10 Portfolio Pages

Pattern Making Using Photoshop

Putting Photoshop Patterns to Use on Stands

Galaxy Inspired Photoshoot Part One

Galaxy Inspired Photoshoot Part Two

Galaxy Inspired Photoshoot Part Three

Galaxy Inspired Photoshoot Part Four

Short Film Still From Converse Ad

Designs For Galaxy Shoot

Galaxy Inspired Illustration

Life Drawing

I feel good about this body of work. I feel like I have displayed different medias in which I like to work, for example film, photography, illustration and painting. I think that it is clear that I prefer to work digitally base, working on my photography. Some comments that I have previously received concern the lack of colour that I have in my work. I think I have really tried to work on this over the different projects and I am happy with the progress I have made in this area. I still enjoy working in monochrome and in some circumstances it is more effective if I do, but it is important to also consider colour and its important role. It is apparent here that I much prefer to work in a digital format than in 3D, however I have tried to incorporate elements of this into my project. For example creating a pattern digitally on photoshop, repeating it and printing it in multiples to then create garments on a stand. Illustration definitely isn't my preferred media to use however attending a life drawing taught me not to focus too much on it and that the best work is usually the one with more imperfections. 

1 - Pattern Making Using Photoshop
2 - Putting Photoshop Patterns to Use on Stands
3 - Galaxy Inspired Photoshoot Part One
4 - Galaxy Inspired Photoshoot Part Two
5 - Galaxy Inspired Photoshoot Part Three
6 - Galaxy Inspired Photoshoot Part Four
7 - Short Film Still From Converse Ad
8 - Designs For Galaxy Shoot
9 - Galaxy Inspired Illustration
10 - Life Drawing

DISORDERLY CONDUCT: Industry Brief Initial Ideas

The briefing of the project gave me a lot of excitements, and a few ideas started coming through upon hearing the theme of the issue (art history) in which it is a possibility that we will be considered for, for Disorder Magazine. We were given the option to work in a small group of our choice or individually. I decided to be in a small group. I decided to work with peers of who's strengths and weaknesses I already new. This would mean that deciding who to be behind the camera and who should be the stylist for example would be a much simpler task. I also find it easier to critique and compromise with ideas when it's with friends you're working with rather than strangers.

The first thing we did in response was our own brainstorms. There are three of us in the group which I think is a really good number to divide tasks and to compromise ideas to make sure that they are unbiased. After completing our individual brainstorms, of which mine included, initial artists I like such as Claud Monet and Katsushika Hokusai, we found that two of us had liked Japanese artists or artists who work in a Japanese style. We looked into this a bit further. Something that was also written on my brainstorm that was greatly received by the group was 'dolls' and 'doll makeup'. After looking through the most recent issue of Disorder I thought that the mysterious creepy element of dolls or doll inspired makeup would fit in well with the aesthetic they have in the magazine. Japanese dolls was put forward as a response in the group, and we all wanted to research into this further. It was when we started thinking about location, did we think about the controversial nature of the idea and also the fact that it might feel like a 'piss take', something that it definitely wasn't intended to be. 

While we were on the Japanese doll idea, we found that we were interested in shooting in a bath, with a slime engulfing the model. We really enjoyed the idea of shooting in a bath and something else that we took from the initial brainstorms was that we were all interested in water. We found another artist that we all loved called Alyssa Monk, who's cool toned colour pallet and vibe was something we found a great deal of inspiration in. It was Monk and Monet's work that we decided to take further and work with as inspiration. I love the painted flowers in Monet's pieces, and I think scattered in a full bath of water with the model close to being fully submerged would create a really interesting image. I would like to experiment with the styling of the model, for example in the first few images she could be styled in a transparent white flowing cloth, whereas in others she could be wearing hardly anything at all. When I think about the shoot I in visage not mush makeup, maybe just mascara and lipgloss, with flushed cheek. ideally the model will look pre pubescent, or in the midst of it, which will provide the back story of feeling as though your being submerged and drowning in hormones. For the hair, it could start with being pulled back, gradually getting looser and surrounding the face to provide a messier look. As far as initial image planning, only a few ideas have been discussed, including having shots that are zoomed into features and others that are zoomed out showing the bath environment. 

