End of City Lights Project

The last two weeks have been super busy for me, hence the lack of posts! My deadline for my final studio project of my second year, City Lights, was yesterday so I had a lot to finish and organise in time for this. But now that it's done I can share what has happened in terms of my work recently.

In my last post I talked a lot about screen printing and different dyes, but since then my project took a different turn and I moved away from these techniques and chose to focus on my digital work. My reason for doing this was that the prints I was creating felt like a step back from the sophistication of my digital designs, lacking the depth of the original scanned in collages. I realised I could not successfully recreate my work in a hand printed form, and that I would be better off spending more time developing my work in a digital form. So for the last two weeks this is what I've been doing, spending hours sat in front of a computer screen, which my eyes hate me for! However I feel this was a lot better suited to this project, and I'm quite happy with the outcome, which is a series of repeated patterns along with some visualisations of the contexts they could be used in.

The repeated patterns were created in Photoshop, as were the visualisations. I've always enjoyed digital work, so this was quite fun for me, although sometimes frustrating when the patterns wouldn't line up properly, or when the colours on the print outs differed from the screen. However I overcame these problems, and I feel I've improved my Photoshop skills quite significantly, which will be very helpful for third year. I printed out four of these repeating patterns onto A2 paper for my final outcome for this project, as well as some single designs onto A2 and some smaller groups of 9, to try and show how my designs work in many different scales and compositions. I also created an A5 booklet containing my visualisations of my designs being used in fashion and interior contexts. Some of these designs and visualisations can be seen below:

My favourite repeated pattern design

A page from my booklet featuring my designs as a wallpaper in a bedroom setting

Designs for backpacks

Another page from the booklet, exploring scale and placement

One of my compositions of 9 designs

 I also created a logo for this project to bring my work together and to get me thinking about how I want to present myself and my work in third year.

Logo for this project; also used on the cover of my booklet

As this project progressed I realised that the focus for my work is moving away from the methods of printing textiles by hand and towards digital, but still with a strong focus on my own drawings, experimenting with colour and composition. For me exploring fabrics through screen print and embroidery is still interesting, but it is no longer the area I feel fully engaged in. Likewise fashion does heavily inspire my work but I don't want to be making the garments myself. I feel that I am better suited to digital and drawing techniques, and I enjoy the challenges I face in these areas much more than in textiles. I already feel like I have much more focus and direction for my third year now; here's to hoping I feel the same when it starts!

My set up in the studio, which included my own photos, collages, experimentations with fabric and stencils, as well as my final outcomes.

Screen Printing, Photoshop and Life Drawing

During the week at uni just gone I spent my time developing my heat transfer dyes and printing more, as well as doing some more Photoshop work with my scanned in collages. I also took part in another life drawing session, the outcomes of which I will be putting up on my drawing blog soon.

On Monday I was in the print room working with some more stencils and heat transfer dyes, which I hoped would continue on well from the week before, however they did not turn out as successful as I hoped. The stencils are not working out for me as I can only use paper/card in the heat press, and no matter how thick the card is the dyes still leak through after one or two prints, which means to be able to produce a length of fabric I would have to cut an awful lot of stencils. It also limits how much I can play around and sample this technique because I end up spending most of my time cutting out stencils. Another drawback is that the thicker card makes the colour look patchy as the dye cannot reach the fabric properly.So for now I'm leaving the heat transfer dyes alone, although I may do a large scale one later one because I still really love the effect the dyes create.

Different fabrics with heat transfer

Moving on from the heat transfer dyes I decided to screen print some printing pigment through an acetate stencil onto cotton to play around with layering up the colours. I used the ready made screens in the printing room but if I take this technique further I'm going to make my own screen to use. But for now the ready made and blank screens are an easy way to experiment with my ideas. I quite like how they turned out and I feel this could be a good alternative to the heat transfer dyes.

Two patterned screen prints then a blank print on top

A new technique I tried out towards the end of the week was mixing up my own reactive dyes to screen print with. This involves measuring and mixing the ingredients for the dye myself, and it can be used in the same way as pigment but it dyes the fabric rather than sitting on the surface of the fabric. I found using these dyes quite difficult however as they print differently on different fabrics. I think they were interesting to try out but I feel I do not have enough time left in this project to actually get to grips with using them, so for now I'm going to leave them as samples.

Acetate stencil next to the printed image

I used two stencils; three small dresses and a
larger shirt one

Besides my experiments with printing I also continued with my Photoshop work and started arranging compositions of my scanned in images of shirts and dresses. Alongside my fabric outcome I also want some prints or other paper items featuring my designs, as I feel they work well as an outcome themselves. Because as much as I want to recreate them in fabric, I also want to show the original designs themselves featuring my collages.

Possible composition for a print

Incorporation of one of the coloured stencils

Overall it was a good week but I don't feel like I achieved much in terms of my printing; having to leave the heat transfer dyes left me feeling like I'd taken two steps back from the position I was in last week. However I know I can keep pushing this project forward, and hopefully I will feel more positive again on Monday.

Heat Transfer Dyes and Life Drawing

During the latter half of this week I further explored stencils and heat transfer dyes. One idea I had was to put the stencil over the fabric and use it as a resist so the dyes only transfer in the shape of the stencil, and then use this technique to recreate the images I had made earlier in the week. Below shows my experimentation with this technique and its varying results.

