Pitt Rivers

On Tuesday we went on a group visit to the Pitt Rivers museum in Oxford. It's a lovely place very intriguing and absolutely tonnes to look at. We are focussing on collections as our latest project brief and so we went there for a bit of research. I haven't done anything with my research yet but I thought I'd pop the photos up now anyway....

Developing my gift a bit more ...

So before I posted about my gift and I have finally finished it. I decided to use the same technique as Kat to make my bowl because I really like the texture of the cup that she made me, but I developed the design around the edge. Taking inspiration from Severijia's work that I saw in Illustration Play two and Kat's piece I designed my bowl.

Mine is a lot more simpler than these really nice pieces but I like the combination between textiles and 3D objects which isn't seen that often.

I'm quite pleased with this, however I would like to investigate this technique further try it out on different surfaces and different stitch but as a trial I'm fairly satisfied. If I had time I would have made the design on the surface a bit more complicated as I think it create a nicer overall finish.

Weekend Project...

This Friday I got an email with a project for the weekend. The task was to document a collection that we have and catalogue it. Because I had a very short amount of time I decided to do some quick observational drawings of my tea cups and some nice photographs and make them into a small zine combining the two elements. I'm relatively pleased with it for a two day project.

Weaving workshop...

Thursday was weaving day ! We were learning the ancient craft of tablet weaving which at first because the small number of components on the list that it would be very simple, I was wrong ! using cards with one hole in each corner and a yarn in each hole you twist and turn the tablets to get patterns. At first it was a little confusing but after a while i got the hang of it and came out with these little swatches of fabric...

The first two swatches used only two colours of wool and 10 tablets so they were relatively easy to make and you can see that I've tried out a few different patterns by rotating the cards in different ways. The last one was a bit more adventurous this used 4 colours and 20 cards. This was a very tricky one and took a long time, the threads kept getting tangled but it was well worth doing.

Workshop week...

This past week it has been workshop week at college. We could sign up to a number of different 1 day activities. The first day I learnt how to do sand casting which was really exciting , but unfortunately I didn't get any photographs. Tuesday I did an embroidery workshop with artist Naomi Ryder. Some of her work is below...

Using this technique I've created some similar drawings on fabric using disolvable fabric. Here are my own versions of these illustrations.

Developing my gift...

My last post was about the gift exchange from which I received a small paper mache cup, when we were told to develop this gift idea at first I wasn't really sure what to do so I tried out the process myself to see what I could achieve with it. As of yet I only have these trial versions but I'm to do some more experimenting with them.

The first one is just a tiny little trial from a dip bowl, I painted it white outside because I really liked how Kat had done mine white on the outside and gold on the inside. I used gold fabric on the inside thinking it might create a nice effect, but the PVA glue didn't really work to well and changed the colour of the fabric.

The second image is of the larger bowl that I have been making again I'm going to gold foil the inside of this, but I'm going to stitch the pattern of a teacup on the outside.

Christmas Project - Received Gift...

So after uploading my photos and giving my gift to the recipient- Kat , I received my gift from her, she took elements of a mood board that I made to give her inspiration just like she did for me, and she took elements of this to make me my gift which was ...

We were then asked to try and develop the thought process behind our gift which is what I will be going for the next week or so, I feel fortunate that my cup has a lot of potential as it opens up a lot of variations in both trying out materials to make the 3d object but also in creating a surface design, I've already started looking into different ways to change and evolve it.

Design Republic...

The first project we were ever set in design craft was so learn a skill which related us to our heritage and learn and display this skill in some way.
Seeing as it's my new years revolution to get organised and stop putting things off I have finally photographed the outcome of my week long project.

Because my dad is a blacksmith I learnt the skill of raising to create a copper bowl, I'm relatively pleased with the way it's turned out but it's given me a lot more ideas for the future.

These are just a few pages from my sketchbook for the project, I really enjoyed exploring the texture of the copper once I had planished it or added flux. This was a good source of inspiration to draw and paint it.

Christmas Project...

Over the Christmas holidays we were set a task to make a gift for a fellow classmate, after researching their likes and dislikes we had to hand make them a gift for under £3.50 and spend between 4.5 and 5 hours making our gift.

After a lot of development I came up with making a necklace which was shaped like a lace collar, it didn't turn out exactly how I wanted it to but I may develop this idea further later on. So here are the photographs of the final necklace and how I will be presenting it...

And this is how I presented my final piece. I didn't want to use a conventional jewellery box because I wanted the gift to be and absolute surprise and so i wanted to disguise it in some way.
I like the collage feel of the necklace on the photograph I will think about presenting my work better in the future.