Intentions

Intentions - Final Tutorial And Overall View Of The Brief.

After my final tutorial with Lynn, I stopped panicking a bit about my work as she put me at ease about what I had done. She helped me pick out my samples to display and gave me some last minute tips about what I have left to do. It was really good seeing everyones final work all come together and to see how people were reacting to the end of the brief. Lynn gave me some really good suggestions on other ways that I could have pushed my work further and if we had another week, I would have defiantly gone forward with my work a bit more. 

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Overall, I have really enjoyed this brief. I was a bit nervous at first as it was the first brief of second year and it was in our specialism subject. I believe that I have really experimented and pushed myself in this brief. I have used materials, threads and fabric that I would have never even touched last year and I think I have taken a risk where ever I could. I think that I have learned more these past couple of weeks about my own work and style than I have any other time. I think I know what I like to use, what I don't like and how far I can push myself. The best part of the brief I think has been the weekly tutorials as it gives me a chance to look at everyone else's work and almost inspire myself to push forward. It also helps with brain storming ideas and getting an opinion off other students in the same situation as you. If I had more time on this brief I could have really pushed myself on the use of line quality in my work and experimented a bit more when it came to what the line means.

Intentions

Intentions - Illustrator Workshop

I feel that after attending the Illustrator workshop that I have developed a new skill to use during my course. However I did find the software very difficult to use as it is something I have never come across before, hence all of the note taking. It is something that I would like to revisit and learn more on in the future, but for now I shall stick to photoshop.

Intentions

Intentions - Irish Workshop 

I really enjoyed the Irish workshop on how to use the machine. I did find it a bit tricky at first as it is quite an old machine to use. However, I did find the machine to be a bit limited in what I can do on it. For what I want to focus on, machine drawing, I think that it will come in handy at some point in the future. 

Intentions

Intentions - Sampling - Applique

After creating the water dissolvable fabric sample I decided to move onto something that would give me some colour, but nothing too harsh, almost hints of colour. During a tutorial, Lynn mentioned about appliqué samples to another student, when looking at them I felt they would fit perfect in my brief. I decided to give it a go. These sample are make using the same top fabric, a horrible shiny silver colour that I bought online, but I think it fits well with my brief on the buildings. The sample on the left is exposing bright colours and the sample on the right is exposing brown fabrics. I actually really like these samples. Again it fits in well with my distorting image and making it unrecognisable. 

Intentions

Intentions - Sampling - Water Dissolvable Fabric

After experimenting with trying to add colour to water dissolvable fabric using stitches. I tried adding colour instead by using strips of fabric. I really liked the samples that I created using the red and yellow thread but I wanted to take that idea further and try something new. I choose really bright colours to try and make these sections stand out more and be the first thing that you notice about this sample. What I also like about this sample is that it keeps with the theme that I have been experimenting with about morphing and distressing the image to make it almost un-recognizble. 

I liked the water dissolable fabric so much and the sample that it gave me that I decided to re-create the sample but using patterned fabric so that it stayed solid. I picked the brightest fabric I could find to be the backing fabric as I felt that if I used to at the front you wouldn't, at first, notice the pattern of St Pauls. This is one of my favourite samples that I have created throughout this whole brief as I think it sums up everything I have been trying to do in one sample and I also think it sums up London perfectly, almost like the landmarks are the first thing you see (which aren't always great and exciting to look at) but when you look further, you see this bright, vibrant city.  

Intentions

Intentions - Sampling - Changing The Image

After experimenting with photoshop and the dissolvable fabric, I thought about what I really liked most about these images/samples and it was the fact that the image was no longer a solid, rigid image. It had been distorted so that it was barely recognisable. This is something I really liked.

With this sample, I tried to keep the line quite think so that they moved around and were manipulated when I washed the fabric away. I really like this sample as you can only just tell what the image was beforehand. 

I also like the mix of colours, the dark, building like colours, then to the bright red and yellow (which I took from the colours used on the London Underground Tube Map) I think it gives the sample something else, as it's not just in the boring greys and browns that I have been sticking too in my past samples. 

Intentions

Intentions - Tutorial - 4th November 2013

Some notes I took during the tutorial

Today, I had a tutorial with Lynn about my brief so far. For the first thirty minutes I was the only person there, which worked in my advantage really as I had time to really talk about my work and gain ideas and inspiration. I found I came away from the tutorial with a clear path of work that I have to do. I was feeling a bit lost at first but Lynn has given me some good things to think about. The main things that we discussed was -

- Experimenting with stitch -> trying to be a little bit more adventurous with the stitch, rather than it just being straight. Use different machine feet such as the tailor tack foot or the cornely machine.

- Scale -> what happens if I were just just focus on one section of my visual research and blew it up to a huge scale. Creating samples on a much larger scale to try and experiment with detail

- Line Quality -> What happens if I were to building the line up. Adding threads on top of machine stitch. Using different threads when creating hand embroidery samples, what about paper threads, thick wools, string.

- Experiment -> to experiment with things, try not to feel like I'm too closed in and to become more free. Not to be afraid of things not working out.

I found this tutorial very helpful and feel like I know what to do with the rest of my brief. I was starting to feel a little stuck with my samples but having had my tutorial with Lynn I feel a lot more confident. 

Intentions

Intentions - Photoshop

These are some of the photoshop experiments that I have done.

Unfortunately, I could not make it to the timed session as I was quite poorly. So after my Illustrator workshop I asked the tutor who was running the sessions what to do and she suggested that I follow the handbook that was given out and to have a play around myself and see what I could do on my own. I downloaded a Photoshop trial on my laptop and decided to have a play around myself. 

I found this very easy as I could go at my own pace and play around with all the different tools. I did find it hard at first as I had never used Photoshop before so everything was brand new to me. However after a few times playing around I found my way and begun creating some really interesting samples. As I was teaching myself how to use the program, I did struggle a bit when things went wrong (for example the sample on the bottom left was an accident, I was trying to layer an image and it came out stripy) however it was just a case of experimenting and seeing where I got too. I found it a lot easier to use the shortcut keys rather than the mouse as I knew what to do rather than clicking all the different buttons. For example when opening an image I found it a lot easier to use the shortcuts -

(as I have a mac) 

cmd+ O -> Open and image

choose the image that you want

cmd + A -> Select the whole of the image

cmd + C -> Copy
cmd + W -> shut the image down
cmd + V -> paste the image
I really enjoyed experimenting with the magic wand tool. This allowed me to crop down and image and cut out the sections that I didn't want. At first I had no idea what to do with this tool and every time I was trying to crop and image the wand just completely covered the whole image. I found it a lot easier to do each section at a time -
I highlighted a section that I wanted to erase
Then Edit -> Clear
I also found the shortcut 
cmd + D 
very useful as if anything went wrong, this un-selected anything so I could start again
and then pick another section and then repeat.
I was also experimenting with the different effects that you can add to a layer. I found that 'Multiply' made the layer become almost transparent and blend with the other layers. With the sample in the top left, I decided to add a 'Colour Burn' effect to this, which I found quite good as when you layered another layer on top it changed its colours to blend with the other layers. 
Overall, I found Photoshop a good way to experiment with images and to create different ideas quickly (more quickly when I get to grips with the tools) I would quite like to learn more in order to expand my skills and to see what else I could achieve with it.