Dress to Transgress

The blog can be found at this web address : http://dresstotransgress.blogspot.co.uk/

Although I feel as though my final outcome for this project was a good concept, I could have done more to make it more interesting, and different. I could have challenged myself more by creating more post ideas and having some of the image content being my own. I think that my 'Bold or Bonkers' post had good content and ideas, there could have been more, and I would like to add to this in the near future. As well as add more posts to give it a better platform. The ideas are all there and I think they have been executed to a decent standard. 

Bad Taste - Kim K Klone

Having an interest in fashion journalism, I wanted to come at this brief with a journalistic viewpoint. At first I thought about creating a magazine spread with a written feature, however with time being an issue the photoshoot to accompany the written feature would have ended up being rushed and of poor quality. Due to this I decided to make a blog, titled dress to transgress, to play off the words, dress to impress. Transgress to means to go above what is socially acceptable. The blog I have created will play host to many posts about up and coming bad taste trends, as well as reporting on some out there fashion and beauty creations. 

My definition of 'Bad Taste' had to be thought about before this project began as I had never really given the idea much thought. I now think of clashing loud busy colours and patterns. Some people can really pull off the loud obnoxious look and I am in ore of them for that. I also think that bad taste can be what is classified as mainstream as well as this is often people subconsciously copying what is on trend to seem as though they have good taste, when in reality I am questioning whether it is their own taste or in fact someone else's.

Nicki Minaj is the muse for this project for me. Her out there fashion and makeup dominated the 2011 red carpets. Displaying her 80s inspired colour palette and bold fashion choices gave people lots of ammunition to slate her style and taste, when I respected them. Im not saying I would go down the street wearing the same but I enjoyed the confidence that she had to go and do just that. Tastes change and that is understandable but I would argue that her style now is more kitsch than it has ever been. She now attends red carpets and events dressing like a Kim K Klone, which takes away the respect I have for her.

Gogo Graham Research and Event Planning

After researching for my up and coming designer I decided on Gogo Graham, a transgender designer who's target market is transgender women. A large part of this project is to design a politically driven event for the designer. Graham uses trans models for his work and so this is the political viewpoint that I am going with for my event. 

For my event I need to think about location. I was looking at water and how when light is reflected onto it, it creates a rainbow projection. The flag of the LGBTQA (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Asexual) community is a rainbow and so I thought that this would be a really interesting location idea to look into. I started looking at hotel swimming pools with interesting lighting and aesthetics however I then had to think about budget and how going down this route could become very expensive. So I looked into outdoor lidos. I found one called the Hampton Pool in London which looked perfect. Once the sun beds, children's slides and lifeguard tower were moved it provided the perfect canvas for my event. Next to the pool was a small field, usually used in the day for an extra lounging area, however for my event it would be used for food and drink and socialising throughout the event. A DJ would be set up here providing guests with an atmosphere that they wouldn't want to leave. 

My event will be held in the evening with lights shining into the pool creating the desired rainbow colours. Glow sticks of the rainbow spectrum will be gifted to the guests as well as placed in transparent balloons in and out of the pools. 

Casting will not be an expensive issue as we would use Graham's usual models which are friends of his. The models will surround the pool, sitting on the edge with dangling feet into the pool, with a few in the pool on inflatable sun loungers.  

Tate - Strongest and Strangest Room

The strangest room in the Tate Modern Gallery of which I have visited for my ongoing contextual project was definitely created by Sheela Gowda. Walking in and being surrounded in real human hair that was hand woven by Gowda was nothing short of strange. It was powerful however it wasn't the strongest room that I walked into. This was created by Marvin Gaye Chetwynd, who put together several tv screens. The actual piece of work however wasn't the thing that made it the strongest though. It was how the room was set up for the display. The room was incredibly dark with the main light source coming from the televisions themselves. It meant that viewers of the public were drawn in and consumed by the work of Chetwynd. 

