last week, and it took me few days to decide on what I would like to focus on, but by the end of the week I had decided. I had made a couple of mood boards but this little one below is the one I feel sums up my ideas the most.

Keeping it simple

 English Beaches, stormy and limited colour palette, working to an interior brief.

I'm looking forward to this one.

Putting my Designs into Context

It was so kind of David Beckham to model some of my designs.

I don't know this man's name, but I've decided to call him Rupert. He looks like a Rupert.

Thank you David and Rupert, I very much appreciate your help.

I'd also like to say a big thanks to Zac Efron and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Great job chaps!

The Final Collection

Digital Development

Over the Christmas holidays, I really got into this project. I haven't mentioned this before in any other posts, but I have really been struggling with my time management since the middle of the last project. I work part-time outside of my studies, I always have since I was 15 so this isn't a problem, but this time I just took on too much. I ended working 25 hours (sometimes 30) a week and ended up spending more time at my place of employment than I did at my place of study. I realise now that this was the problem, so had planned to catch up what I was behind on over the holiday season.

As it happened, I ended up getting lots of shifts over this time as well - I only actually had 5 day when I wasn't working and two of those were Christmas Day and New Years Day! So I didn't get as much done as I had hoped, but I did manage to bring this fashion project to a near finish, so I'm proud of that. I managed to experiment quite a bit with layers and what-not on Photoshop and ended up with about 65 designs and colour ways.

Here are 16 of them:

Tile Inspiration

Instagram is a big part of my life at the moment, I use it not only for my interests and hobbies outside of my studies, but it's also been a massive help in my research this term.

Tiles

I'm sure you'll all be very happy to know that I made it out of my rut alive and well. I had to do some serious Instagramming, Pinteresting and sleeping (probably too much of sleeping) but I came across something that helped me spark up a new idea!

I am a massive fan of Print Fresh, a textile design company based in Philadelphia, and I'm not afraid to admit that I am probably slightly obsessed with their work at the minute (you can see there Instagram account here) and they posted something that really helped me along. They work with current trends in mind as you would expect and had posted some small paintings of pretty tiles with the hashtag 'ss17'

I then began working in a tile format, but still very much inspired by Indian design ideas.

I then put these first few paintings into Photoshop and spent an hour or so coming up with some quick ideas. 

Below, you can see a few of my ideas, just experimenting and seeing what works. The outer two designs I have to say I do not like, they're far too busy and just don't really flow - however, I think it's nice to see how putting a design into a half-drop repeat instead of just repeating it normally can give it a very different feel. This is going to sound silly, but it makes it look less, well... repetitive?

This was my happy accident (below)

I took the little square and mirrored it to create the full flower-like tile. After the putting this into a repeat, I saved it and then - I'm not even sure what I did, I must have knocked my mouse or something - because the design on the layer beneath that I had hidden appeared. 

IT MADE IT PRETTY

The white was a little over powering now that I can look between then two, thank goodness for that little slip of the cursor because it improved this quick little design massively!

Initial drawings

Two of my first drawings for the new brief. 

I had planned to focus on Indian architecture, but now I'm not so sure. 

I've always struggled with perspective, ever since high school. I remember in college in one of our still life drawing classes, we were sat in front of one white wooden in box, in which just had to make a simple line drawing of - this did not go well. My tutor then went on to add more and more boxes into the centre of the room for the next three hours, until we were left with a mountain in front of us and also drawn - badly, in my case - on the page in front of us. I just couldn't get the angles of everything right, clearly something I'm still struggling with. 

Sort of in a rut now; unsure of how to move on.

*slump*

The fashion brief

The third project in my second year is a fashion brief; this is something that makes me feel quite uncomfortable as I haven't worked in this area since I was in high school (and believe me, my textiles GCSE pieces are not something you'd want to see)! One thing that I am very exited about is working towards a trend and really being able to feel as though I am designing for a purpose - this is a massive motivator. We only have four weeks for this project, so it's going to be fast paced - this I am scared about. I guess it's a good lesson for what it's really like working in industry though, so definitely a learning curve.

We have to work towards the trend forecasts for spring/summer 2017. I collected images and came up with this moodboard. I've decided that I'm going to work in menswear just to give myself a real challenge (as if fashion wasn't already going to be hard enough for me) and I am super excited that the colour palette is quite earthy but with bright oranges and navies thrown in there too.

