Micro Form

The stitched samples above are inspired by the patterns and frills that Ashish N Soni used in his ‘Cytology - The Micro Lab’ collection.
And the shapes created by the Swedish designer Naim Josefi in her 3D printed ergonomic shoes.

Ashish N Soni - image from http://thilinah.tumblr.com/post/41105579983/microbiology-and-fashion-cytology-the-micro 

Naim Josefi - image from http://www.coolhunting.com/style/fashion-x-technology-naim-josefi.php

I have used the shape of the shoes to inform the coposition of my deisigns and the way Soni styles her prints with plain co-ordinates, this can be seen in my stitch samples above.

Creating Networks

Using websites such as linkedin.com to create networks with professionals and people a like you can expose yourself to people who you could possibly never contact before.

My profile on Linkedin.com

 With this specific website you can include the individual projects that I have done for each unit and link them to my blog.

My projects and the links

There is also a job search option, and as having your profile with so much relevent information avaliable it makes it easier for the employers to find potential employees.
This enables you to make contact with them in messages, although I haven't personally been offered any jobs over this, I know that employers do use this from a peers experience of being offered an intern position in Next through this platform.

Under the Microscope

Decay - Different Types of Fungus

 

Photographs of the Fungus under the microscope

 

 Cells taken under the Zeiss Microscope

Cells taken under the Standard Microscope

Following on from returning to the primary research stage, prints were able to be produced using various media. This process of going back to primary research has help whever I have gotten stuck after just looking at books and ready made prints.
The designs below were created using manipulation tools in Photoshop and live trace in Illustrator.

 

 

Design size: 4 x A4 (297 x 210 mm approx.) onto 1400mm width silk voile satin.

 

At this stage composition, size and context was being considered.

Having them printed out on to fabric has shown that these designs are too small and detailed to be printed using the digital ink jet printer. Thus if I was to use these designs they would have to be enlarged and simplified, a lower resolution would also help. I also concluded that since these were designs for clutch bags, research needed to be carried out on sizes of rectangular clutch bags in order to be printed to correct size with seam allowance.

The reasons that silk satin was chosen was that it would naturally add dimension to the design without needing to add too much stitch, however I would consider a lighter fabric to create a floatey, ethereal like addition to the design to like with the death and decay theme.

From this stage of the process I have concluded that the theme of 'wearing death' has been slightly more defined in the sense that slides of cells are created from post-mortems, thus these designs can be created using cells of a deceased person, linking with the original idea of Memorial Inking.

Mary Katrantzou Exclusive Resort Collection - Image Copyright Mary Katrantzou

 

Image from http://stylefrizz.com/200910/alexander-mcqueen-spring-summer-2010-collection/ - Copyright Alexander McQueen

 

These designs were influenced by Mary Kantrazou, and Alexander McQueen.

The bag idea was inspired by Rianna Phillips.

Customer Research

New Context Inspirations

 

I found some fashion bloggers that are the most experimental with their fashion, because they are not afrid to clash prints and wear bright eye-catching outfits. They like to wear unconventional garments by designers that create more than just pretty printed garments.

Susanna Lau (Susie Bubble) http://www.stylebubble.co.uk/

King Htut http://kinghtut.blogspot.co.uk/ http://instagram.com/kinghtut

 

These bloggers were found in Vouge and Instagram and follwing a tip from Rianna Phillips and how she gets her Image and designs out there is through sending out free samples to her target market in exchange for reviews and advertisement.
 

 

Rianna Phillip's Instagram - Photo of a blogger's lookbook picture with her bag.

 

Visual Research

Reflecting upon my previous work on inky/faded memories and skeletal stitches. I decided to look for more visual images to inform my drawings to create successful prints. So I decided to look in trend book Promistyl autumn/winter 2014.

And I particularly liked the image on the left with which looks like a building that is organically growing and distoring like a smoke cloud. I also enjoy using a pastle colour palette so I found it most suitable to use.

The development of the above piece was based on that image, it did not come out as I had imagined however I worked with what it came out like.
After I looked at creating those kinds of textures with different media.

I then looked at exploring the mircoscopic concept as I quite liked the marbled like image, so I tried out some marbling with a limited 5 oil paints. The browns and greens actually created quite a godo colour palette that links with my theme of decay.