There are many ways in which the rooms exhibiting the work of Sheela Gowda and Marvin Gaye Chetwynd can be compared. They have some similarities, such as the themes they were influenced by, and some differences such as the way they chose to display their work. It is interesting to see that despite the sixteen year age gap, an amount of time in which a lot of social norms can change, they are both interesting in representing the same themes and ideas. The different styles that each have used has taught me what is effective and what isn’t. For example Gowda’s work was of a large scale and covered an entire room, however Chetwynd’s physical piece of work is in one corner of his designated room, but the room is dark and so the light illuminating from the screens draws you in and when seated on the beanbags in front makes you feel as if the scale is bigger than it truly is. Gowda worked in sculpture and upon walking in the room and discovering the media that she used was human hair, despite being impressed I was left feeling strange and slightly disgusted due to the thought of who's it was and how old it was. I love sculpture however I also love video and I feel as though Chetwynd has combined the two in perfect harmony. The images displayed on the screen seamed together provide the interesting video, along with the way in which the screens are arranged makes it more of an installation piece. Therefore I would argue that Chetwynd’s work is stronger. The power in which it had over it’s audience was amazing to see. I saw first hand that captured faces of the viewers who were onlooking what Chetwynd

had produced. It wasn’t just the piece of work but the way that it was displayed that made it stronger than the work of Sheela Gowda. 

Designing

I knew I didn’t want to create a garment for this project  as I would be taking a promotional route. Therefore I decided to make a simple but interesting headpiece for my model to ware for a focused photoshoot and a film. My designs were simple as I’m not great at illustrations, I played around with the placement of my accessory to understand where I wanted it. I decided on the head as I wanted to also focus on makeup for the shoot and so having the accessory on the head would make things a lot easier when it came to having both in the same shots. 

Moodboards for Shooting

I created several mood boards in preparation for my shoot. Location for me was the most important. This would set the desired mood for my photoshoot and my film especially.

Space and Galaxy

After researching into sunsets I became fascinated in the sun, and therefore space. I love the idea of the universe and galaxy. Galaxy matches my purple colour way and therefore I decided to look deeper into it. The idea of space and gravity relates to structure and attachment for me because I don’t like to take an obvious route. You may look at space and the universe and see little structure, however to me that’s all I see. I see variations of perfect and no gravity, I see stars not randomly spread but alined perfectly, and I also see perfect combinations of colour in a space where there is none. The way that us as a species have describe space through illustration is beautiful. Galaxy print has become such a trend recently and I am very much a fan of it. The idea of aliens and what we perceive them to look and be like also interests me. My idea of what aliens would look like is a combination of galaxy print and unusual features. I would like to find a way of producing this combination in my work. One idea of doing this would be with galaxy makeup and an unusually shaped head accessory. 

Picking colour for Mono Project

At first I thought it would be really interesting to work in one colour for this project. Normally I find it quite difficult to insert colour into my work and find myself trying to inject colour for the sake of it. I started off by looking at what I am attracted to when I flick through magazines and look books. I found that I was more drawn to neutral colours like tans and browns. I felt as though this gave a classy feel to work and photography, but at the same time it was also quite boring to look at as everything blurred together. Another colour I was drawn to was blue, I found that it gave things a crisp clear look, and depending on the shades and tones used can set some interesting moods. 

After this I decided to look at a wide range of colours to decide for definite what I wanted to take forward. I created a mood board of colours and found that I was also drawn to purples. I took it down to blue and purple as I could combine the two quite easily until I had decided on just one.

Blue Skies and Sunsets

After researching at the earths structure I decided that the route I was going down was far to broad and I needed to limit it down into something that I could focus on. After just simply looking out the window I stared to look at the clouds, how they moved, how they split and combined. I looked at the sky as my mood, and would use the colour blue to explore it. 

After completing some photography I found that the blue that I was exploring didn't vary in shade, and I became quite bored in the work that I was producing, this was until I began to look at sunsets and then my colour quickly evolved into purple, a colour that I was interested in the beginning.

Natural History Museum [add images]

I didn't know how to go from the brief, structure and attachment and it wasn't until visiting the Natural History Museum when my direction became a bit more clear. I walked into the earth lifetime room where I found out some pretty interesting facts. I found out that if the lifetime of the earth was put into 12 hours, absolutely nothing was there until three o'clock, this is when bacteria was evident, at six o'clock every living thing was found in the water, nine o'clock and life out of the water was evident, dinosaurs came at ten and mammals at eleven, then at just twenty seconds to midnight, humans. This fact blew my mind and made me think about the structures and attachments that were made along the journey that made the earth how it is today.   

