Splash CMYK style

It may be the end of term but I've finally got some printing done!! And I had to pick a tricky way of doing it. CMYK = one giant screen with four images on it which when printing need to be lined up exactly otherwise it doesn't work, but I think I did okay for my first one!

Once the screen is made, and everything's lined up I enjoy the printing process because it's nice to feel like I'm actually making something and if it ends up looking right all the better!! To end up with having a choice of which print was the best I made 4 (2practise on bread and butter paper) prints on Fabriano paper with the idea that all future prints will be the same size, on the same type and size of paper so that when shown at the end of the year they all link together.

I want these prints to tell a story of a journey so still focusing on the Exeter to Dawlish trip I'd quite like to have maybe five or six prints in the end showing each stage of the journey, with Splash perhaps being the last one. I think that having Splash as the last one would be quite appropriate, ending the Journey not being able to see the view through the window.

Dawlish stills

I've been experimenting with print screening shots of the videos I've been taking and the ones that I've liked the most are the ones between Exeter and Dawlish. I knew before I took then that this would be my favourite section of the journey and it turns out that I got the best stills of these videos too luckily enough.

This one of my favourite shots because it was when the waves were so choppy and strong that day that they actually came over the wall between the beach and the railway to splash the train itself. Which I think shows just how close to the sea this particular stretch of railway is and on a choppy day like this being on a train is the closest you can get to the coastline because the pathway for walkers is underneath the high tide. 

Splash

Then I feel like these shots show how much your vision of a view is blocked by what's on the window, because until it dries it's spoiling your view.

 Then this just shows the difference a day makes. This shot from the video I posted last week and is from the second trip I took along this path and I shows just how different somewhere can look with different and more attractive weather.

Now that I've got solid photos to work from I'd like to start some printing and my tutor has been telling me about the CMYK form of printing where it's like a printer in that there's four layers of ink over the top of each other so that's how you create the different shades of colour, so I think that would be the best form of printing to get an accurate version of the photo.

The Dawlish Coastline

Continuing with the theme of my own journeys I had the idea to photograph them. I travel by train quite a lot (hence my interest in the original posters) either to visit friends or go back home to Plymouth for the weekend, and I thought you see sights that sometimes go unnoticed. Railways can go places roads and therefore cars can't, but either due to the speed of the trains or whether it's just that people get bored of looking out of a window so always occupy their journey with a book or a film some sights can go unnoticed.

I wanted to try and photograph some of these sights to represent my train journey home (Bath - Plymouth) however due to the speed of the trains it's near impossible to get a clean crisp shot of anything other than when the train is sat in a station. I've also never noticed before just how dirty the windows on trains were until I tried to photograph through them and my camera kept tying to focus on the dirt on the window itself rather than the the view through it.

I didn't want to just give up on this idea so I tried videoing the journey through the window instead, however I didn't have a tri pod on me let alone even own one, so I did try to keep my hand as steady as possible but it's difficult on a moving train and I found it really frustrating when I'd watch these videos back and the camera was moving even if it's ever so slightly in every single one, and also the dirt on the window was really starting to get to me. So the following weekend when I went home again I tried a different tack of having the camera right up to the window so the lens was actually resting on the glass, and in doing this my camera didn't focus on the dirt as much, but more on the view that I was trying to record, and in having something steady to lean the camera on it made the videos more steady, not perfect but a lot better than my last attempt.

This is just one of my many videos that I've taken but I knew even before I took it that it would be my favourite. No matter what the weathers like, what mood I'm in, what I'm doing on the train even if it's some university work or something I will always put it all down when the train leaves Exeter St Davids station because I know that my favourite part of any train journey is coming up. When the train is going through Dawlish it could be the first time I've seen the sea since I've been home last. It could be months, and to someone who spent 18 years taking it for granted seeing the sea every day just by looking out of the sitting room window, I never realised how important the sea side is to me until I came to university and didn't see it everyday. So that's why this is one of my favourite sights, and why I'd like for my art project to continue down this path, perhaps using sights like these to design and create posters advertising the coastal towns of Devon and Cornwall.

Disney Postcards

Between myself, two sisters and my mother there were a good 2,500+ photos taken of this Disney adventure shall we say, so trying to narrow them down to just a few that best represent my summer has been extremely difficult. In the end I've divided my summer into  categories, Disney World in itself the colourful place that it is and my own journey of a summer.

