I have enjoyed the whole of this project as I felt that there wasn't any pressure as to where it was leading, I was just experimenting as to see what new qualities I could create. I felt there was a natural flow to my project because of this. I started off my project as I have any other, by collecting as much contextual research as possible, my work was then generated from this. I have always found that the more research I have, the more ideas and work I can create. A page in my book of research and a drawing I created from it:
I also found that choosing our own contexts for our work made it easier as this made it more possible to choose things that would link well with your theme. I chose jewellery as my theme as I have always had an interest in it and I have a lot round me so I knew I would find it easy to research. For my contextual words I chose repetition as thought about the repeating links in jewellery; and colour and monochrome which are used more directly in jewellery.
In future I think I need to pay more attention to writing my ideas down n my journal so in the future I can read how I came about these different outcomes.
I decided to choose machine knitting as my workshop as I have always enjoyed hand knitting but have never had the chance to work on a machine. I also thought that machine knitting would create a lot of interesting samples as there are so many different techniques and materials I could use. When I was initially starting to learn the different techniques on the machines I chose to use monochromatic colours such as greys, whites and blacks. At first I was interested in the process of lace holes and ladders as they reminded me of the patterns diamonds are set in, so I started experimenting with that. Lace holes:
I then started drawing onto metallic surfaces to emulate jewellery so I wanted to include this in my knitting as well. I started by knitting with wire by hand as I had seen some of Jurgen Eickhoff's jewellery in Manchester Museum, which included knitted sterling silver wire with jewels on. Photo of Jurgen Eickhoff's work with a photo of one of my wire samples:
But I knew I couldn't machine knit with either of the wires that I had used as one was too uncontrollable and the other was too thick and stiff. I also tried hand knitting with other metallic materials such as ribbon, but found they weren't easy to knit with on the machine. I then came across an artist who used gold leaf on top of his knitted garments so I decided this would work best for me. I also introduced coloured yarns into my knitting. I took the colours from the colours in my photoshopped pieces I have done of photos I had taken of pieces of jewellery.
I mixed these colours with the monochrome yarns I was using before and metallic yarns. After a story workshop I found that I have been using circles and circular lines in my work so I decided I would use these in patterns in my knitting. I think this developed my work very effectively and I think also shows what I have learnt about the way I work.
After this I found it quite easy to choose which samples would be developed in my second project. I am doing the photoshop workshop so I thought that I would use a few of my drawings or photograph close ups of my drawings that could be layered up or repeated as I have naturally used layering a lot in my drawings.
I also thought I could create patterns as I started to involve patterns in my knit work.
The only part of this project that I would say is a negative for me is that I didn't get much chance to look at other students sketchbooks and give each other criticism as I think this helps a lot during projects.
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