Notes on My Tutor Report - Assignment 4

The overall comments were generally positive reassuring me that it's fine to be nervous and find the artistic process a little strange still, also that often struggling has a positive outcome long term.


Things to Think About

The woven sample of two pictures could be used to create a painting or patchwork.
My sketchbook needs to be less like a scrapbook and contain more actual drawings and thoughts of my own.
My theme book needs to contain more drawings so that the blank space is filled.
Notes that my preferred images are quite sculptural, do the vintage fabric designs I like have a 3D quality.
Use books more for research than the internet as it can provide biased information.


Things to Read Around

The braid makers workshop at The knitting and stitching show.
The british tapestry group.
Moore, Piper and Sutherland and Tracey Emin.
Cathy de Monchaux.
Mandy Pattullo.

Next assignment due January 2014.

Pointers for assignment-

• How am i going to make my love of vintage fabrics and clothes work for a starting point for designing a textile piece.
• Will I be doing a 2d or 3d item, will it be practical or decorative? 

Assignment 4 - Links to online source material.

Online Themebook Sources : http://www.pinterest.com/darlingsvintage/theme-book/

Online Sketchbook Sources: http://www.pinterest.com/darlingsvintage/sketchy/

Assignment Four - Reflective Commentary

Demonstration Of Technical and Visual Skills

I think I managed to demonstrate good technical and visual skills during this part of the course using a wide range of materials and really making sure I tried all the techniques in as many ways as I could. Although it took much longer I'm glad I spent the extra time as I feel I've learnt a great deal. My final sample shows I am able to convert one form of artwork in to another and I'm quite pleased with the outcome. I enjoyed working within a wire structure earlier in the course but found myself wanting to make it in to a piece that had meaning and not just something created on instinct. 

Quality Of Outcome 

I think the quality of my work does tend to vary a lot and although I'm happy with my final sample I wasn't happy with the triangular wire structure I made. Although it met the criteria it just felt messy and too small. Generally though I think the presentation of my work has improved and I feel much happier sending it off.

Demonstration Of Creativity

I think the demonstration of my creativity has been quite weak through this part of the course. I felt that the project was quite exercise based and aimed to teach the techniques and didn't give a great deal of room to use my personal voice to create a piece. Although I was imaginative with the samples I produced when I started weaving I think it's difficult to see my personal voice in the work I produced. 

Context

On reflection I am happy with the work I've produced. I am unhappy that it took so long but I think I'd rather take longer and produce good , well thought out and properly researched pieces than something rushed. There are still lots of areas for me to improve on but I look forward to working with weaving more and I think it has given me plenty of original ideas for my final piece. 

Stage 4 - A final Sample

I decided to base my final piece around this piece by Monet simply because I liked the combination of colours. After a bit of fiddling with paint and crayons I decided to focus on the far right of the picture and just use a very small section as the source as I felt it worked better that way. Below is my final piece with the yarn winding and my colour planning. I carried the plan everywhere with my and ended up finishing the sample on a train to Edinburgh, hence the coffee stains! 

Did you have enough variety in your collection of yarns and other materials? Which kind of yarns etc did you use the most? How do their characteristics affect the look and feel of each sample? 

I think by the end of this part of the course I had collected enough yarns and materials to use for weaving and was no longer particularly limited by it. I personally preferred to just use standard weight yarn in a variety of different colours. I also used a lot of embroidery floss. I did find that I preferred the thinner yarns as they concealed the warp better where as thicker ones left is exposed. I really liked playing with the rug making techniques and loved the way the outcome felt. I can see myself using that again. 

How did you find weaving in comparison to the other techniques you've tried? Did you find it slow or too limiting?

At first I found it frustrating and slow but as I did more I found my own way of working and got much quicker. I really didn't think I would enjoy it but it may be my favourite technique so far! I don't think there are many limitations and I'd like to try combining it with other disciplines such as stitch and printing to create more unusual effects. 

How do you feel about your finished sample? Are you happy with the relationship of textures proportions colour and pattern to the finished size? Is there any part that you would want to change? If so try to identify how and why you would change it?

