Colour Conscious

So this week I have been concentrating on COLOUR! I have to admit, I am petrified of colour, I am usually sticking to very simplistic, minimal colour. I found myself steering back into this comfort zone earlier this week and it has set me behind a little with my development throughout the project which I do regret and it has taught me a lot. I originally wanted to take inspiration from this image -

However once I began to develop a colour palette using Designers Gouache I became really against the idea and realised that the small amount of colours was going to hold me back, and I did not want this to happen. So back to the drawing board I went.. searching through blogs, style websites and my own images, I began to search for images in which I generally was just captured by the colours used. I wanted to step outside my comfort zone.

Here is my final image in which I plan to use the colours as inspiration for my own work. This image in particular stood out to me on a fashion blog, the colours are so prominant and in your face, they actually scare me a little. However I think this will be a really good experiment for me not just in this textile world but as a designer in the future. 

So to start I began using Designers Gouache, creating a hand drawn colour palette but using my eye to really work out the colours in the image. This is to help myself as a designer to understand colour and have a better eye for colour. It is a longer process than simply using an eye dropper tool on Photoshop but it is a great way to learn.

Digital Session - Adobe Photoshop

Each week we have been having digital session with Sally, they have been really informative and useful to me. Although I am quite confident with Photoshop already as I have been using it for a while now, there is always something you do not know about Photoshop and Sally's teaching style has really allowed me to grasp these new techniques quickly.

Although I feel that I understand these techniques I have not been able to put them to much use. Every design in which I develop using Photoshop I HATE!!! We need to develop a colour palette for next weeks session, so this is what I will be concentrating on for now.

Final Images for Screen

These are the final 2 A4 pages that I have decided to send to be developed onto screen for printing. To allow these designs to develop I need to photocopy these designs onto acetate, I then need to double up the acetate so that the black is very very black. This makes sure that no light can pass through the image whilst being exposed. The exposing process takes only 3 minutes. Once the screen has been developed I then need to double check the screen for any holes or gaps in the screen and I will also need to mask it off using gum tape.

Screen Printing

In preparation for the print room we have been asked to develop enough motifs to fit onto an A3 section of an A2 screen. The amount of motifs was not a problem, however choosing which motifs to include was. I had that many designs that trying to edit them down was difficult and definitely something that I had trouble with, however I managed in the end. The task then was to decide how thick the lines were going to be, were I wanted to designate the colour and I also wanted to have a variety of digitally produced motifs and hand drawn ones. I much prefer digitally produced motifs as I find them cleaner and more precise, however I am excited to see the outcomes of the hand drawn motifs once developed onto screen.

This image is an example of the different decisions that had to be made during the designing process for the motifs for screen. The black is were the colour will come through on the screen, were as the white will be blocked out. Although it seems a small decision it makes all the difference once the screen is sent to be exposed.

Drawing Development

I have been carrying on drawing from my research and have found a few shapes that I really like and feel that I could carry on into a motif with. I have been working in black and white  from the beginning of the print textile world as these motifs are going to be developed for screen printing, however I am constantly thinking about different colour palettes that I could use once I have developed my screen.

Here I have experimented with composition and tone. I really like the last drawing as the tonal work has worked really well with this drawing, however the drawing itself is too large and scaling it down would make the lines thinner, and the positives that go to be exposed for the screen can not have any lines thinner than 0.5.

Drawing from Data

After doing a lot of research in the MMU library I collected a number of books and used photocopies from these books to draw my inspiration from. I tried not to stick to anything to specific as this was just an initial excursive to gather research and get drawing. So the books that I took data from were about geography, dental science, cancer cells and volcanos. This was due to the fact that as I flicked through the books I found some visually exciting graphs and diagrams that I thought I would like to develop further. Here are some of my drawings so far.

     

                    

Data

Well its the end of one project and the start of another! I have decided to go into the textiles world of Print. Print has always excited me and is always something that I have thought about doing, but not something in which I have fully explored.

So for the initial few weeks before we break off for christmas we have been asked to collect research around the word 'DATA'. This could be taken in any way we liked and we played a game of Chinese whispers to get a more abstract outcome. I heard the phrase 'paper, text and graphs' so off to the library I went.. I found that researching into other peoples research was pretty boring, but I was looking at the visuals rather than the written word.

We were given a task to then use different rules to aid our drawing skills. We had to create a maze, but using our own rules, I chose to use blind drawing for this particular piece. We were asked to document date such as the growth and age of a tree, we firstly had to use our left hands to control the pencil and not let the lines touch one another. The second attempt was using a long garden pole with a graphite stick attached to the end, we had to stand back from the paper, and draw using our normal hands this time. I feel that my left handed attempt worked quite well as I surprised myself by being able to control the pencil well. However the second attempt with the pole did not work very well, it went out of shape and it slipped a lot of times.

Once we had drawn using these set rules we were asked to apply them to our own drawings, drawing from the research that we had carried out earlier in the day. I took inspiration from a range of graphs that I had found in geographical books and books about dentistry. I also collected some data from my own flat, using the data that printed out from my own printer after cleaning the printer heads. I tried to experiment with media here, using graphite sticks, pencil, fine liner and gouache. Personally I do not feel that these have worked out as-well as I would have liked but it was just something to get us drawing again and thinking about the different ways in which we can make a mark.