I used normal cartridge paper for the stencil and I found that although it resisted most of the dyes it was not quite thick enough to resist the blue dye, due to its strong pigmentation. So for next week I bought some thicker paper and card and have made new stencils to try out. However I really like how theses samples turned out, despite the issue with the blue dye, and I feel this is already quite a development on the dye work I did earlier this week.

On Thursday I also had a three hour life drawing session which was a nice break from my current project. The pictures below show some of the work I did, but I will eventually post them properly on my separate drawing blog, which can be found by clicking on the link on the right hand side or by clicking here. Please follow this blog to see updates on my life drawing and other drawings I'm currently doing.

Heat Transfer Dyes and Stencils

My first few days back at uni after Easter have seen me really push my project forward. Before Easter I was starting to feel a bit lost, having developed my sketchbook work and collages as far as I could go and therefore needing to move into fabric, yet not feeling ready to do so. This was because I had decided I was going to make a fashion garment earlier on in the project but had now began to change my mind, not wanting my work to be limited by the fact I had already decided the outcome. So on Monday I decided to forget about the outcome and just get on with some experimentation with heat transfer dyes.

In order to try and recreate the torn paper in my collages I painted the heat transfer dyes onto newsprint paper then tore them into strips. I then placed these face down on my fabric and put the fabric into a heat press at 200 degrees for 40 seconds. I tried a variety of different matte, shiny, opaque and translucent fabrics so I could compare the different effects created, and the different strengths of dye that transferred. The resulting samples can be seen in the picture on the right. They have a long way to go till they start resembling my collages but they're a good starting point.

Also on Monday I played around with placing cut out stencils of clothing over my collages then scanning them onto the computer. The stencils were inspired by clothing I had seen on a fashion trend report, which I quickly sketched onto paper then cut out with a craft knife. Originally I did these so I could see how my collages could work as prints on garments, but once looking at the resulting images I realised they could be more than that. I showed them to my tutor and she suggested that they could be a print or pattern themselves when they are lined up together, whether for a garment or for a wall hanging or something else entirely.

Yesterday and today I continued to play around with this idea, cutting more stencils in coloured paper and editing some on Photoshop so they have a combination of different collages, like the one on the above right. This idea has really excited me and given me focus with my project again, generating a whole load of new ideas that I should hopefully be able to explore in the remaining three/four weeks of this project.

London: Food etc!

My last two blog posts have focused on my art related visits in London but I have to admit that most of the time was spent enjoying delicious food in cafes and restaurants! So here is a small selection of photos of that side of my trip, and some of the sights I saw.

London: Art Galleries

Aside from visiting Liberty, I also went to three different art galleries whilst in London; Tate Modern, Whitechapel Gallery and Bankside Gallery. The first two I planned to visit before I went to London as I knew they would be inspirational for my current project City Lights, whilst the latter was just out of general interest.

At the Whitechapel Gallery I went to see the Adventures of the Black Square exhibition which was focused on Abstract art and society 1915-2015. It was a really interesting exhibition as it allowed me to see how abstract art has incorporated new techniques and materials over the years. I also got to see the work of some of the artists have been researching, such as Saloua Raouda Choucair, which was quite exciting, being able to recognise and see their work in real life. I wasn't able to take pictures in the exhibition but I picked up a leaflet and postcard to use in my research folder for my project.

I did take a quick photo of the lit up work of David Batchelor however, as I thought it was really interesting compositionally having his photos laid out like this. His work is looking at abstraction in everyday urban areas, taking photos of single white squares or rectangles that are found whilst walking through cities. He has been taking these for over twenty years so it is an impressive collection of photographs that was almost mesmerising when showed as a slideshow, with the size and shape of the various white squares and rectangles morphing into one another.

Tate Modern was the first place I thought of when considering places I could go for research for this project, as it has a large collection of abstract art. However they also had an exhibition on Louise Bourgeois' work, where I saw the piece below which is a fabric art book she made inspired by a river. It is a wonderful exploration of colour, texture and pattern and for me shows the many ways a single theme can be interpreted into a multitude of different images.

Below is a painting by Julian Trevelyan, another artist who I have been researching recently, that I saw in the Tate. This piece is called A Symposium and portrays seemingly fragile structures that are interlinked to form a delicate web like pattern, highlighted by blocked areas of colour.

Overall it was a successful trip and provided me with lots of new ideas for my project now and for my art in the future. I feel its important to not only see current exhibitions but also to view museum and gallery collections so that I can be informed and inspired by art of all ages and styles; only this way will I be able to create work that is new and exciting.

London: Liberty of London

My recent trip to London gave me the chance to finally visit Liberty. I've been meaning to visit for ages but just haven't had the time, however as I was in London for four days so I was able to fit it in.

Every department floor felt like an exploration of colour, pattern and texture, seemingly reflecting the designs of Liberty fabrics themselves.

Seeing lots of different designers work in the flesh was also very inspiring, particularly the clothing ranges of designers that I have been researching for my current project. But perhaps most inspiring was looking at the layout of their products and decorative items, which is an area of interest for me as I want to improve how I present my own work in my studio space. 

The building itself is really interesting too, and a quick look on Wikipedia reveals that it's not as old as it seems, having been built in the 1920s in the Tudor revival style, using timber from two ships; HMS Impregnable and HMS Hindustan.

Although I spent quite a lot of time in their I would've loved to have stayed longer as there is so much to see; hopefully I can go again in summer!