The small sample to the left of it in green also reminds me of paisley print. I see these as successful inital samples as I think they will have more potenial on a larger piece of paper, so I will source out a bigger tray to marble in and then focus in on different sections and create more drawings.

I found that focusing on the marbling piece that I enjoyed doing created the drive and motivation I needed in the project as a good starting point to continue with. These pieces looked like cells in  muscle in terms of shapes and the red colours, so this began my research focusing on cells. I have previously liked using cells as an inspiration, but never quite got to fully explore it, so I took this oppotunity to use this.

Advertising

Looking at ways fashion is currently advertised I have decided that for my audience of fashion bloggers tend to look at big fashion magazines such as Vogue, Dazed an confused and Elle.
The way these magazines advertise the garemnts and accessories are now quickly adapeting to the new digital platforms such as video and photo apps and other media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook.

The ink idea was derived from the research that I did into remember the dead and memories, it linked well with how memory is fades. Thus I made the ink pieces bleed out and fade into complete blackness, filling the page.

I concluded from making my video of my markmaking idea that I would use video as a form of advertising for my brand and products that have my print on by merging images of my prints with images of my theme.

However, I did not continue with this idea because I did not want to create art direction pieces and decided to go back and think what normally works for me. I decided on using this as an experience with exploring the theme of death and go to look at creating prints for fashion, as I have strong skills in working with digital prints, and it is something I enjoy most.

Developed Ink Pieces:

These pieces were developed after thinking about how I could add colour and experiment with different media. Thus I included stitch inspired by the 'skeleton' and 'scaffolding' idea from looking at burials, and also capturing shape in wool tops and then scanned.
I don't think the woll piece worked as it was hard to get the right shape and was not like ink at all.

Research

I decided to concentrate on the Decay part of death to inform my sketches, however I got stuck as I did not have anything to inform me visually to continue drawing so I created a spider diagram for Decay.

After doing further reading on Death, I managed to find out about decay in the context of linguistics; the Decay of Language, and how it has changed since language was first used and why.
The other way of looking into death is the ancient funerals and burials, and the social and representations of death.

Concluding from this week I decided that doing the decayed leaves and food idea was still too basic and needed to push the philosophies of death concept further, by researching language and rituals I can look into how people remember the dead and peserve memories relating to them.

Decay

For this week I will look into Death and what aspects of it that fascinate me. I decided to hoan in on the stages of decay and I liked the idea of layering and possibly juxtaposing life and death and apply this to the body such as skin coloured or sheer leggings.

More research needed to be done to support my concept of Death more. I have tried to further this by trying to think outside of the box when it came to death. So it is not a death of a person that I was looking at, so the fist thing that came to mind was 'Death of a Crayon' and how I would capture that as a process on paper.

From these marks I have thought about media, specifically ink. After working with it I found that it creates many different shapes as it bleeds out and fills the page. This made me think of capturing this movement, so I started to use a video camera to record it.

 

This idea then developed to a film piece concluded in this post.

Life and Death - Beginning Concept and Idea

Life and Death 

I began my project on looking at Life and Death, after being inspired by Rankin's response to his journey with coping with the recent death of his farther Alive: In the Face of Death that is available to view at the Tate and there was also a documentary about it on Channel 4.

From this research I will continue to look at death and how people remember the dead.

I wanted to explore a lot of different ways of drawing, and risk taking when it comes to line for this project so I started with a lot of spray diffuse and stencilling. I took a lot of visual inspiration from tattoos that people got to remember a death of a family member. Many of them tend to be a portrait of the deceased but also there were many roses and skulls.

Sucessful pieces:

 

I think these specific pieces really captured the look that I was going for, a faded creepy kind of skulls and neat roses that looked like they were slowly still blooming forever.

I found from doing the skull studies that they looked less comical if you take away the jaw bone so there's a less of a funny grin and more of a mystry of how there is a missing piece that potenially envokes the sense that it was lost during battle or disease.

However, I had to expand on this in terms of depth as the images of skulls and cross bones has been done numberous amount of times by artist today. The continuation of research into the theme of death looking at burials and traditions my inform more visual images that can be used. So through this decision I have dropped the idea of the skulls.