Friday, January 1st, 2010
HAPPY NEW YEAR FAITHFUL READERS!
(if there are any)
x
Saturday, December 19th, 2009
When we received the brief for handmade graphics, everyone was really pleased. the subject – british birds – seemed to delight everyone, and i know i looked forward to starting very much. The first workshop included making our own stencils and spray-painting them on to the walls – i really enjoyed it, because there was no faffing around, we just did it all there and then. i was really impressed by everyones stencils, and it helped give me an insight in to my new classmates. To see them work ‘under pressure’ revealed alot about what they were like.
i enjoyed experimenting with stenciling at home, but i found using a scalpel for smaller aspects of my work to be detrimental to my hands, it took weeks for the cuts to heal!
We then did the vinyl scene with Kid Acne – that was awesome and i enjoyed every second of it. nothing critical can be said of that.
when the vinal thing was completed(ish) i tried sewing birds on a machine. i was already familiar with stitching by hand and machine, so it was nothing new. However this is where i struggled. We had received our brief, and as fantastic as it seems to be able to do anything you want (that’s to do with british birds) the reality was not so fantastic. I had loads of ideas, but every time i stared one, it didn’t work out right, or would be too fiddly, or someone else was doing it. It was really really frustrating not being able to take to something and start working on it, and i got super angry at myself, and thus was a veritable grizzly bear to my friends. not cool. i went to see claire and she asked me what i’d enjoyed the most. truth was, i’d enjoyed everything, but every time i tried to put it in to practice toward a final piece, it would go wrong. Maybe the problem was that i was concentrating too much on a final outcome and not enough on the creative processes. Eventually i got sick of faffing, and just decided in hand sewing birds, for what purpose, i don’t know, but it was soothing. i decided to do a cushion, don’t know why, but it certainly was a trip back to year 8 textile classes. thankfully the deign on the cushion isn’t a tacky shooting star. nor is the cushion made out of denim. (Yeach!) I’m not happy with the concept (a cushion – how banal!) but it worked out well. i love the designs.
Saturday, December 19th, 2009
Here are my two finished cushions, created for the British Birds brief as part of my design specialism in handmade graphics:
Here’s a close up of cushion number one:
And a closer look at cushion number two, which features three little birds sewn onto the bottom right hand corner of the cushion:
For the finished project, we also had to demonstrate a ‘graphic’ outcome, so for mine I chose to provide an example of what the cushions might look like featured in a home/fashion magazine, such as LivingEtc:
Thursday, December 17th, 2009
Short entry today, it’s almost time to hand in so its all hands on deck.
I decided to keep with the idea of cushions, so, i’m busy making 2, entirely from scratch, and embroidering them. Lets hope they turn out alright!
Thursday, December 17th, 2009
Today i met up with Guns (more commonly known as Katie) and we had lunch. She is doing structural design, so she showed me the workshops and machines and we sat at a bench and chatted. During this time i wasn’t idle! I’d pilfered some stiff canvas material scraps from the fashion department, and began to sew some more birds. It was rather relaxing. All in all, a good day, caught up with friends, did some awesome work, and rexaxed abit…. why can’t all days be like this?!
Oh, and here are the fruits of my labors:
This is the first one i did, it features one bird outline, sewn with fishing wire – i was aiming for it to be ‘invisible’ but it didn’t turn out like that. (Fishing wire is actually slightly green and pink.) The other bird started out as a sort of barcode bird, but the lines were blurred, and it was soopa fiddly, so i stopped.
This second attempt worked better, with the lines further apart. i really like this one!
lastly these are some sketches of cute little birds and possible candidates to be sewn!
Wednesday, December 16th, 2009
to year 8 textiles. I am embroidering a cushion. God knows why, well actually i do know why, after panicking muchos, i went in to uni to talk to my tutor. I’m sure i looked rather pathetic and desperate as i questioned her as to what exactly i should be doing. Her answer was frustratingly simple: do what you’ve enjoyed doing the most so far. awesome.
But i don’t know what i enjoyed the most, i loved all of it. I’m still panicking quite a bit. Sat down with matt and asked his advise on which pieces of work looked the best. So here i am sewing birds on to cushions (badly – am so tired), as it is late at night and i have nothing else to sew on to.
It looks awful. Time for bed methinks.
Tuesday, December 15th, 2009
Panicking slightly here. Loads of people already know what they want to do as a final piece. It’s frustrating because everyones ideas are fantastic, and they’re all stuff i’d like to do too! So out of sheer desperation and in a desire to stimulate my mind, i’m searching through all my draws and wading through crap to find some kind of material to work with.
I found some gardening wire, and some really thin red wire too. I’m thinking big wire sculpture of a bird, i’m thinking fairy lights…. HMMM could be good, non?
Oh, and these are supposed to be bird wings…
HMMMM, as it turns out, no. Making a wire sculpture is harder than previously thought, especially with the kind of wire i own. I went to wilkos to get some thinner stuff, but was told that they ‘don’t stock garden wire in the winter months’. Brilliant. What if i had a major gardening problem to sort out?
Sunday, December 13th, 2009
Having reached a bit of a ‘creative block’ with my work i turned back to spray painting and stencils, just for the fun of it really, and seeing as i had run out of card, i just used what ever i could find. A couple of examples are below.
Saturday, December 12th, 2009
This week I’ve been experimenting with sewing and different ways of portraying British birds using material and thread.
I started off by creating the outline of a bird in flight on a scrap of material.
My tutor liked the contrast of the simplistic lines with the pretty patterned material. Personally I didn’t like it because the wings were very tricky to create, and this shows.
It was made harder by the fact that I was using an industrial sewing machine rather than a domestic one, which meant the only function available to me was straight stitch, making it very difficult to create curves!
I carried on with the theme of creating simple line drawn birds:
I didn’t like this one either, perhaps due to the colour of the thread. I’m not sure, but something about it isn’t quite right.
Next, I set to work creating a patchwork wing out of different pieces of patterned material:
I like the effect of the patchwork, but I don’t like the fuzzy material that it’s on (all the birds were simply created from scraps of material that I found in my sewing box).
Eventually I managed to get my hands on a domestic sewing machine, so I had a go at creating these wing shapes:
I really like these wings, they were really enjoyable to create on the sewing machine, and I’m pleased with how they came out.
Friday, December 11th, 2009
So I’ve finally gotten round to taking some photos of the vinyl work we created with Ed (Kid Acne). I really, really enjoyed creating this bird filled scene, and it was great to experiment with vinyl for the first time.
Ed liked the idea of having an image of some pheasants strung up by their necks on a line, and so this is one of the elements that I created:
The detailing of the feathers was particularly fiddly and time consuming to create, not to mention a strain on my poor fingers, but I’m really pleased with the result.
As well as the the dead pheasants, I also created some birds that were slightly more alive, such as these lovely song thrushes in mid-flight:
And, slightly larger than the others, I created a swan out of a sheet of white vinyl, while some of the other members of the group created the reeds surrounding it:
I also took some photos from a little further back to show what the bigger picture looks like. Everyone put in such a lot of effort for this project, and I think the results reflect the time that was put into creating them:
