Showing posts with label workshop. Show all posts
Showing posts with label workshop. Show all posts
I was really looking forward to the stitch workshop because it is the area I thought I’d choose to specialise as it suits the way i’ve always worked in the past: I like to explore techniques, exploit the use of a material and use a variety of ‘unusual’ materials. However, once I started, I found that I wasn’t enjoying it very much. I think this could be because I have done it so much before. I knew how to use a sewing machine, dissolvable fabric, bondaweb, etc. And therefore, I didn’t find it exciting or fascinating. Whereas with the other specialisms, they were new to me, especially weave! Even print, I have done that before but not digital and not the method of screen printing using stencils and making our own dyes, so I still found it fascinating. But that just didn’t happen with stitch: I think i’ve just done it too much before.
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Research: C
Analysis: B
Subject Knowledge: C
Experimentation: C
Technical Competence: C
Communication and Presentation: B
Personal and Professional Development: C
Collaborative and/or Independent Professional Working: C
‘Your sampling has a strong colour identity and some playful research. Your presentation is clean and professional but no need to insert samples i plastic sleeves - surface texture is key. Your sketchbook is very controlled - try and be a little less conscious in future.
I always thought that weave would never be something that I enjoyed. But after enjoying wrappings so much, I went into the workshop with an open mind.
Not going to lie, I didn’t enjoy day 1. Day 1 consisted of threading the looms which was a really boring and tedious task. But I later learnt that it’s actually really important the loom is threaded correctly otherwise the design produced will be very different to the one you had planned.
Day 2 was probably the hardest day: this is when we actually started weaving. Plain weave was simple and easy but when it came to twills and herringbones and diamonds, it became a lot more difficult and challenging. But I found it easiest to understand if I coloured in the squares to achieve the pattern I desired, and then re-writing the squares as numbers. Once I had tried these out, some more successful than others, I became a lot more confident on the loom.
The following days consisted of playing and experimenting with different materials, yarns, loom set-ups and warps. I really enjoyed working with the coloured warps as I think it really added to the design: it changed the way your yarn looked and produced some really interesting patterns, colours and effects, especially when the warp was made with multiple colours. I also enjoyed playing with the thinner and thicker yarns and how they work together to produce interesting patterns and textures.
When I was just experimenting, I hadn’t given proportion much thought, but now it was time to develop this. After my tutorial, I decided to base my proportions on one of my wrappings and essentially, recreate the wrapping as a weave. I think it was by far, my strongest work as the weave looked so much better now that I had considered the proportions. What I thought might be interesting would be to repeat the same (similar) design on different warps and looms. By the end, I had turned the original wrapping into three different weaves, each one looking completely different. For me, comparing the three weaves and the original wrapping was really fascinating because I never expected them to look that completely different. But these were my favourite pieces from the weave block and my most successful.
- Consider proportion: both colour of yarn and thickness of yarn, maybe looking at wrappings for inspiration
- Best research is wrappings, especially the more playful ones
- Collages: make sure to remember the neutrals and the black (only a hint of black so not overwhelming)
- Carry on using coloured warps, try using the wool one where there is a gradient.
I was apprehensive about the wrapping workshop because weave is something that has never really appealed to me. Much to my surprise, I thoroughly enjoyed the wrapping workshop and now, I’m even thinking that weave is a possibility for specialising. I prefer to work 3-dimensionally, particularly with slightly raised surfaces and enjoy using a variety of materials which is why I think I particularly enjoyed it. It was interesting using the colours and textures of items within my box to produce, essentially, a line pattern; it is a way of ‘drawing’ that I had never considered, but one which I want to pursue and will definitely use again within my work.
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Day 1 was focused on outlines and silhouettes, whether that being of a singular object or a group of objects. My favourite activity of the day was creating dot-to-dots of one of our objects and then having a partner complete it. I particularly enjoyed this task because it’s a lot easier to create the dots than to complete one. When you’re creating the dot-to-dot, you have the object in front of you so you know how it’s going to look and which order the dots go in, yet when you are presented with the dots, you have absolutely no idea where to start so the results were quite magnificent. I didn’t enjoy drawing with adjectives, for example, ‘what would my object look like if it was hot?’ I found that activity very challenging. Creating the hybrids at the end, however, was very enjoyable. Combining the different techniques used as well as suing different objects from the box each time, created some fabulous patterns, again, another way that I had never considered drawing.
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