Another of the big trends that I noticed was a great deal of travel related colours, imagery and pattern amongst some of the reports. I really enjoyed working with the SADACC theme in the last one, so I would like to carry on my research into South Asia. My dad went to India in 2014 and I just remember him coming back with great photographs of architectural ruins and gorgeous temples. I think this is something I would like to use in my work this time around.

Photoshop Work

Photoshop patterns using my bleach samples.
I soon realised when making these that due to the nature of my ink and bleach paintings, they weren't going to repeat well digitally - the repeat was so obvious because of the bleeding in the colours at either side of the page and I just don't feel that I could in anyway, make it work.

So I began just taking elements and marks from my drawings and created the patterns digitally, so that they can repeat vertically and horizontally. These are my first few outcomes/progress shots. I'm really happy with what I have achieved today.

My favourite:

I layered a ditsy stripe over the main pattern, with the layer effect *hard light*

I just love the amount of texture in this one.

Devore Sampling

Using the same technique that I did with my bleach / ink paintings, I used applied the devore paste to the cloth and the used a cross-dying technique in which I intended to dye the viscose and the silk fibres very opposite colours. 

The plan:

4 velvet & 4 satin

I wanted to create a contrasting look using bold colours for the self and the viscose fibres, however the only time this worked was with the lemon yellow and bramble pink. The violet direct dyes for the viscose with the turquoise acid dyes for the silk was the one I most wanted to come out well as it was inspired by my favourite of my ink and bleach paintings, but unfortunately it didn't work on the velvet or the satin. Both of the samples just came out with a very dark purple colour on both the fibres. When tried the other way around, it worked a little and although the violet was quite light and only visibly different to the viscose fibres in a certain light, I was happy that there was a least a small difference.

I definitely prefer using this technique on velvet rather than satin, probably because of the obvious difference in texture. I think this works well as my brush strokes were quite large, so burnt a lot of the fibres away, but I think for more delicate prints the satin would be beautiful.

Nana's Story

My Nana moved across to England from South Asia in the 1940s, you can't tell from looking at me that I'm one quarter Indian - but I promise you, I am. Considering the project at the moment is based on the pieces at the SADACC Trust, I thought it would be nice for me to incorporate her story into my work, so to add a personal touch. She lives up North (my parents grew up in the Manchester area) so I don't get to see her very often, I also know very little about her journey, so I am very excited to phone her now and find out as much as she can remember!

Bleaching Adventures

After painting patterns with watercolours for a while, I wanted to try something a little different when I discovered how well bleach worked when applied on top of Brusho dyes. This soon became my obsession and I ended up filling a sketchbook with these very basic marks. Although you may not be able to tell because I didn't paint them on large paper, they are a repeat, a very linear repeat, but still. Just a simple stripe.

At the moment, I thinking about developing these further and working with devore paste on to velvet and satin - my two favourite fabrics to work with. As the bleach takes the colour away from the inks, I feel like this will translate well when the same marks on painted onto the fabric with the devore paste as this will burn away the viscose fibres in the cloth (just leaving the silk). This will also then allow me to cross dye the fabrics, using acid for silk and dyrect for the viscose fibres, each will take the colour for those fibres, which I'm hoping will give these patterns a whole new look.

Colour on colour for life.

Hand Painting Patterns

I had booked myself in to the print room quite early on into this project and I'm going to be honest, I was still trying to come up with some idea of what it was that I wanted to be doing. Although I found the SADACC gallery very beautiful, I was finding it difficult to pin point an aspect that I felt inspiring. The problem was, that it was all so inspiring, that I just felt lost and overwhelmed.

After many attempts at the very popular paisley patterns that seem to be everywhere recently, I began to get quite frustrated and so just began painting in a very linear style - at the time, I didn't expect to get as obsessed with it as I did (I've filled a whole sketch book with the things!)

It was just so relaxing - if ever you are feeling stressed or panicked, I would seriously recommend this as a relief method! I think that's why I became so attached the painting them.

It was also interesting to see how the Procion dyes were different on each fabric, they were much brighter when painted onto the satin (right)