Film Workshop

We were split into groups of three for this project which would allow us to mix with people of different talents. Our brief was to create a short fashion film that had a clear set up and pay off. Being promotion students we went straight to thinking about adverts. We had to come up with a product and a statement. We chose shoes as we are all interested in that market, and our statement was 'Be Yourself, Find Yourself, Enhance Yourself'. We thought about what brand to use and so we went with one that was available to us to shoot with, this being Converse. We began to research some fashion films to find what style we liked, and it became quite apparent that we all liked being surprised in an advert, something that we thought John Lewis do quite well. We discussed set up and pay off and agreed that it was very important that it is clear to the audience. We brainstormed to determine what role we would all play in the making of the film and where we would shoot. The idea of the advert was to show a young female getting ready to  go out, presenting herself in quite a glamorous way through makeup, hair and her red dress. It would then show her picking between a few pairs of heels and picking up a pair just outside of the frame. Then you would see her on her way to the event she has been getting ready for and just as she is walking up to the front door of the house the camera pans down and shows that the model is actually wearing Converse. The set up is that the viewer is expecting to see the model wearing glamorous heels to match the rest of her look, but the pay off is the surprise that comes with finding that she is wearing Converse, and that this is the product that has been being advertised the entire time. 

Our advert can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuUgmoU7uW4 

Having only two days to research, brainstorm, film and edit we didn't have a long period of time to film. We took about one and a half hours to shoot the required shots, and we made sure that we got a large variety of angles and shot the same thing more than once to make editing a lot easier for ourselves. What made filming a lot easier was that we had planned out all of our shots in a storyboard format, so we all knew exactly what we wanted to film, how and where we wanted to shoot it. All in all shooting was successful and we got lots of good useable shots. The whole process definitely went to plan.One of the members of the group had experience in editing software, so she took the lead in this part of the project, however we all had opinions on how we wanted shots to flow, the themes and possible filters we wanted etc. Something we all strongly agreed on was that we wanted our them to flow with our chosen music, and that we would do this by slowing down and possibly speeding up certain sections of shots. Editing went really well and we were very happy with our and result. 

Some feedback we received from out tutor suggested how clips could be cut down even more, that they were slightly too long, 'we get it she's putting on makeup, next scene'. We understood his comments, respected them and will try to find time to re-edit the film in this way. Another comment he gave was that the brand and product weren't being advertised until the very end and that there should be more focus on the product throughout. However our peers disagreed with us and understood what we were going for a lot better. That the element of surprise worked really well and the fact that converse were only shown right at the end made it a really professional feeling and was very effective. It was interesting hearing the different comments and after hearing our peers opinion our tutor changed his. Some other critique we were given was the fact that the beginning was possibly too cliche and that seeing someone getting ready to go out had been done hundreds of times so the quickly began to loose interest, however once they received the pay off their opinions changed, and so maybe it was the case in showing less of  the getting ready process, shortening the advert and getting to the pay off quicker. Although a possibly cliche beginning portion, it became apparent that this was the goal after the pay off was received. All in all a successful viewing as everyones opinion was what we had hoped and that the set up and pay off was clear, which was the main goal. 

Photoshop Workshop Day Two and Three

I started of the day by making sure that I completely understood the offset tool and could use it to make boring shapes into interesting patterns. I then was taught about the clone stamp tool and started to experiment using it. It is a great tool that allowed you to clone a segment of an image and blend it in with another to create a more blended image. I then finished off creating my own repeated pattern using all the knowledge and skills that I had learnt so far from the workshop. I then learnt about the heat press printer in the prototyping lab to print my pattern onto fabric. We then teamed up to work and combine our patterns in groups of threes, so that we could create a few designs/collection with all of our patterns on stands. 

I focussed on making one good pattern rather than create a few that I wasn't happy with. I knew I wanted to use the clone stamp tool as it was one that I really enjoyed using. I was really happy with my pattern, it turned out to be very abstract which I enjoyed, and I made sure to give it the same colour-way as my ongoing structure and attachment project. The colour I chose on my laptop however was a different shade than the one that got printed however which was something that didn't go quite to plan as now it looks as though I didn't match it to my colour-way, when my intention was for it to match. 

I think that I have learnt a lot from this week. I had the choice whether to take part in this workshop or not and I almost chose not to as I already had some knowledge on how to use photoshop. But I have learnt a lot from this week and it has taught me many things about different tools that I didn't even know were available as well as how to create an interesting repeat pattern, a skill that is important to have as a fashion student. I enjoyed learning about how to use the heat press printer. I probably wont need to use it often, if ever, as making and designing my own patterns doesn't really interest me, but it was really interesting to learn about the process nevertheless. Working as a team to combine patterns and design on the stand was something that I really enjoyed. I love working with other people and bouncing off of their ideas, and I especially enjoyed working with design students and seeing how differently or even similarly they think about things, especially placement on the stand. I enjoyed working with them and creating designs that were more conceptual and sculptural as well as more wearable designs.  