I'm actually rather happy with my finished sample. I really like the way it looks. I spent most of my time concentrating on colour and proportion. I chose a small section from the right hand side of the painting on and think the result was quite good. However I think there is far too much brown in my sample than in the painting. 

The piece isn't perfect but it's the first piece of work I've produced so far that I really like and feel happy with so I don't think I would change anything. It may be interesting though to reproduce the sample but to block all the colours together instead of alternating and focus on using more textual yarns. 

Was there any stage in the whole design process that you felt went wrong? How would you tackle this process differently another time?

I actually liked the way the design process was so thought out and planned. It meant that the work turned out pretty much as I had expected which is not often the case with printing and other such techniques. I think next time I should use a loom bigger than I think I need so that I have extra space. I found that i was very conscious of getting close to the end and needing to keep the work exactly as I had planned instead of doing what felt instinctive. 

Which did you enjoy more- working from the source material or putting colours together intuitively?

I actually really enjoyed both for different reasons. I think putting together colours intuitively was very helpful for the final sample but I do like to create something that is something as opposed to just a random piece. For this reason I think I prefer working from source material. I look forward to creating less abstract weaving work in the future. 

Project 9- Stage 2 - Excercise 3

I was a little cheeky when I started this part of the course and read ahead as I knew I needed to be speedy having lost so much time faffing earlier on. So i decided to try and incorporate this exercise in to the others as much as possible. I think given the time I spent on the other 3 samples I haven't lost anything and will make sure to produce a small sample trialling any techniques before I start the main piece of work.

Below are the samples I produced.

Project 9 - Woven Structures - Stage 1 & 2

I decided early on to buy a loom from eBay and managed to find a pretty cheap vintage style children's loom. The instructions were terrible so I warped it up totally wrong the first time I used it but it didn't seem to make much difference to my sample.

I did also buy a larger frame and warped it up the traditional way as instructed by the course. I found this really frustrating as all the yarn kept shifting, then getting knotted, then the tension wasn't right. It took ages and my sample didn't really end up any larger than on the childrens' loom. I am glad I tried though as if I want to create a larger piece ever at least I have had a go.

I started just by different coloured wool in to the warp until I felt comfortable with the technique. At first I made it all much too tight. When I felt comfortable I started experimenting with other materials such as pipe cleaners, string and different weights of yarn.

After this I produced a second sample to learn some of the more complicated techniques. This included sumac , curved wefts and knotting. I particularly enjoyed the knotting and the tuftyness it left.

I was advised by my tutor to buy Joanne Soroka's book on weaving and I must say it was immensely helpful and I found it contained more information than the notes. It was also really nice to see where weaving could lead and the types of work it could produce further down the line. I really did think I was going to hate it but I surprised myself and kept being inspired by lots of things and had a great idea for a final project to do with fireworks.

Overall though I've been pleased with the work Ive produced so far in this part of the weaving section.

Project 8 - Stage 2 - Exercise 3 & 4

Did you enjoy inventing constructed surfaces? Were you suprised at the results? Can you see a connection between your choice of materials and the types of structures you made? Regular irregular small or large scale. Which samples worked best and why?

I enjoyed inventing constructed surfaces much more than I thought I would at first. I especially liked making the braids. I found it rewarding to watch the patterns emerge and once I'd got the hang of it It was quite a quick process. I did find myself being surprised by how a simple plait could produce something actually quite interesting. However other times work I thought would be interesting just ended up as a knotted mess of materials. 

I tried not to think too much about giving the work a theme as I didn't want to box in my creativity and I just tried to go with it but I think for smaller structures I used smaller thinner materials where as in the larger pieces I had more freedom and not worry about clogging up the work. 

I personally enjoyed working on a larger scale as I did with the final grid. Although I didn't weave in to it much I just enjoyed the chunkier structure and felt that I could then add smaller details where necessary essentially giving me the freedom to work with all my materials. In the smaller piece I didn't have this option as it was too small and fiddly to work the open space.

How accurate were you in matching all the colours in your post card: 

with paints?

I thought I did quite a good job matching the colours with the paint. I selected a small area of the bird so that I didn't have too many colours to choose from.

with yarns/ other materials?

With yarns I thought I did the best I could given the limited supplies I had when I did this part of the work. Looking back though I still don't think the matches were terrible.