First of all the wonder of Disney:

Main street USA at 7.59am

The cost for some beloved Cadburys at the United Kingdom Pavilion in Epcot 

The level of show Disney World upholds even when renovating

 My Summer:

Mickey's famous high four

All it takes is faith, trust and and little bit of pixie dust

Alice in Wonderland, The character that whether it be guest or cast member got reverenced to me literally every single day  

Of course I've got a lot more photos that represent my summer and Disney World on a whole and I think that it could be such a nice project in itself to print these 30 or so photos (that I've narrowed it down to for each category) as postcards with perhaps a quote on the back explaining each one, and to then present them in a similar box to the penguin postcard box. I think it could be a nice sum up of my summer and own personal journey.

Penguin postcards

During a recent tutorial I was told about these Penguin postcards which is basically a box of postcards and all the designs are the old classic penguin book covers, and I really find them quite cute. The colour and design of them very much remind me of these posters I've been looking at recently and them being postcards sort of link to the travel aspect that my work is starting to become about.












If anything I collect postcards, whenever I go somewhere chances are I'll pick one up, and actually something that I noticed this summer was just how few postcards there were at Disney. You'd think with 4 theme parks and 2 water parks there would be amble of choice for a postcard to send home to your family or friends but there were only a dozen or so for what felt like all or the parks and they seemed really dated, some of them looked as if they'd have been the same postcards 5 or 10 years ago just using the same photo of Mickey and the gang in front of the castle.

Being that my work seems to be becoming about travel and journeys I think it could be interesting to try and collect together some of the photos from perhaps my summer, the ones that best show my own journey so to speak, that could be my postcards that best symbolise my summer.

Hogwarts, It's quicker by rail

Following my research into the 'It's quicker by rail' advertisements I've been playing around with a few of my own ideas and designs for posters, only I've been drawing on my summer in Florida for inspiration. For example I think it would be interesting to advertise Disney World in this style however I thought it could be interesting to advertise somewhere that to me is British it being on American soil.

The Wizarding World of Harry Potter is a newly opened section to the Isles of Adventure theme park in  Orlando, Florida. It's somewhere i've been looking forward to visiting since I heard of it becoming a reality a few years ago, and being in Orlando for a few months I knew that I would visit only just a few times. And as much as I loved the whole set up of going through the gateway into Hogsmeade, seeing the Hogwarts Express with the conductor standing by it's side (who had a very strong Yorkshire accent) and then seeing the Castle in the background was a truly terrific sight, however seeing the fake snow on the roofs of the shops of Hogsmeade in the 30 degree weather I couldn't help but feel that this is a bit surreal.

In my mind Hogwarts is set in the Highlands of Scotland, with the strong winds (which would make the cloaks for sale more appealing) and bitter chills to which a Butterbeer would warm you up in the Three broom sticks rather than cool you down. But I'm not an idiot I no why 'Harry Potter World' is an addition to an existing theme park to keep it more up to date and for guests to keep coming back but it still feels a bit wrong that such a British franchise is in America.

So more for my own amusement I've just done some rough sketches of how Hogwarts and Hogsmeade could be advertised in the 'It's quicker by rail' style (which I think could be very appropriate considering the most well known way of getting to these magical places is by the Hogwarts Express.

It's quicker by rail,

These posters symbolise rail travel for the1950s, when travel became popular to everyone because it was affordable and such a quicker way of travelling. If you were living in city you could escape to the country or the seaside within a few hours even if just for the weekend.

 What I love about these posters is that even though each is done by a different artist they all follow the same style whether they're print or painted. I feel like it's something to do with the line of font along the bottom, even though each of these don't always say 'It's quicker by rail' but since they're still advertising a certain city, then with the symbol for the particular train line, likes them to rail travel. Growing up in south Devon myself I'm mostly taken with the posters advertising somewhere along the coast but that's just me, I love seeing the familiar sights showing that these coastlines haven't changed in the past. 

However I don't want to design poster advertising the same places, I instead want to try and use the style of these posters with the font, the sayings and attach them to my own prints advertising Disney World, in Orlando, Florida. Where I coincidently spent the summer working on Main Street U.S.A in the heart of it all, Magic Kingdom. I just think it could be interesting to try and design some prints of the classic sights of Disney World, but some how make them look like they were done in the 1950s. Of which of course there aren't any because Disney World was built in 1971!

Oh trains,

A new school year means new projects! And this year in art i'm going to be focusing on a subject that I really enjoy, as sad as it may sound, I love going on train journey's, no point denying it, it's not trainspotting, I wouldn't know the difference between trains other than the colour of them (unless it was the Hogwarts express in which case i'd never want to leave it!) But it's the journey that I enjoy on trains more than any other form of transport. 

