Rebecca Horn

I love the simplicity of the images, with the strong linear effect continuing throughout. This really relates to my project, through the simplicity of the line, scale and quality of line.

I also think she has the most beautiful drawing style.

Photoshop

Second day using photoshop with Chetna, and this workshop allowed me to actually use photoshop to make some print designs and play around and experiment using the basic skills taught to us on the first day. Chetna also helped massively as she showed us different ways of using photoshop and how the most basic techniques can create great effects - so even though I used basically the same two tools all day I managed to build a number of print ideas that all look really different. I really enjoyed this workshop and found it really useful to see how simply ideas can be made using photoshop.

Digital Print ideas:

First day in Print

Today I had my first day in the print technical block, in which we learnt the basics of photoshop which was amazingly useful for me as I'm a bit of a dope when it comes to anything to do with technology. I can now make patterns, even though I have done this before at Alevel I didn't know of an easier more organised way of doing this other than just playing around and hitting the undo button every 30 seconds. This is the print I liked the most:

Grayson Perry Late Event

Last Friday UAL students hosted a late event at the British Museum to coincide and honour the current Grayson Perry: The Tomb Of The Unknown Craftsman exhibition. Students had organised all kinds of activities and workshops in the style of Grayson Perry's own work. My favourite was the tree of pompoms initiated and mostly made by second year Chelsea Textiles students, as it sounds like a really odd idea, but really worked and looked like an amazing, crazy wooly christmas tree. I made a few pompoms myself and had quite a bit of fun feeling like a primary school kid again.

my pompom =3



There was also a workshop that involved making a small plasticine animal which would then be used as an offering to the gods and in return we received our fortunes, reading it back now it all sounds a little mental but thats Grayson Perry I suppose....

my plasticine cat/fox offering!



The photo quality here is incredibly bad oops... I need to get used to using a proper camera rather than just an iphone...

Stitch Technical Block

I have just finished my first technical block, which was stitch, and I have to say I don't think I was in anyway prepared for this discipline. I hadn't realised how broad the area was, I had always thought it was just embroidery and such, but I was so wrong when I found we could do literally anything - as long as it related back to the research. On the first day we were shown a huge number and variety of techniques we could experiment with, chosing the ones that were most relavent to our own drawings. I chose to work mostly with stitching into stretched lycra, and trapping yarns in between layers of wadding, as my drawings were mostly based on different qualities of line and these techniques best expressed this.
I found the block challenging as it was such a broad subject area, and I tend to feel a little lost when there is so much freedom and not as much structure, however I found the tutorials and all the time with tutors/technicians amazingly helpful. I also found the amount of work quite intense, as I feel I haven't stopped working for the entire two weeks, however I feel I got a lot out of the block and that my work shows this. A few of my final samples are very 3D and quite structured, in fact one looks like a small metropolis! I don't know if this is an indication that I'm more construct or whether I just happened to like this particular technique, time will tell I suppose!
Some of my earlier more experimental samples:

burning through fabric

dissolvable fabric & wrapping/bonding with Bondaweb

dissolvable fabric

More resolved samples:

Final Samples:

Wrapping and Winding

In addition to the drawing workshops, we had a day of wrapping and winding introduced by the weave tutor Lorna, to make samples using our colour pallettes to make interesting designs using different yarns and other materials. I loved this workshop, as it felt like for the first time since we started we were doing something textilesy, and we got to move away from drawing for a little while. These are my little wrappings:

POP UP - Drawing

For the pop up project we had to bring and draw a collection of items with some kind of message or story linking them. I brought a number of objects that had been made out of other disgarded items; so it was a collection of collections.

We then had a number of directed drawing days in which we drew our objects in several different ways; first was directed drawing which I personally couldn't stand as I hate drawing in this way, then we had a day of mark making using patterns and features of our objects, this drawing style was much more to my taste so I really enjoyed it; finally we had a drawing day in which we had to use our imaginations to transform our objects - this was my favourite of the drawing days, however I forgot my own objects on this day and thats why the drawings look nothing like the objects above.