Accessory Project - Making Final Models and Prepping for Photoshoot

I used this day to finish making my final accessory, and because time was a big issue for me I used my model in my final accessory and just refined its shape and added more to make it a little bigger. For my photoshoot I planned to shoot the reflection of my accessory worn as a choker. However the image didn't shoot as I had planned and so I decided to make it more simple and shoot the accessory straight on positioned off centre to the right of the frame. 

My shoot didn't go as planned but I was happy with the end result in the end as it does feature my accessory clearly, but I am disappointed that it doesn't showcase what I am capable of and I would like to in my own time to re-shoot it. 

Working on the Stand [using photocopies of my models]

I do not enjoy designing, and I enjoy little of the making process, but what I do really enjoy is working on the stand in a more three dimensional sense. I photocopied my favourite model out of all of which I created. I used different scaled photocopies to attach together on the stand in places that interested me and I would want my accessory to feature. I manipulated the colour of the photocopies into my chosen colour-way for my structure and attachment project, which is purple. I found that this made the shapes that I had created even more defined within the photocopies and a lot more interesting.  

I found working on the stand more inspirational for me and the accessory project. I am not a designer and I much prefer photographing/promoting over actually making the accessory, so working on the stand gave me a bit more enthusiasm and allowed me to see more clearly where I want my accessory to go without sketching it. 

I chose to work in the shoulder neck area as I found the structure of the body the most interesting to work with in this area. I think if I were to go back and create something else for this project, I would definitely try more to take a promotional route and tried harder to create a prop as I think I would have been more enthusiastic about the task, and maybe would have created a more interesting piece. 

Accessory Making - Making Models With Household Objects

I brought in some objects from around the house that I thought would be interesting to manipulate and use in repeat to eventually use to create accessories. The objects I chose to bring in were straws, cotton buds and bottle lids. I wanted to use the bottle lids to melt under the heat press to give them a much more interesting shape. However the heat press was unavailable to me and so it was difficult to use the bottle lids in other interesting ways as they aren't very malleable. 

I started with the cotton buds, starting very simply with joining them end to end and seeing what would come of that, I then began to make more geometric shapes which I found to be more interesting. However with the cotton buds being quite boring and of a white colour, I thought about how I could change their colour, but this turned out to look quite messy. 

I then started on creating models out of the straws, I began in the same way as the cotton buds, and it was already looking more interesting just because of the colours of the straws. I then started to cut up the straws without a final outcome idea in mind. I ended up cutting the straws into small pieces and glueing them in a really unordered way. They looked like little different coloured beads in the end which looked very detailed and fragile although it wasn't. It resembled a galaxy which linked to my theme of galaxy and space within my structure and attachment project. 

Accessory

The goal for this week was to create and photograph an accessory or prop. At first I wanted to create something promotion based and make a prop, however then to make my prop in a realistic scale I would have to use photoshop and it was advised against this, so I went ahead and turned my model that I made into a choker. 

The idea for the shoot was to capture the reflection of the accessory through a mirror however it didn't turn out as I would have liked and so I had to create a more simple shoot. I think the simplicity worked best, as there wasn't a lot going on in the image and there is now more of a clear focus on the accessory itself.

Overall I am happy with my final image, but I do feel that it definitely isn't my best work and I could have done a lot better. Unfortunately time was an issue for me during the week as well as things not going as I had planned. I think overall I am not happy as I wish I had gone with my gut and made a prop as I wanted.

Photoshop Workshop Day One

I have some basic knowledge of photoshop, but it is almost completely self taught. I was very excited to learn from someone who has a lot more knowledge of the software and can teach me a bit more about using it to create interesting repeat patterns. I started by creating a small 2cmx2cm white canvas, and creating a circle using the elliptical marquee tool, making sure to hold shift to make a perfect circle. I then defined this as a pattern, made a new a4 file and filled this with the defined pattern. I then took this a step further by duplicating the circle layer in the original file, moving the duplicated layer to the left and offsetting this to create a step pattern. I had some trouble with doing this but soon got the hang of it as completing this task would be integral in making successful patterns later in the week. 