More than a couple months ago now me and my mother went on the Avon valley Railway (my mother hasn't stopped going on about wanting to go on steam train journey for months, make that years) So as a belated mother's day present we went on a some what short trip along the Avon, 

where I had to nodd along to comments such as, this is how trains are meant to be, hear that? That's how they're meant to sound. but I have to say that this trip did have rather picturesqueness qualities about it, and mostly reminded me of the Railway children going through the valleys, and all I kept thinking about was that how the inside of the carriage are so much nicer than in modern trains today, but then again they remind me of Hogwarts express which I would give anything to go on for a trip up to Scotland. Anyway (I can feel that Harry Potter is always going to be cropping up in this project, this could have something to do with my love of trains, wanting them to take me away to Hogwarts) my mother was telling me about this ad campaigns from the 50s advertising cities around the UK with the quote of "It's quicker by rail" which i'm now going to investigate into! 

Esoteric Illusions

 

It's now been a few weeks since our private view and the week of showing Esoteric Illusions at Walcot Chapel and I do think that we did pretty well we were advertised in papers, we had posters and flyers around the city of Bath and we were even shown on Points West! Well done to Molly Gibbens for sending them the information about our exhibition weeks before we did get several people coming along during the week as they'd seen us on TV!!

Esoteric Illusions

So for my Professional Practise module I am a part of a group of 10 Bath Spa students are putting on an exhibition in Walcot Chapel. We’ve spent the past few months planning and designing the posters, flyers and now it’s only 2weeks away. So now I’ve actually got to finish some work to put in it! I’m going with my Alice in Wonderland work. I’m going to get my blue dress finished by adding some embroidery around the hem. Then when I go home the weekend before we put up the exhibition me and my sister (who studied Photography at PCAD) are going to have a mini photo shoot in the woods by our house, so I’ll have some photos of the dress in context to hang next to the dress in the exhibition.

So everyone come along and see some great work from the creative arts students of Bath Spa! Hope to see you there!

Embroidered flowers, a closer look

There’s a limited amount of embroidery detail on the dresses of Alice but I’ve come across an embroiderer Pat Trott. Some of her main work involves creating 3D flowers out of stitch and it’s just when I see this image (of the garden of living flowers) I just think that this technique could be used effectively but yet still be subtle on a costume dress for Alice.

Pat Trott was introduced to embroidery by her mother and hers before her, the passion for it was almost passed down as well. She now teaches workshops and also at schools and colleges to share her embroidery. She has her 17 ‘techniques’ which can then be combined to make a number of different flowers as seen here. The same stitch can be used with different threads and sizes to create different effects and in her book Three-Dimensional Embroidery stitches she explains a shows them all so that anyone can create them as well.

What I like about this style is that I haven’t seen something like it before, and that I can now very easily recreate them myself. Obviously floral is probably one of the main subjects of detail when it comes to textiles but it’s the way the embroidery sits on the fabric, it’s raised which I kind of like.

On a dress for Alice I think perhaps the singular flowers could work as perhaps a border, or maybe a smaller image like this one but just on a pocket and then others dotted around, blending in but still bright enough to catch your attention.

Playing around with some playing cards

In photos like these you can really appreciate the time and energy spent in creating such an elaborate dress, with so many layers of netting it must have to keep its shape along with the little details that I’d never noticed till I’d never even seen these close up shots. That this dress is covered in hearts and daises, I really like the effect of the darker lines on the slightly opaque fabric which adds in the black and white but means that the red is still the strong main colour of the dress and is shown through. I also like that there’s a sketch of the design for the Queen of hearts costume shown behind Alice’s dress while it’s being exhibited, this shows where the main inspiration came from for this particular costume.

Here I’ve taken the shape of this Alice dress but then been making it my own. So I’ve been experimenting some more with taking aspects of playing cards and using the symbols and colours as inspiration for some dresses. I like the embroidery of heart and spades etc on the ribbons; I’d like to then apply them criss-crossing over the body of a dress and draping over the skirt.

So I’m defiantly going to continue with this theme of working as everyone is familiar with the character of Alice wearing the pale blue dress and an Alice band in her hair however, for Tim Burton's film costume designer Colleen Atwood wanted to create something new, with no disrespect for the older designs, but I think especially for this film during the plot when Alice is staying with the Red queen, all of her attendants are dressed in the same colour scheme (of black, white and red) and so I think here’s a reason to try Alice in some new colours. It’s a very lavish dress, it’s been made for the purpose to be fit for Alice being in the presence of a queen and I think that this dress is the one that most of all fits with the others from the earlier photo shoot. It’s not something you’d wear every day, but something to help her get into being the character that she has to put on, and it helps her become who she has to be in order to get what she needs.

Disney Joy

It’s nearly 100 days till I spend my summer working in Walt Disney World resort Florida for 3months so anything Disney related catches my eye at the moment and so with my Alice project on the go I feel that I can make it a bit more rounded by looking at other Disney tales as well only when it crosses into the fashion or costume world. 

