End of Print Week

On your left is me printing :) I found this week quite difficult but fun. It was hard standing all day and pulling and pushing a squigy but I liked mxing up the colours to suit my research. My hands got really messy and dyed with all the colours but its Halloween this weekend...

Below is an image which i did last thing on Friday which i thought was really succesful even though it was quick and simple. I had dyed the fabric and lifted the colour on Thursday and when i came back to work on it on Friday I quickly cut out stencils which related to my research work and printed that on top. Frances and Jo said to be brave with our work although it is very daunting to have a peice of white fabric infront of you. I decided on Friday to just do that and it apppeared that they were right, I just had to be brave with my work. :)

Research page from my sketch book where I found inspiration to develop in my print work shop. The red and white image is by Nick Knight. He makes interesting compositions which organic materials which is why it led me to making my own compositions from found leaves.
Next week I have Mixed Media so Im looking forward to learning how to use different materials and how to combine them to make an interesting outcome.

Bye x

Brianstorm - making connections

The brainstorm was based on the tipping point. I got together with some other girls in the textiles class where each of us had based our mind map on a different chapter of the book. I found this very useful as the person who looked into detail of a particular part could briefly remind the rest about the chapter. This then led us all to put our own intepretations of the chapter in. I found the brainstorming much easier than the mind map as it was like throwing ideas in the air and we got a laugh out of it. Below is a slide show/video of our outcomes in each chapter.






We started off looking at the epidemics chapter. In this chapter we started off looking at hush puppies which was mentioned in the book, this made us look at the bigger picture of trends, we linked this to GHD straighteners as they are very popular now. It started off with a few people having them and straight hair was the new look. Once your friends have them then you automatically want them too. I have a pair so it was good relating things from the book to your personal life. This is an epidemic. We also looked at how Gadgets got sticky. Game consoles were made bigger and bigger and new consoles kept coming out. The main ones which we looked at were the Wii, Xbox, and play station. These consoles got very sticky as they became interactive like the Wii remote which is motion sensitive rather than your normal play station controller. It was like going one step further to make something sticky and different.



The group then moved on to look at The Law of the Few which contained the Mavens, Salesmen and connectors. We found that when we were throwing ideas up about the connectors we were naming social networking websites such as Bebo, Twitter, Facebook etc. The same came about with the Mavens, we were looking at comparison websites which offered us information. For the mavens we looked at the highstreet salesmen and websites which sold things without actually having a salesmen, such as Ebay which is a big sales website.



After looking at The Law of the Few, we started to brainstorm on the Stickiness factor. This is the chapter which I did my mind map on in the first seminar task. We looked at how things got sticky in advertisment and we found that most companies with catchy slogans tended to stick. Companies such as Mcdonalds "Im lovin' it" and Loreal "because your worth it" are very sticky and makes the buyers remember their products and presence. Other advertisment in companies have visual stickiness from TV adverts such as Asdas pat on the bum and Cadbury's gorilla playing the drums. This was my favourite chapter as the sticky advertisment are very clever but subtle.


The last chapter we looked at was The Power of Context which we all found the hardest. We found it hard to start of but when we thought of a few ideas the ball started rolling. We came up with The Sufragettes and the Sufragists which was two groups of women fighting for womans right to vote. One group took a violent approach and the other was took a more political approach. This related to the power of context as woman in that period felt that they had the right to vote and if they didn't start this woman today wouldnt be able to vote.


I really enjoyed doing this brainstorm as a group because i found it much easier bouncing ideas of each other than sitting brainstorming on your own. Our next task was to have a discussion on our brainstorm where we then go off develop our ideas further ourselves. I will post my dicussion spider diagram up soon, so keep posted.

Bye x

BLUE ILLUSION

One night my boyfriend and I were bored and we were watching some videos and i came across this arty illusion which really amused me. So maybe this will do the same for you.

Right so on your right is a picture with 4 shades of blue and if you put your finger between the first two shades of blue then they become the same shade. If you then put your finger between the 2nd and 3rd section they become the same shade. Same goes for the last 2. Try it you'll be amazed!

Research on Cultures Project

Scanner still doesnt agree with me so I took some pictures instead...These are some of my research pages from my sketchbook. I really enjoyed working on these pages as I liked experimenting on the different colours and looking at the subject in more detail. I looked at the mussel shells because they reminded me of the paisley teardrop shape. I also liked the colours which were in them and how the shells sat with the seaweed. I took these pictures from Broughty Ferry beach the day after some heavy rainfall. I also looked at the English Chintz which is why it led me to look at leaves and flowers. I found when i was researching I was getting led from one place to another random place. I was jumping about in my skecthbook but I really enjoyed the research side and hopefully has shown in some of my research pages. I might add some more pages later. Enjoy.

Bye x

Development of Cultures Project

Through the reading week I finished off my research for my cultures project in order for me to focus on the development side of things in the coming weeks. I found that as I was researching I got over excited and covered almost everything under the sun, not always a bad thing as it means I now have more to work with but the problem is I dont know where to start my development. The tutors have put us into little groups for the textiles in practise and this week Im working on Print which im really enjoying because its a good challenge thinking about colour and composition all at once. In my research I have looked at the Chintz, Paisley patterns, Tartan, Chinoiserie, Japanese Kimonos and many other cultural patterns. I will post up some pictures of my sketchbook pages when my scanner decides to be my friend again. Also i will by the end of the week show my stages of development through print.

Bye x

Photoshop

The Above images are my final outcomes for the photoshop programme in semester 1. I started with the very basics by scanning in my mark makings from my sketchbook then experimented with the colours and compositions. As i got more confident with photoshop i scanned in my work related to my cultures project. At the moment my culture project is looking healthy as im having fun researching the Eastern and Western Patterns. At the moment i am looking at the English Chintz where the above images are influenced by. I really enjoyed using photoshop as it has taught me a new skill which i found helpful because 1) its much quicker to lay out compositions and see how things look without doing it manually, (very time consuming) 2) it is also easier to see what colours work better against each other.

Mind Maps for Tipping Point

The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell, is a book which describes different epidemics and how little things can have a huge impact. For this book we were asked to make up 2 mind maps in the style of Tony Buzan. One mind map containing an overall view of the book where we could work in groups firing ideas at each other. I found that really helpful as i had forgotten some of the incidents within it. For our 2nd mind map we were to work on it ourselves and focus on a particular chapter which interested us the most. I chose the 'The Stickiness Factor' as i found it related to my childhood and was more enjoyable to read. In the stickiness factor chapter, I branched off the main subjects which were Sesame Street, which related to my childhood, Blues Clues and advertisment and from them i branched off into detail.
The mind maps by Tony Buzan, i found very hard to get the hang when put into practice as i dont usually write on the spine of the line and use colour, so it was different. The mind map itself was very useful though because it breaks the chapter up into sections and makes things easier to understand. One thing which i did not follow was drawing pictures instead of words as it was hard to put into context. The pictures above show my final result.

Bye x

Lecture on Friday with Mike Press

We had a Design Lecture with Mike Press on the 2/09/09 which i found really interesting. His views on Desgin really made me think as he made you look at the bigger picture. This is really encouraging and inspiring as he also gave examples of people who did 'THINK BIG' and became very successful. We got given a book to read 'tipping point' by Malcolm Gladwell which i found very interesting and it really reminded me of the way Mike Press spoke as every point he made he also backed up his views.

I will post my mindmap of the tipping point later. It will contain one of the main subjects within the book which i found interesting :D

Bye x