Experimentation - workshop 2 (textiles)

The Brief: to produce an outcome which adorns the body whilst exploring grids,layers and reflections. The outcome produced will consider surfaces or textures taken from our everyday surroundings.Interpreting ideas through the manipulation of materials,media,photo's,drawings.mark making etc.

bearing in mind that we only received the brief after the session was finished I believe that my worst nightmare came to life.
Unfortunately the session began with the tutor rambling off what was expected of us as if we were already experienced in textiles which for me may as well have been explained in Russian for all I understood.

On asking for a translation into English I was presented with a piece of paper with squiggly lines on it and asked what it said to me (I thinks something was mentioned about textures and sand) my response to which was that whoever painted them hadn't pressed hard enough with the brush (considering the last thing I painted was a wall!). I don't think she was too impressed, however she proceeded to place a map on an overhead projector and project the highly distorted image onto a piece of paper and paint more squiggly lines in dye onto the paper (not even following the lines of the map by the way). In all honesty my thoughts were ' If you wanted me to paint random lines on a piece of paper then why didn't you just say so.' I really couldn't get my head round the map thing after all what is the point of projecting a map and not even following the lines of the map? However I was determined to create something so I found another acetate of what looked like a painted star burst or firework burst and began to very roughly follow the pattern with different coloured dyes but If I am totally honest I still didn't get it, but here is my first effort anyway.

Experimenting with dyes

After a short break I decided that this really didn't mean anything (in fairness my 1 year old could have produced something similar) so I decided to start from scratch on a piece of material and create something I could relate to a little more so here it is.

The final creation

Experimentation - Workshop 1 (photography)

The Brief:

To produce a series of light paintings with the camera (also known as light graffiti)

This is done by using a slow exposure time such as 30 seconds in a darkened environment and then waving or pointing light sources in front of the camera to draw patterns or pictures with the light trails (or lines)

See Here

Working in groups of two we spent some time in the studio experimenting with this technique (albeit very basically) and here are the results my partner and myself achieved:

created by waving 2 separate light sources around at the camera

single light source at the camera

By placing different coloured filters in front of the lens we created these effects

Created by using coloured filters again and this time placing light sources on strings and turning the body through 90 degrees

These images were created by drawing with a laser pointer from behind the camera also by using the coloured filters as before

All in all a very lighthearted yet successful session with some good results, however I feel that with a little more time and with a little more freedom over the camera controls the results could have been much greater and more refined.

Experimentation - overview

We are into the first week proper of this 6 week initial experimentation stage where we move around, taking in a taster session of each pathway: Photography
                                                      Textiles
                                                      Media 
                                                      3D
                                                      Fine Art
                                                      Graphic design
With the aim of working towards a drawing qualification at the end of the 6 weeks.

The collective theme running through these sessions is layers,grids and shadows.
Now, based on my limited understanding how we interpret that is different with every discipline eg. in photography we use grids to create the composition of an image (rule of thirds etc.) and in audio production layers of sound are placed on top of each other to produce jingles or sound beds for radio shows, however in textiles for example I presume that it means something quite different. Hmmmmm this is going to get interesting!

 

I will go into each session in more detail individually as they are completed.    

First Project - Rethink!

OK. I know it's only the first project but I want to make it count so after a weekend break I have decided that my initial thoughts were justified ie. I needed something which I could learn from, in particular the thought processes which go into creating a piece. However, I also felt that the piece itself needed to be relevant to the area in which I want to progress ie. sound, audio and radio. Now how is creating a painting going to be relevant to that? Well it just isn't is it!

So how am I going to make this work? Well using a range of media such as spoken audio,and music I intend to create an Audio CD featuring stories and legends of North Wales based on my own experience and research. Based on the sort of thing we would play on coach tours.

Well that's the plan anyway!