Vintage Americana

The second project of this year was also self-initiated. I completed a textiles course during my A-Levels, and this year due to living with fashion students, I wanted to create a project that was illustration/fashion based. I decided I wanted to explore creating prints that could be used repetitively as material for fashion garments. I wanted to keep this project contemporary so I chose the fashion trend; Vintage Americana; for Spring/Summer 12'13. Each individual print is made up of everything American, such as urban signage, vintage cars, American diners and iconic American symbolism. I wanted to keep the colours as vibrant and retro as possible. I created twenty-four geometric prints in total, which can easily be replicated using Photoshop. 

Here are 10 of the final prints;

Here are 6 of the repeated patterns, to show how the print could be used as material;

So my final outcome was to create a LookBook of prints that could be used as material. Here's a few pages from the Look Book;

Front cover;

Example of left page;

Example of opposite page;

Summary;

Back cover;

'Birds of a feather, flock together'

So over the summer, I had to draft a self-initiated brief as my first personal project of my third year at university. From previous briefs, I knew I wanted to draw from my own photographs wherever I could, so I decided to base my project on photographs I already had of birds of prey. I started the project quite realistically, to be honest I just wanted to prove that I could still draw, with changing styles over the past couple of years I just wanted to strip it all back to the basics. Here's one of the illustrations;

The project swiftly moved on from this process, as I wanted to play around with pattern and intricate detail within the form of a bird. I enjoyed this way of working so much that I based the entire project around it and created two final pieces, one a hand made canvas, with the image screen-printed onto calico, and the other was individual screen-prints on calico, stitched together (patchwork quilt style). 

This illustration in particular was to represent 'birds of a feather, flock together'. Each bird is a different breed of the falcon family and the branch is to represent the connection between them. 

I also produced illustrations of birds in flight. The final outcome of these illustrations was created to illustrate this poem; 

Birds In Flight

By Anishinaabekwe

The bird flew, in flight,

Flew, flying, the birds cross paths,

In flight, wings touching,

Hearts connect, but must fly away.

Shadows cast, a glimpse of the soul,

Intertwined, a moment,

Snapshot, in a picture,

Connection to a soul,

Soil signifies connection,

But longing, reaching, broken for home.

Summer Project

So for Year Two's Summer Project, we had to choose between a range of given briefs. One brief was to use one word off a given list and explore. So I decided to create a project using the starting point 'play'. Straight away I thought of play, in the sense of play, stop, pause, record and just explored this idea, mainly using shapes, such as triangles and circles in particular. I also wanted to be playful in terms of colour, so I tried to stay away from black as much as I could. Here's some of the illustrations I created;

So this illustration was created based on the word record; which translates as vinyl record. So I used a combination of black acrylic and collaged papers.

This image came about as initally a pause sign, so just the two rectangles, however I didn't know what to do with the image, so I just started to create my own town in the middle using different coloured fine liners and just really enjoyed the freedom within these illustrations. 

I also extended them both using Photoshop;

This illustration came about after numerous 'experiments'. Originally the idea came from a circle, so the record itself is a circle, the centre of the camera is a circle and the numerous shapes within the cassette. I just wanted to see what this illustration would look like on paper, scanned it in and tweeked it on Photoshop.

This illustration was based on the camera in the previous one, I just wanted to play around with different retro colours and repetition. 

Elective, Part Two.

Humans, Structures And Things That Grow.

Brief;

Buy an A3 sketchbook or make one by binding paper you have collected. Fill it with sketches, drawings, marks of humans, structures and organic things. Keep in mind the materials and processes from Part One of this elective. There should be no fewer than 30 drawings of each category meaning 90 in total. When drawing always consider the surface. The surface could be used to reflect the subject in some way. Then select your 3 favourite/most successful working methods and 3 favourite drawings from the brief and re-work them to A1.