Photoshop: 3D stitch/light samples.

In order to get to grips with photoshop a bit more, I decided to use the photos that I had taken to layer up the lines created by the stitch and 3D samples. I was very happy with the results, and I liked layering up the different line qualities.

I also liked the contrasting circle shapes created by the light coming through the holes in the paper when I took the photos.

I have discovered through doing these samples that I love using photoshop as part of my practice. I don't know how to use it very well but I feel that when I feel more confident using it, it will really enhance my work, and allow me to mix processes really easily.

Group Tutorial - 28/10/2013

I felt that I came to this weeks tutorial with a lot to show, but I left feeling lost, as if I had so many directions and ideas but didn't know how to develop it and move it all forward. I feel like some of my strongest work has been my 3D, stitch and light samples this week, so I am planning to push this forward even more. To do this I have considered crossing over stitches, using printed card and reflective card, and playing more with photoshop and photography.

Colour is also something that I need to consider more when I'm working, as I need to be careful that I don't end up using just grey and orange. I think some of the sepia tones that are coming through in my photography might help me to refine my colour palette and experiment more with colour.

A big aspect that was brought up this week was thinking about what we want to produce as a final outcome for our project, such as a collection of prints, or an installation for an exhibtion. I am going to try and think about this more this week when doing my work. I also need to think about whether my work is going to be for fashion or interiors, and where within these markets I want to sit.

Responding to instructions

After doing work last week based on giving people instructions to respond to, I decided to respond to the work this week and see which aspects of the work I enjoyed most. One example is shown below. I also did some drawings of other aspects of the experiments that I liked.

Responded to above drawing with handmade string stamp and black acrylic paint. I love the textural and tonal qualities of the result.

Monoprinting

After doing so many workshops and learning new printing techniques, I felt as though I needed to have a go in the print room. I want to make sure that the work I am doing is relevant to my project so I decided that monoprinting would suit my work best, as I could paint anything I wanted onto a blank screen.

I am also keen to improve my overall printing skills and get used to the new print room, so that by 3rd Year I feel confident in doing this. As part of this I also want to get used to fabrics, and understand how I should use them in the print room, as in layering them up, and working out how many pulls to give the binder on different types of fabric.

The prints that I created were based on drawings from my sketchbook.

I wanted to try the line drawing print to see how much detail I could achieve with this technique. I thought it worked quite well but the line quality looked a bit like felt tip. It was still interesting to know that I could achieve detail with mono printing, without the dye smudging.

I created 6 prints in the print room, with 2 different designs, but I was only really happy with 2 or 3 of them. This is because of the fact that 2 fabrics were layered up (the underneath one didn't come through properly) but it was really useful to see how fabrics reacted, and to see how many prints I could get out of painting one screen.

I decided to embroider on top of one of the prints that I wasn't too pleased with, due to the dye not penetrating the fabric properly (as it was underneath another fabric). I thought the sharpness of the stitch contrasted well with the blurred, grainy quality of the print behind it.

Stitch: 3D samples

After creating my stitch samples last week, I felt like I needed to develop them further. I decided that the tight long stitches which i was using to replicate sound waves, could instead be suspended, by holding together card to create shapes.

I also tried to create an element of blurring in some of my photos to link in some other aspects of the project.

I thought the crossover of the straight threads created interesting geometric shapes.

For my last sample I decided to use a simple shape, but paint the threads with black ink in the shape of the song waves I have been working with from Piano Phase. I thought this was particularly effective when looking at the piece from an angle.

I thought that the stitches crossing over in my 3D samples might create some interesting shadows so (despite the camera quality) I decided to take some photos of the shadows I was creating. As well as casting shadows on the wall, I also cast them on the inside of the card to create this bent effect shown below.

Bending the card also made the yarn slack to create this wobbled effect. The black quality of the ink also showed up nicely in these images below when the light was shone on it.

Stitch: Blurring and Lighting

So far blurring has been a part of my work due to the dragging effecting created by the sound waves I discovered whilst using audacity, so I thought I would develop it further into my photography and photoshop. Here are some deliberately blurred images using the manual focus on my camera.

I used the sample that was stitched on paper to do these photos, in front of a light source to see what the blurring effect had on the holes of light.

For the sample above, the light source was the TV, and it was interesting to see the colours change.

I am really happy with the results, so the next step will be to work from them and put them into photoshop and work with them.

Group Tutorial - 21/10/2013

Todays group tutorial gave me lots of ways and ideas to push my work further, and it was a really useful session. One of the underlying questions that I had last week was about how I could develop all of my work further, especially the instruction based work I had been doing. After speaking to Alex I think the best solution is to start representing some of the results using stitch, and pick out the aspects of them that I like most to work with. I also thought that layering different drawings and images on top of each other on photoshop, and playing with layering and layout would be a good way to push my work further.
My stitch experiments were also a big part of last weeks work, and I plan to take these forward by trying to make them more sculptural, using the stitch to hold paper together. I also thought that when I had experimented with this, I could use paper with scanned images or prints on, and play around with the results.
I have also been growingly conscious about getting into the Print room and putting some ideas onto screens, but speaking to Alex has reassured me that the direction I am going in at the moment is fine. When I have looked at all of my work as a whole, I might consider putting some different lines onto a screen and layering them up (like people did in the Instruction experiments) but for this week I am going to try and see where the work can take me, without concentrating too much on the print room.