Making Lookbooks

From the London Mystery tour I worked in a group to create a lookbook/trend forecast presentation for spring/summer 2017. 

I had never created a lookbook before and so I was really excited to get started. I also enjoy working in groups when it comes to these types of projects as it allows me to bounce off of other peoples ideas to come up with the best result. To begin the project we made a large brainstorm mapping out the types of running themes we found when we were researching around London. I think this was a really good was to begin as it allowed us to see what themes were important to each of us, and after a short while it became apparent that we were all interested in the idea of gender fluidity in clothing and that a lot of the styles that we saw in London were androgynous and we all enjoyed seeing that.

After coming up with our main theme we decided it would be good to do further research into various websites such as WGSN, The Trend Spotter and The Design Mine. WGSN was really good for researching the street style and catwalk looks from the both recent fashion weeks in New York and London. 

We thought about a name for our lookbook, and first came up with undefined, but wasn't happy with it so thought of a synonym 'Indistinct' and we all felt as though it fitted our theme a lot better.

After researching we assigned each person in our group to create 2 or 3 slides. each person had something different to focus on so that when we came together we would have slides that showed, accessories, fabric, pattern, colour, beauty and hair and styling.  I created a slide on accessories and  a slide on pattern. I was really happy with how they turned out. 

I really enjoyed creating my pages as I really like to create different layouts. When the group came together to share our pages it turned out that we had all used similar colours and they all worked really well together and it was just a matter of putting them in an order that was the most effective and flowed. 

In the end I think we had created a really good lookbook, that came across as being professional and clean. I really liked the minimalistic style we went for and I found that this allowed our themes and ideas to come through without having to tell the audience with words. I think we worked really well as a team and out of 16 groups we managed to come second place.

London Mystery Tour

The idea of today was to walk around and find places in London such as fabric shops, department stores and high end retailers with London and New York fashion week in mind to pick out key running themes that represented spring/summer 18. I started in Selfridges as I knew that it is a large department store and would probably take the longest to go through. I found this shop to be very inspirational. I picked out a lot of muted tones throughout the different collections as well as a lot of loose fitting fabrics running through.

Academic Writing Workshop

For this workshop we were given the brief for our contextual essay and taught basic blog writing skills. 

I wrote a blog all of last year for my pre-foundation course, but I was definitely ready for some advise. I felt as though last year I would forget far to often to update my blog and then try to do two weeks worth in one go and forget vital information. So this year I am going to make a big effort to have my blog up to date at all times with detailed responses and analysis of my ongoing projects.

This workshop also refreshed my memory about the Harvard Referencing System. I found this quite difficult to master in my contextual essay for my Pre-Foundation year, and I sometimes forgot books or websites where I received information and therefore I couldn't use it in my essay due to the fact that I couldn't reference it. I am definitely going to make sure that every piece of research that I carry out, I write down the information needed to reference 

Design Workshop

This was an intense workshop. It was incredibly fast pace and in secured my thinking that I want to go into promotion rather than design. I started off the workshop by creating 6 t-shirts, 6 tops, 6 skirts, 6 pairs of trousers, 6 jackets and 6 coats. I found coats and jackets the most difficult and I found myself thinking too much about it rather than sketching my initial first design ideas.

I knew before completing this workshop that I wanted to go into promotion and not design and this day definitely clarified this for me. It was definitely interesting to have a go at the process, to watch different catwalks and to critique different collections. The goal of the day was to have a completed collection of designs, something that I didn't manage to complete. Each part of the day was timed and went incredibly quickly. I found it quite stressful to complete the desired number of designs and found my self designing because I had to and not because I wanted to. I do enjoy designing but I can't see myself doing it day in day out as a full time job.

Life Drawing

I had never taken part in a life drawing class before, and to be honest I was always quite scared of the thought of going to one. At first I was apprehensive but after the first couple of drawings I found it to be quite enjoyable. I am not the best drawer when it comes to proportion or accuracy but this workshop definitely helped with that, even if it was just a little bit. I know that I don't want to go into design because of this. However the workshop was useful for other things, such as working quickly. Each drawing was timed some quicker than others. I actually found that my drawings that were completed in the shortest time frames were my best, and the fact that I am not the most accurate drawer worked to my advantage. 

