Evaluation

I have been given the theme of 'Journey' for my FMP. 

When exploring the theme of Journey I decided to look at it in a very literal way. I focused my research on designers that incorporate maps into their work, and designers that incorporate landscapes into their work.  

Finding artists that have used maps in some form in their work was relatively easy, I found a few high end designers, department stores and many independent artists that had used the theme of maps. I did not find this research very inspiring as maps was a very repetitive theme and many of the garments seemed very similar, I started to lose focus with this theme so I began to research landscapes.

Finding designers that had used landscapes in some form was much more difficult, I found a few garments here and there on the high street but I had to really research landscapes in detail to find what I was looking for in the high end market. I found a brand called Marios who I found very inspiring, they had created very simple garments that could be worn in many different ways by both sexes. Their garments portrayed beach and mountains scenery and at that point I knew I wanted to create something similar but using my own scenery. I stumbled upon more high end designers that had used a similar but subtler concept, for example Louise Amstrup who had collaged different landscapes and incorporate them into their work. Dries Van Noten had also created some beautiful landscape themed garments. I found Mary Katrantzou to be the biggest influence on my work, she perfectly combined landscaped and bright colours on stunningly structured garments.

From my research I decided to document my own journey, I chose to focus on Manchester City centre at night. I was hoping to recreate something similar to the landscape artists I had researched only with my spin of the city rather than of the more rural scenery they had used. Whilst taking my photographs I decided to create movement to blur the images so all that was visible would be the city lights rather than the surrounding buildings. I was very pleased with the outcome of my images and I began to edit them straight away. I used a simple editing software called Fotor to change the brightness, contrast and to add filters, I mainly used the filter Real Illusion as I felt it really brought out the colours and enhanced the city lights. From this I began to create samples using inks on fabric. I wanted to recreate the city lights in the photo’s I had taken, some of the samples turned out to be very strong pieces in my opinion, especially when I combined bright dyes with bleach. Straight away I knew I wanted to incorporate this into my final piece in some way.

After creating samples I felt that my work was lacking in something and although I had created some strong backgrounds, I needed to add more detail. As I was focusing my project on landscapes I decided to add some form of architecture into my work. I had previously taken photographs of a journey around Newcastle and decided to use any architecture images as research for my sampling.

I found inspiration for this project on my current favourite blog, Love Aesthetics. Ivana Carpio is a lover of minimalism and shares my love of PVC. Her DIY tutorials show how you can make pretty much anything out of PVC and bits and pieces from the hardware shop. I wanted to incorporate the use of clear PVC into my work so I began to create samples. I used my architecture images as a reference and began to sketch out buildings on the PVC with the acrylic ink, I found this to be a very effective technique and I could create depth in colour by using several layers of ink. I was very pleased with this outcome. At this point I had begun to piece together my final piece in my mind, I began to research several architecture and illustration blogs for more buildings inspiration. I found this very helpful and found images in a similar quirky drawing style to mine. I began to sketch out different buildings, houses, office blocks with Quink ink and a wooden skewer, this gave me less control over my drawing technique but gave a more desired outcome as the images were unique and unusual.

For my final piece I decided to create two separate lengths of fabric, an under layer and a top layer, for my under layer I recreated my favourite city lights photograph. I wet the meter of fabric and began to splash dyes to resemble the photograph, I later added bleach. Due to a dying malfunction and most of the colour being washed off of my fabric I had to re dye my fabric. For my second attempt I mixed dyes and poured them into spray bottles and proceeded to spray the dyes onto my fabric, I wasn’t certain whether this technique would work but it actually worked out better, the dyes blended easier and gave a more desired look. Once again I added bleach and left the fabric to dry. Although the colours didn’t turn out as bright as my samples I was still pleased with the final outcome. For the top layer of fabric I used PVC, I sketched my many different architectures scenes onto the fabric with blue acrylic ink using a wooden skewer so I would get that unique look I desired, I later machine stitched onto the fabric to make the landscapes seem more 3D. I was pleased with my final outcome, although I am not over enthusiastic about my piece, I would much prefer it as an actual garment. I think the scale was too large for my concept and my landscapes seem to get lost on the fabric.

Overall I think I did quite well with time management, I had done the majority of my research within the first couple of days of the project. I also took my primary photos very early into the first week as I wanted to get started as soon as possible. Unfortunately I felt I had ‘hit a brick wall’ very early on into the project and found it quite hard to get motivated. I thought sampling would help to inspire me but unfortunately it didn’t. I feel I did most of my best work in the last couple of weeks of the project as I feel I work better under pressure. My final piece was very time consuming, obviously I had spent twice the amount of time I would have liked to spend on my background layer as I had a dying disaster, but otherwise it wouldn’t have taken that long at all, maybe an hour or two. I found the top layer incredibly time consuming, it took me 12 straight hours to draw my landscapes onto the PVC. This was extremely tedious. Looking back I could have created one scene and repeatedly screen printed onto the fabric, but if I was to redo my final piece I would definitely hand draw it again as I love the unique quirky style which cannot be recreated any other way but by hand drawing it. The machine stitch over the top didn’t take too long, overall I spent around 3 hours on my bottom layer (including both times I had dyed it) and 13 hours on my top layer.

I don’t think there is much I would change about my overall project, I would perhaps do more sampling (as I usually mention in every evaluation I write) but I had a pretty clear image of my final piece in my head so I didn’t feel the need to experiment too much on this project. I would like to spend more time on making my book look more professional and including final designs and possibly garment designs. I would like to create a garment with a similar outcome, I would experiment with using screen printing instead of sketching by hand and hopefully create something really unique and eye catching in an unconventional garment.

I would also like to make more use of my blog as I currently see it as more of a hindrance than an aid as I feel it gives me even more work to do.

Once again i would like to mention as i have in previous evaluations i hope i don't decide to base another project on architecture again!