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.

Serpentine Galleries

I recently visited the main Serpentine Gallery as well as the Serpentine Sackler Gallery located a short 5 minuet walk away. In the first gallery was an exhibition for Alex Katz entitled Quick Light. The exhibition showcased his more recent oil paintings. The exhibition was interesting to walk through, however I wasn't particularly inspired when I came out. The most I took from the exhibition was his use of colour. A lot of the paintings only used up to 3 colours. Knowing that for my current project I am only to work in mono, I made sure to see what colours worked well and which didn't. Many of Katz's paintings used a lot of orange which was incredibly striking, and when paired with black I became more aware of its effectiveness. 

The two paintings above were probably the most relevant to my current project, as they each show the same model repeated 6 times in different positions. It taught me and inspired me about layout. Katz has positioned them very simply and neatly, however it is extremely effective and the use of an orange background camouflages the skin of the figures, to allow the clothes to shine through. 

I then visited the Serpentine Sackler Gallery, which I found to be more helpful for research for my project. The exhibition I visited here was Etel Adnan: The Weight of the World. It was very much an exhibition full of abstract paintings, which were made up of 2D block coloured shapes. This exhibition gave me even more inspiration for choosing a single colour to use throughout my project. 

Day One at Ravensbourne

After studying for a year at Ravensbourne, I am already comfortable with the building and surroundings. The day was spent inducting new students on some equipment such as photocopiers, as well as introducing us to our first brief of the year. 

I am excited to be studying for a second year here at Ravensbourne, especially to be studying a more specified course to the specialism that I am interested in. Fashion and Textiles. I am hoping to continue the course and go onto the fashion promotion pathway.