Photoshop Workshop.

At the start of this week I had a great photoshop workshop teaching me loads of great techniques about placing our designs and drawings onto the objects we want to see our designs on. I have spent a lot of time this week practicing what I learnt and playing around with different objects and drawings, for both interiors and fashion.

I thought the line drawings on these dresses were the most successful results.

I enjoyed this exercise, as I am still unsure about whether I want to do print for fashion or interiors. I have always preferred print for interiors but I found this exercise much more exciting (and with better results) when I was working with fashion garments.

Responding with Stitch.

After discovering the Audacity App I loved the results it produced and liked playing with its linear qualities. I thought it would relate well to stitch, so I did two samples, one on paper and one on fabric shown below.

I liked the results of both, especially the paper experiment which let through light in a delicate way through the holes created by the needle. 

I responded to these in various ways including drawings in my sketchbook, and a french knot embroidery sample, marking all of the holes that the light came through. I thought the drawings were successful and I would like to try and work with the results on photoshop.

Instructions

As development on my research about minimal artists and visiting the Do It exhibition, this week I decided to do a few tests using the idea behind a lot of Sol LeWitt's work: instructions.
For the first experiment I used 7 people including myself, and gave them the following instructions (an adaptation of Sol LeWitts instructions for drawing #118):

On a paper surface, 

Any size, shape or colour paper surface,

Using a hard pencil, 

place 20 points at random,

But these points must be evenly distributed over the surface.

All of the points should be connected by straight lines.

I hadn't seen the result of the drawing by the gallery before I did my experiment, but it is shown below.

 The results were really interesting, as only one looked like the result above, which is shown below..

Here are a few of the other results, which had very different qualities, some were joined like a dot to dot, and some lines connected just 2 dots.

After doing this experiment, I wanted to do another one but creating my own instructions to control the results a little bit more. They are shown below.

On a blank piece of paper, draw a square, 10cm by 10cm.
Draw a grid inside this of 25 squares, each 2cm by 2cm.
Fill each square with various lines, of any kind.

Here are some of my favourite results, because of tone and line quality.

As development from this, I need to decide what I am going to take from my findings, which might mean that I do more experiments or use the results I have to make more work and drawings.

Manchester Art gallery/ Do It Exhibition.

Art For All: Thomas Horsfall's Gift to Manchester.

This display explores a selection of nature-themed artworks and objects from the city’s Thomas Horsfall collection. As nature is a massive influence in my work, I really enjoyed looking at different artists interpretations in a variety of media.

It was interesting to see paintings of so many places that I knew and had visited. I saw two paintings of the landscapes of Conniston Lake (Lake District) and Lake Maggiore (Italy), both of which I have been to. One painting was painted from Chester Road, which is the main road where I live. It was interesting to look into the history of these places; seeing Chester Road surrounded by fields with cows in was a welcome contrast to the current towns and villages on the outskirts of Manchester.

One thing that caught my eye was a print that was displayed with the series of carved printing blocks used to make it. As I am interested in the variety of printing processes, it really got me thinking about block printing, and made me want to try a similar process like Lino Cutting and Printing myself.  

Hidden amongst the watercolour and oil paintings was a gorgeous hand woven Silk Demask fabric by William Morris & Co in 1881 called Oak. It was lovely to see, as Morris has been my inspiration for a long time now, with his delicate floral designs from the Arts and Crafts Movement.

Do It 2013 - A world premiere for Manchester International Festival

The 'Do It' exhibition was initiated by curator Hans Ulrich Obrist with artists Christian Boltanski and Bertrand Lavier 20 years ago, and consists of a variety of instructions for artists to follow in order to make the art. 'Do it' has been enacted in 50 different places, making it the widest-reaching and longest running ‘exhibition in progress’ ever to occur. This links really well to the work I intend to do this week based on Sol LeWitts instruction based conceptual, minimalist art.

To celebrate its 20th anniversary, and in homage to the original idea, this exhibition premieres 70 brand new instructions, bringing together artists from the first do it experiments with a new generation of contemporary artists such as Tracey Emin.

Below are some of my favourite pieces from the exhibiton as well as the Instruction the artist was given to create it.

^ Liam Gillick (Instruction 1989): Using a pipe and a cable detector locate all the cables an metalwork hidden below the surface of chosen wall. Loosely mark their location using a light blue pencil.

^ Yoko Ono (Wish Piece 1996): y.o. '96. Make a wish. Write it down on a piece of paper. Fold it and tie it around a branch of a Wish Tree. Ask your friends to do the same. Keep Wishing. Untill the branches are covered with wishes.

^ Alison Knowles (Homage to Each Red Thing 1996): Divide the exhibition space floor into squares of any size. Put one red thing into each square. For example: A piece of fruit, A red doll with a red hat, A shoe. Completely cover the floor in the way.

What I loved about this exhibition, was its openness to interpretation. Any artist could have followed the same instruction and come up with something similar, yet different. It reminded me of the Oblique Strategy Cards which can be used to inspire any creative mind. 

I look forward to giving some people specific instructions as an experiment to see how different people interpret them. I also want to try giving people a more vague set of instructions to see how different the results will be.