Illustration references

 

Visual Communications (week 1)

This week I've started into my second elective, Visual Communications. On Monday we were all given a word and for this week, we are to come up with an illustration that communicates this word. My word is 'Assemble'. I quite like it - not too complicated and I already have lots of ideas based around the word. For Monday and Tuesday we continued with thumbnail drawings - ideas for our main illustration -taking any ideas associated with our word.

 

^ my desk on Tuesday!

During the last few days, we've been working with our light, medium and heavy weight fabrics. I've taken a few of my favorite designs and translated them through each fabric. So far, my favorite fabric's been the light-weight muslin. I love how it flows and almost adds it's own life to a design. It's not as strict as the heavy-weight oil cloth.

Some beautiful pictures of Christopher Kane's Spring/Summer 2013 show from 'Show Details'.

 

 

 

 

Knitwear Assesment!

Today we set up our knitwear for assesment. It was alot of hardwork but I was really happy with my outcome. For my main piece, I first made an ombre pink shawl, with wide stitching and fringing. I experimented with a variety of yarns: I shredded a white t-shirt and soaked it in berry tea (which gave the yarn a dusty pink color); used white netting and bought yarn; made a colour story based on the artwork of Australian installation artists 'Pip and Pop'; and finally I made my own arn. I put my newly aquired felting skills to use and added some watered down poster paints to the wool before felting it. Then whilst it was being felted, the colours ran sublty into each other and into the wool, creating a cool tie-dyed yarn. From the coloured yarn (and also some white netting) I made a little neckpiece to add to my display.

 



 

 

 

 

This morning we begun working on our croquis, bringing our 3D mannequin work back to a two dimensional quality. It took me a few goes to realise that what I place on the croquis, can't just 'float' on the body, they have to be structured around the body. I chose my first shape from my mannequin pictures and begun to photocopy, trace, enlarge and extract from the image, applying it in different ways to the croqius. It was lots of fun really, seeing what works and working out new ways to transform the silhouette. I had a little time on the manequins today aswel. Unlike what I did previously, I isolated  parts of the body and focus on the silouettes of these parts. Pamela and Mairead went oround to us today talking to us individually about our pieces. Feedback is always welcome!

 

 



 

 

 



Rodarte

Laura and Kate Mulleavey are the founding duo of California based Rodarte. The sisters studied liberal arts before deciding to follow their true calling. Creating fanstatical outfits that could be found in one of Grimm's tales, in a Japanese horror film or a ballerina, Rodarte has gained cult (and celebrity) status and a dedicated following amongst the fashion elite.

 

I've always been an admirer of Rodarte since spotting some of their spider-web knits and reading an interview in Instyle. Yesterday, they were the first to spring to mind when we were being introduced to knitwear. They create such beautiful and elegant designs, almost fairy light, that seep with angst-y feminity.

 

 

I think these jerseys are just beautiful. The combinations of colours, yarn and spaced stitching is an artform in itself. The piece modelled by Natalie Portman below is simplistic but utterly unique.

 

http://www.interviewmagazine.com/fashion/rodarte-natalie-portman/

Knitwear

Today was allocated to knitwear with Liz. We were told to be prepared - to know how to cast on, knit, purl and cast off. Thankfully I've known how to knit since I was seven, but I had to teach myself to purl over the weekend (thank goodness for Youtube tutorials!)

Liz explained some of the terminology associated with knitwear to us and show how you can make yarn out of almost any kind of material. The importance of colour was especially stressed. We all chose a colour story from our sketchbooks/contextual study and were brought to the yarn room to pick out our coloured yarns. I picked, from my contextual, a picture of a piece done by Australian contemporary artists, Pip and Pop. Acid-y and pastel colours prevailed (as they always do with me) and I picked out some pretty lilac blues, bubblegum pinks, lime greens and lemons.

Felt making was really interesting in the second half of the day. Liz showed us how to create felted yarns from pure wool and also how to add colour and different threads tp it to create pattern.

We don't have knit again until next Tuesday (our knitwear assesment!) I must do some planning as to what I'm going to do for my final knitwear piece - what yarns to use, stitched, size kneedles etc....
I'm pretty excited for this knitwear project!

 

 

 

 

    (my felting)

                                   





Day 1 of Fashion Design Elective

Today is my first day of my first elective, fashion design. Granted we've only had one day so far - I'm loving it! We were given our brief last Friday and told to analyse selected images from the 'To Sense my Space' project. I chose my boat shed image and (of course) Gaudi's Sagrada Familia from my contextual. On showing my images to the tutors, they agreed that I could derive so much from the Sagrada Familia, so that's my chosen piece to analyse!
 From the analitical drawings, I drew some really interesting shapes. Not just from the outline and line drawings of the fantastic church, but also from close up images of it's details and construction images.

 

 

A selection of my shapes derived from the Sagrada Familia:

 

 

The shape above was the most interesting shape that I found. It was one of the unique totems on the steeples of the church. I think it's almost sculptural even as it sits on the page in 2D. By looking at it  I could immediately envision it on a mannequin. It's almost grotesque in shape but I can also see a natural side to it (maybe like coral or an interesting bloom.)

 

 

I then photocopied the shape to a grand scale, preparing it for the mannequin...

 

... And begun to cut out some of the smaller shapes
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And on to the mannequin!!

 

 

 

When I started to fit the shapes to the mannequin, I kept them close to the body, as if almost trying to create an outfit. I was soon corrected by one of our fashion tutuors, who explained to me that we shouldn't be creating something to fit the body, but a sculptural piece with the body as a platform. It must also have an interesting silhouette..

 

I think these trials on the mannequin have taught me alot. I'm definately going to study each one, taking into account what's working in the piece, and what's not. I didn't exactly come up with any masterpiece today, but the whole day was such an amazing learning curve!

 

 

 

 

 

Exactly one week until my assesment - eeek! During the last few weeks I've been putting together and arranging my sketchbooks, contextual and actual pieces for assesment. The next few days are going to be very important in putting my final display together. Tomorrow I'm going charity shop and/or attic hunting for something to use as a memory box. I also must get some prints done and do some sketches. Four days and a couple of hours.....