Assignment 5 Tutor feedback

Tutor report

Overall Comments

Christina this is a well-executed assignment following a strong structure of drawing, research and sample making.  You have used these three elements to successfully explore your ideas and ambitions for this final part of the course.  It was interesting to read your feelings on receiving feedback, these emotions are all too common and I know them well.  Feedback is a balancing act of showing you what you have done well and guiding you to further improve your work.  I think what we make comes from a very personal place that finds criticism hard therefore creative people like you (and me) who put their work out in the world have to be brave.  

Feedback on assignment 

Demonstration of technical and Visual Skills, Quality of Outcome, Demonstration of Creativity 

For this final assignment you developed ideas from the previous work that stood out for you in this course.  This is an important way of working and I encourage you to continue to reflect on earlier outcomes and ideas to move your creativity forward.   It was an interesting review of your work so far showing you to be honest with a deep understanding of what you are interested in and what stimulates your creative ideas.  This thoughtfulness and freedom to think broadmindedly has led to some interesting outcomes.  I believe it is good that you have found the course material restrictive.  This suggests you have a strong idea of how your own design process works which if you follow will come up with the best outcomes for you.  The course material become more of a guide as you move through the levels and even at this level it is not necessary to follow it exactly.

Through research and drawing you created some interesting samples to work through your design idea on revealing light through a hole or slit.  This idea of the ‘slit’ is strong both visually and as a concept.  You used drawing and sample making to explore its value and to understand how to take it into a final piece.  The samples you have sent are constructed with skill yet remain experimental.  You have communicated through them what this ‘slit’ might be.  The samples have been made in a range of fabrics in vibrant colours.  I particularly like the sample where you have used fabric and stitch to create the space of the ‘slit’.  The colours are feminine and sumptuous with the potential to frame a view or scene in the gap they have made.  It would have been interesting to see what you could have come up with if you had made a whole series of these samples, constructed from fabrics and other materials like plastics and metals.  It would also be interesting to explore how the size and shape of the ‘slit’ affects the impact of the sample.  Would a narrow gap give a different feel to a wide one?  Does the gap need to be vertical, if so why?

I find your final piece rather eerie and provokes an emotional response in me.  This is partly because you have displayed it on a mannequin’s hand but I think it is also something to do with the textures and colours you have chosen.  The ribs on the surface of the fabric remind me of the raised veins on the backs of hands.  Your cutting through is as you intended very like the surgical cuts seen in your research.  These reveal the bright delicate structures below.  The piece has been well constructed and looks like it would function well as a glove if that is your intention.  

Sketchbooks 

Demonstration of technical and Visual Skills, Demonstration of Creativity 

For this assignment you have continued to use drawing to generate ideas and work out design problems.  This includes using collage and mixed media to explore texture and colour.  You have used your drawing effectively often by repeatedly drawing the same idea until you come up with something that seemed right to you.  This is an excellent way of working out ideas and planning any sampling you intent to do.   

Learning Logs or Blogs/Critical essays 

Context 

Your assignment contains an interesting and broad range of research.  You used contemporary fashion imagery and your own photography of surfaces and textures to stimulate ideas for this assignment.  Some of the research, particularly the images you collected on Pinterest are very vibrant and exciting.  To make the research more useful I suggest you write about what it is that appeals to about the work and how you can use this in your own work.

Throughout this assignment you continue to reflect effectively and show yourself to be self-critical.  You write articulately about the thoughts and feelings that relate to your creativity.  Your learning log contains technical information, exploring decisions you needed to make and reflecting on previous feedback.  I am particularly impressed that you are able to embrace the idea that concepts and artistic ideas are of value when producing a piece of work.  This is evident in your notes on what using a glove might mean in this assignment. 

Pointers for assessment

• Refer to the assessment guidelines on the oca website, Research ▷ By Course Area ▷ Textiles ▷ scroll down to page 2 ▷ Assessment Guidelines: Textiles
• Aim to organize your work so that it tells the story of how you went about achieving the outcomes.  You did this by conducting research, doing drawing and making samples.  You may wish to display this on a board.  For example, for this assignment an A2 board with some of the most relevant imagery from your research along with a number of your drawings and samples would explain to the assessor how you went about developing the glove piece.

Well done Christina and congratulations on completing Exploring Ideas. 

Tutor name	Rebecca Fairley
Date	10th December 2014
Next assignment due	Course complete

gn

Glove Colour Pattern and Texture

When I went to find the right colour of red-purple fabric for the outside of my glove, I was thinking that it had to be fine and pliable, so that I could use it a bit like the tissue paper in the sketchbook sampler shown here. But with slits showing an underlying layer of fabric and 'friendship bracelet' inspired netting in the contrasting fabric.

Sketchbook sample showing tissue paper
PVA and gel pen design

I was lucky enough to come across this fabric, that is made already covered in quite deep parallel pleats, with much finer weave in between them.

Here is what it looks like against cream background. The colour from this photo is very inaccurate - it's much less blue than this in reality. 

But you can see that the underlying fabric is visible as long lozenge-shapes of paler colour between the soft parallels.

I made slits in the valleys and tried this over pale orange fabric. This gives two different contrasting colours - the subtle change in the purple where it is not cut, and the more glowing colour contrast where it is.

And this one shows what happens with a lemon yellow background fabric. Instead of the glow imparted on the orange by the contrast, in this case the purple makes the yellow look almost lime coloured and it loses the 'dark light' visual motif I was going for.








My next step was to try out laying the slitted fabric over the netting and the contrasting fabric.

This shows what a single slit could do, which had the contrasts, and the shape nicely, and reflected something of the way I was hoping the curved pleats might fall.

So I then tried it with multiple slits...



