Fabric Sampling

I have now started testing out different textured materials to see if this would help me to create new textures. Some of these worked really well especially the ones with the bold colours and patterns.

Whitworth Art Gallery Lace Collection

I managed to organise a viewing of the lace collection at Whitworth Art Gallery to help me with my visual research and ideas for sampling. The visit proved very stimulating as I have now thought of many new ideas for my sampling. I viewed lace from Honiton, Italy, France and Hungary.

This piece reminded me of spiders webs in old stately homes, maybe I could introduce this into my designs?

This piece looks like it has devil faces hidden in it, maybe I could mix my drawings of rams skulls and tigers heads with lace designs? It also reminded me of the Raphael drawing I saw in a book in MMU's special collections which has hidden ghostly faces in the back ground. 

I also liked the pieces that included gold threads, metallics would work really well in my work, it would give it an even more decadent feel.

This piece was so bold and beautiful, it was made by 12 rose point motifs mounted on velvet. It made me think about sewing back on top of my work. 

I loved the effect this lace cuff gave as it is layered up, I need to think about how I can layer up my designs to create more designs that can flow and be copied.

Print Processes Experimentation

As I didn't get to learn hand printing in my first year, I wanted to spend my first week experimenting with different processes. This helped me to get a feel of how I wanted my work to look. I realised I didn't want my pattern to be the main focus, but the textures created by layering up the pattern. I think I am starting to create some interesting textures using my colour scheme and linking it with my theme, making it look more aged. After getting more confident I started experimenting with different materials using the devore' process.

Creating a screen

I found this photo in Dazed magazine and gave me the idea of breaking up my patterns and piecing them back together to make them more contemporary. I started to test this out with a few of my drawings I had already done and thought it had worked effectively. I created my final piece for screen which I thought looked very interested as my drawings had become distorted.  I decided to create my print using a mixture of lines and block colour just like the fragmented photoshop pieces I created.  But I also thought it felt quite flat, so when I am doing my prints I have decided I want to do processes that will create texture, such as devore'.

Monoprinting

I have now started to draw from my photo's I took at Nostel Priory. I now wanted to draw more images, such as a lions head and rams skull, I think this will give me more to work with when create patterns for my print screens. I have also done some monoprints as these give a really nice rough aged effect. I also printed the negative of my drawings, I really liked this effect, I have now decided to put a negative of some lace flowers onto a screen as these monoprints worked so effectively. On my prints with this screen I want to create textures using different print techniques. I got inspiration for this from my textured fragile pieces I created on photoshop yesterday. I like the aged look that I have created, it fits very well with my concept.

Photoshop

I have taken some of the photos I took at Nostel Priory of patterns and started editing them on photoshop, picking parts out of them and giving them a lace quality. I think this has worked very well and would like to try and achieve some prints that have the same qualities.

Lace

I started by drawing from my photos that I took of lace. The most appropriate way I found of drawing lace, was to draw continuously without looking at my page as this makes the shapes more important and my pieces flow more. This is important to me as I want to be able to piece my drawings together on photoshop and make them look like one continuous flowing piece, so I will be able to create prints from them. I also started to edit my photos of lace on photoshop, to see if I could create anything that would be suitable to put on screen for printing. I found that even though these were interesting to look at, none are suitable enough to be put onto a screen as they aren't complete and I want to get a better feel of a pattern.