I worked with lots of different techniques throughout the course of the day. These included not taking the pen of the paper [continuous line], drawing with your eyes closed [drawing from memory], drawing by looking at the model and not the paper and drawing with less used hand, which in my case was my left. I found working in continuous line to be the most interesting, and the whole point was that the drawing wasn't going to be completely accurate, so of course I wasn't worried about mine not being 'good enough'. However I was least fond of working from memory. I feel as though my best drawings are when I am working from a muse or inspiration, so I found it incredibly difficult to only work from memory, without even looking at the page.

Throughout the day I worked with a few different medias. Pencil, biro, fineliner, oil pastel and charcoal. I found charcoal to be the most interesting as I was able to give my drawing tone very quickly, whereas I had run out of the allotted time to do so when I was working with the other medias. 

Over all I really enjoyed the experience and I definitely wont pass up the opportunity to take part again. 

Designing on the Stand Workshop

This has been one of my favourite days so far on this course. I picked out a shape that has an interesting outline from my research so far in my  sketchbook. I picked an image of a building that was from a post card that I collected from the V&A Museum. I thought the shape was very linear, and would be very interesting to fold and manipulate on the stand. 

I started by cutting out my shape into the rough size of 15x15cm. After cutting out multiples of these I went ahead and scaled this up and down to cut out both smaller and larger shapes. I then traced around the original sized image, and then traced around one centre metre larger of that to create the shapes outline. I found this to be the most interesting when it came to manipulating and layering to create designs on the stand. 

I created many designs throughout the day, starting off with designing shapes and then working to create full garments making sure to incorporate lots of volume. I also worked with other peoples shapes, I found it fascinating just looking a the different shapes people had made and how different they were to my own. 

Idea Development and Research Workshop

The purpose of today was to train myself into a better way of thinking when it comes to research and development of ideas. I found it incredibly useful to take a day just to think about ways in which I can research as it taught me of different methods and how to take one idea and work with it to create something even more interesting with a lot of thought behind it.

I started by creating a large mind map from an image that intrigued me in my sketchbook. I created some subheadings to begin with, such as; who, dimension, shape, effect, light, colour, origin, why and architecture. I was to create 5 layers of ideas/words from each of these subheadings, which upon first thought sounded like a gruelling task, however I was surprised at myself at how far I could go with these words and what I could change them into just by simply taking them that little bit further. I managed to fill two a3 pages full of comments and responses from the starting image and by then it was time to choose 3 words from different layers from different subheadings. My words were depression, purity and change. I chose these words as they were heavily different from each other yet still could be interlinked by taking them further and using them together. Out of my words I made a short poem; 'Change the darkest of times into the brightest of times', a conceptual idea for each of the words, chose colours for the words, draw and trace shapes based on each of the words and finally create collages of images, textiles and fabrics based on the words. 

Working From Meaningful Objects

I brought in 6 objects that had some form of meaning or relevance to my life. I love traveling and seeing and learning about new cultures so all my objects were from places that I have traveled. 

I started working from my objects by drawing them in different medias. Starting from the basic pencil, then working through to biro, fineliners, and then paint/charcoal. I found working with pencil the most difficult surprisingly as it gave me little to no immediate texture and I found it too boring.

I really enjoyed working with a black fineliner which I quickly added water too to use as though it were watercolour. The reason why a liked this technique is because it dried incredibly quickly which meant that in what ever way you smudged the ink it could not be changed. It made the end result look very authentic. 

The Victoria and Albert Museum

I had been to this museum once before but it was quite a few years ago and my memories of said visit are hazy. The museum was larger than I remembered with many different exhibitions going on at one time. The exhibition that I wanted to see in particular was in the fashion room, entitled undressed. Unfortunately the majority of this exhibition was paid entry and so I wasn't able to look around, however I am planning to go back and see what missed. A large part of the fashion room was still available to view for free. This section was labelled History of Fashion. It showcased many different garments dating back hundreds of years. I really enjoyed looking through these and seeing the different outfits and how they were styled on the mannequins. It made me think about clothes being passed down through generations.

The architecture of the building its self is what was really interesting to me. It is clearly an older building, and it made me think a lot about the structure of the building and it what ways it was built. I then thought about the hundreds of connections it has with creators.

We didn't get to see many exhibitions as many were priced and we were unaware of this. I have planned to go back and visit these priced exhibitions at another date.