As you can see this didn't give me the visual appearance I was looking for - the fabric buckled in a way I didn't want; the curved lines were not variable in width and complexity; and there was no opportunity for using the difference between the contrast described above. It lost most of the aspects of its appearance, contrast and texture that I was after! The one on the right shows the same thing but taken with a flash.This allows you to see how much more interesting it is when you can see the yellow both behind the netting and in the valleys. The colour is a bit more accurate too.

















I decided to try putting slits in further apart, so as to utilise this difference in glow, and to allow myself more opportunity to use the curves of the parallel pleats for texture and pattern.

As you can see this worked well to give me a resulting sample that reflected the attractive
aspects of my sampler (above)

Using light inside

Sketchbook image of how I might produce the effect of light coming through a slit.

This was an exploration of my thinking about the contrast between the slit "golden light" and the surrounding areas.

Using copper florists wire for its flexible but strong properties, and it's ability to withstand the heat of being so close to a light bulb, I wrapped it round picture wire uprights, to give the structure of the sketchbook picture. Also referring to the structure of African huts and the shapes in the little pictures below, from earlier sketchbooks and samplers.

With light coming through I can see that:
1. This emphasises the edges rather than the split
2. It might be better to give the impression of light rather than having actual light coming through.
More interesting to look at.
3. There needs to be more breadth, and more regularity, to the 'verticals' to put the emphasis on the split-ness.
4. The presence of a warm light bulb reduces the options for materials.

Another sampler I made to explore the idea of light inside was on the sewing machine, with layers of fabric split apart and joined by stitching onto dissovable fabric.

I found that the requirements of the dissovable fabric for connections and reinforcement of the stitching meant that some of the expressive lines I wanted to make became thicker and more vertical than I wanted them to be. For example, there had to be some stitching down the sides of the slit, which interfered with the pattern of horizontal lines that I wanted to emphasise, and smoothed out some of the attractive complexity of the slit's edge.

On the other hand, stitching seems to be a good way to introduce colour in a different way, and has the potential for subtle shading. I might well use this technique on another occasion, but it doesn't seem suitable for this piece.

Next stage of designing

Pulling threads to make an image

I pulled out some fabrics in the range of 'golden light' colours which would either allow the light through or reflect it.

The pile on the left is what I found.

The grey chiffon is clearly not in the colour range and was removed after this photo.

I used the A4 drawing of cork tree bark as my template and used it to cut threads in the layers of fabric, starting with the palest chiffon

Palest pink satin underneath

Light behind

I tried to work out a patter for each layer that would give
a final arrangement like the cork bark, with areas of greater
depth and areas with closer lines. This is at layer 3.

This is one of the more translucent layers against
a window. This made me think again about
what imagery might be meaningful for this piece.

Close-up of the next layer in
progress

The light coming trhough from behind gives it an attractive glow, and shows the variety of colour achieved, but also reveals that I could have
paid more attention to the detail of the pattern when designing it.

Pinboard showing that this sample reflected the image of cork bark, but that it needed some oversewing to get the detail. (Some difficulties getting a photo that shows the structure without the flash light being reflected from the surface so much that it confuses the image. )

Stage 5: Playing with the chosen image

Working from the photos in my sketchbook, I tried out various ways of representing the image, using some of the techniques I'd already tried, and some new ones.

I soon found that I was doing only one of the three images, which was the most interesting. This of course made the composition all wrong so I would have to think about that later.

This was my attempt to use free machine embroidery as drawing, inspired by seeing a huge Alice Kettle wall picture at Collect 2014.

This is folded muslin, fixed with PVA glue. The folded parts look more intensely white with the light in front of them, and darker with it behind.

I like the way this works, and the contrast between the stiffness of the glued fabric, and the softness of the curves and translucency, and would like to try more of this in future.

At this point I realised that the book about folding that I ordered, as recommended by my tutor, has not yet arrived, so it will be too late for me to use for this assignment. Which is a shame.

This was rather less successful, an attempt to make the shadow shape using patterned black fabric and black machine 'drawing'. Part of the problem is that machine stitching has to stop somewhere, and the thread is visible behind. Also that the pattern needs to be purposeful in the image, or it just gets in the way of visual understanding.








I decided to try a combination of the soluble fabric and layering techniques to create an image of all three shapes like the glasses photo. I tried to use the texture of the bondaweb to give more interest to the background, and a more densely woven fabric to give contrast between the shapes and background. I wanted to make this one very white. This is what it looks like with the light from the front and from the back.



















Finally, I had a go doing something similar with colour.

What I wanted to capture, if I could, was the quality of light that was in the original photograph - that light that shows you used a flash in a dark place.

I also wanted to capture something of the feel of the mysterious striped coat from Martin Margiella.

For this I again used yellow organza in several layers, and bondaweb, but this time I used strips of it rather than a whole sheet. I made the shape/ background contrast using a piece cut from an old kimono dressing gown with some flower pattern in the central part. I sewed pale yellow lines in topstitching to indicate the patterns within the shape.

This is also interesting to look at, and I think that it does
capture  the strange specific glow of light that  wanted it to.

Then I printed off a photo I had taken of regular metal fenceposts onto extravorganza, and superimposed this on the image.

This is what it looked like with the light in front (left) and the light behind it (right). The one on the left allows the details of colour and translucency variations, and the sewn lines, to be seen. The other one is more threatening somehow.



This is interesting, and I think the most successful of the samples I've made, and I would like to explore this more with different kinds of bars in front of different kinds of images.




As usual, the ideas start coming more when the deadline approaches.

Weaving in progress, with shadow.

The final weaving piece as a mask
This didn't work as the shadows were not
visible on the face photo at this distance. 

The final weaving sample with shadows

Weaving piece (without shadows), showing how it is intended to be part of a larger piece
with more interesting composition