Yesterday while on the train I saw the person next to me reading the paper beholding this image so it caught my eye but couldn’t really see what it was about, I assumed that it was an advertisement for a theatre production, however after researching I’ve discovered that it’s for a photo shoot by Annie Leibovitz, who also took the photo’s for an Alice in Wonderland shoot which I studied recently for a power point presentation. So I found it interesting to look through some more Disney breaking into the fashion world.

Just a few more flowers

So these are just a few more scans from my textiles sketch book. I seem to be going in two directions, it’s either flowers (The garden of living flowers) or playing cards which I’ll hopefully have some more work on by next week so can upload some of that. But for now flowers seem an important part of wonderland as they help colour Alice’s world.

These sketches are just examples of how a simple dress could then be transformed by embroidery. This rose dress would be covered in woven roses, one of the techniques from my post below which I learned from the book Three-Dimensional Embroidery stitches by Pat Trott. I’ve learned a lot from this book and even find myself using her techniques when I’m not even sewing flowers for woven roses are a great way to fill in a perfect circle.

So for now I think I’ll keep going with the flowers but I think it would be interesting to look more into to the playing cards, using the colour scheme of black, white and red perhaps as this would create something much different and I’m finding when I try and stick to the pale blue dress my work can get quite limited and here already I’m leaning towards different colours. This is the point of this sketch book to try different things as it’s alright if it’s not perfect, I’m just exploring, but do think if I were able to make more than one dress by the time of our American Museum show to have one pale blue dress along with a red dress covered in playing cards or even just the symbols, this could then be something quite different, so I’m quite excited by this.

Alice in Wonderland

 So (just noticed that I seem to start all my blogs with so, no point changing now!) for my Alice project I'm using an old Alice through the looking glass children's book as my sketchbook. I've had some comments that the words are in the way you can't see the drawings, but I like working in a book and what I'm doing is going through the book look at the illustrations of the tale and using them as inspirations for each design. So there've been detailing in a fireplace and then I turn it into detail on the skirt of a dress. I find that it's a good thing to have something to refer to right there on the next page as I'm working as I've got my research folder but sometimes forget what's actually in there and so I use main sources of inspiration from the folder but for the smaller details I like working from my sketch book.

So I go through drawing a sketch of a garment on each possible page then look into what detail, what technique of embroidery could be used to decorate it. Here for example is a sample is of the kind of embroidery that would be used to cover the top of this dress. Different techniques such as French knots and weaving were used to create some of these flowers.

Here's another example of my work from my sketch book. This was a chapter that I choose to look into playing and the different ways to use them for designs of decoration. Then a quick sample of the type of fabric that would be used and then I used some woven roses to create the main body of the sign of a club.

Next I'm going to be continuing through the book and filling it with designs and samples, while creating some larger pieces that that I'm not just confined to the smaller size of my sketch book.

Drawing through a book

 

 So I’ve never been very good a fashion drawings also just been teaching myself but the drawing will still always come out a bit funny and I’ve taken out books from the library but other than tracing from them haven’t really found them very helpful but then I found a really good one with some good step by step instructions about spacing and such so hopefully I’ll start to get the hang of it if I keep at it and then not have to keep referring to the book in the end!

So for art I’ve been looking at buildings and different illustrations and artists, but I always wanted to lead onto a more fashion based project, so in my research folder I’ve been collecting tear sheets of fashion shoots from magazines which are all set in and around buildings so that hopefully there’s a link there for now and then I can perhaps like the effect or texture of brinks and stones to the fabric for maybe a dress.

So these collections of drawings all lead up to one when the 3 are layered on top of each other. I started a new sketch book to be dedicated to fashion drawing so hopefully I’ll be able to see improvement throughout the book but the first couple are just of using geometric shapes to create the body and that just started to make the book look a bit boring so I added a thick black line of what an outfit could be for the theme that I’m going for and then with this one started to add more detail with the brown criss-cross behind the figure giving the impression of perhaps stones, bricks, to give an idea of where this outfit for a photo shoot would be shot but drew to the new detail on top of the brown paper you can tell that’s it’s not to colour of say the top but of the background.

So to add some more texture to this piece, to make it more that a sketch. I got the idea for a pair of sequined trousers from one of my tear sheets. Where the outfit is all black bar these sparkling trousers, so I drew a quick impression of them but you still couldn’t really see what it was meant to mean, so I thought that even though the proportions of the sequins would be completely wrong so instead of covering the top layer of drawing with them I stuck them underneath the lines and rows of drawn sequins so that the colour can be seen from underneath. 

So next I’m just going to be focusing on practising my fashion drawing and experimenting with more ways of how to give an impression of a pattern rather than having to draw out every little detail.