T-Shirt Development

As mentioned in my last blog post, this week I have tried to see what my t-shirts are going to look like and I have made a stencil with a t-shirt shape drawn around it. As my patterns were coming together nicely last week my plan was to  put over any mark making from the beginning of this project through to now and any I might do just to give me an idea of how it looks. 

I have made these rectangle pattern shapes so I could make lots of different patterns quickly, they were done randomly with lots of different designs and patterns just to make sure that I wanted to use the colour palette I had already chosen and that I wanted to do the same design that filled the shapes I was going to use. I don't think these will be used in any of my final pieces as they didn't really link with anything I was doing, through this I was trying to take a few risks and merge these together but it didn't turn out as well as I hoped it would.

Every time I have hovered the stencil over a pattern I have taken a photograph and in the end I have ended up with around 80 images. I have displayed some individually but the others have been put in sections. Doing this and looking at what they will look like has confirmed what I want to do for my final pieces, as well as the abstract images. I want to look back at my visual research and do some floral designs as well as I regrettably looked past the pictures of the flowers I did and the paintings from those.

 I want to look back at my visual research and do some floral designs as well as I regrettably looked past the pictures of the flowers I did and the paintings from those, this has been influenced by a mens garment of my friends that had a floral print on it.

Pattern Making

Last week I was unable to go to my tutorial so I took it upon myself to develop my work from home, as I discussed in my last post I enjoyed working quite freely so that was my starting point this week. 

To start off with I have simply started making marks in the same way I had previously done, I have then searched around the house for random objects that I could make repetitive patterns with but I also took into account shapes that would appear on photographs I had already taken. Below are the paintings I have done, the first one worked quite well and I liked the circles I imprinted on it. 

As I have continued to do these I have started to flick back and forth with doing patterned ones and just mark making, so I have decided through this process that any mark making could make an absract print for a t-shirt so I will continue to do this this week. I plan on doing some more A1 scale paintings to experiment this method on a larger scale as this would benefit me in a way of getting into a more loose approach. With this I also want to try and see if my designs would look good in my silhouettes and on my t-shirts so something that I feel will really benefit my journey to my final pieces is if I was to make a small stencil and put it on top of them and take a photograph.

Building Assembling

In my tutorial last week we discussed that I would look at buildings as a collective image so I decided to look back at the images I took in Chicago and take sections of the large image below. I am taking small bits of this image as I want to be the silhouettes of the building's to be quite simple.

I have worked on these in my sketch book using water colour and acrylic paint. Seeing the results on A1 paper when using different tools and objects to paint with I continued experimenting this on a smaller scale and I was curious to see the results when I didn't use them on the end of a brush. 

After doing more free hand paintings I experimented doing a scaled drawing still using the same tools and colours but introducing some more red than before. What inspired me to do this was was looking at a painting on pinterest that was similar to the style of painting I was doing. Experimenting with colours has made the paintings a lot brighter if I continue to do this I will introduce the colours from the photographs I took of flowers. These stages in my project have made me think about what season my t-shirts would be placed in, at this moment in time I do believe that they would be the most successful in a summer collection being either summer 2015 or summer 2016.

http://uk.pinterest.com/pin/413134965791829195/

Exploring with Mark Making

This week my tutorial was focused on what visual research we had gathered from the second week, as the week before I focused on the shapes and the different scales of building's around Manchester. I decided I would do this on a big scale again as I wanted to use different objects to paint with and to do it from a distance so I experimented with a tooth brush, a sponge and a comb all sellotaped to the end of a brush. This worked out well for me as I feel not being fully in control of the object I'm painting with makes interesting marks on paper that wouldn't be made if I had used a paintbrush normally.  

Having done a few fairly quick paintings which were successful I decided to do a more detailed one with a textured surface. I knew from some experiments I did last year that toilet roll made paintings appear softer as the paint spread and made a rough and hard texture when it dried so I decided to do this on a big scale and see how the same type of painting came out when I used different processes. 

             

The image I worked from is the image on the left, however I did zoom in slightly and made the colours I used warmer than the original picture.

  After my work was looked at we have decided that continuing with looking at views of buildings as a collective image is a good way to go forward. This is definitely something I am looking forward to exploring and seeing what results I will benefit from by doing this. But we have also discussed that the original colour scheme for this photograph was better and I need to start thinking about my colours in advance before starting anything new and not just do it in random ones.

Visual Research

During this week we have been able to explore Manchester and have a feel of what it really has to offer looking at it closer and more in depth. I walked in and around town taking pictures of textured surfaces and buildings until I got lost. These are the pictures I took and worked from during these two weeks.

I then walked past a florist and thought the flower arrangements were very pretty and inviting so I took a few pictures of them and knew I wanted to use these in my work in the future.

All the images I have got here will have a massive impact on my work as well as my summer photos and I am very excited to start this unit!