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)

The SADACC Trust

The SADACC Trust is an absolutely gorgeous hidden gem right in the centre of Norwich. I am so grateful that the starting point we have been set for this project is this wonderful place, otherwise I probably never would have found it.

Group Project

The first project of my second year is to create a 4 colour repeat, hand printed onto a silk twill.

I was quite lucky when finding out my team, as one of my best friends was going to be in the same group (you can see her blog here). We worked together on exercises to help us understand the repeat: mark making, speed drawings, working in pattern. I really enjoyed these lessons, it was a great way to get to know the other two girls in my group and also be able to see if our drawing styles worked well together. We spent a few lessons like this, learning about repeat structures and experimenting with textures, then it was time to decide on a theme - Team Tropical was born!

  I began drawing and collecting idea's for the theme, I found that drawing leaves that I'd seen at the Eden Project over the summer were the thing I was most interested in.  We drew in black, as this is what we would have to do on the drafting film, so we thought we'd better get used to it.

As a group we did some colour testing in down in the print room and eventually decided on our four colours. At first I wasn't too keen as they were extremely bright, which is something I would normally stay away from, but I understood that it fitted with the Tropical theme and that the colours would work well together when overlapping on some layers. 

Colours: Bright Turquoise, Pink, Lemon Yellow, Bottle Green

The bottle green was a life saver for me, it really toned everything down.

We the spent about two weeks putting together our repeatable structure and then translating these marks on to our drafting film. This bit was a struggle as I was often left to work on this on my own, due to members of the team not turning up on time, or even at all. Alas, it did get finished eventually and then we were ready to print!

I've always adored the screen printing process, so I couldn't wait to get stuck in! I had the problem again of people not turning up, so i was setting up on my own, but thankfully we have wonderful technicians that are super supportive and helped me a lot until the rest of my group arrived (although one girl was almost two hours late, so we were already on the second layer of colour by the time she arrived!) 

 Above: progress shots

The whole printing process took us about four and a half hours, and was worth every second! Although after looking at it closely, we realised that there was a few sections that needed more detail, or when making the drafting film we'd obviously completely missed small sections; and like I said, the colours wouldn't have been my personal choice had I been doing this on my own. I still feel it works really well as a repeat - there's no obvious line where the repeat ends, and even though we only used 4 colours, we've been able to make 7 with over lapping the colours we had whilst printing.
Below you will see the full length of fabric, and three of my favourite parts, the sections I felt worked well.