Greeting cards Live breif.

Developing my own live brief gave me the freedom I wanted to explore this new illustrative approach to my work. I gave myself the brief to develop hand crafted greetings cards for a shop such as paper chase for my age group with a humorous aspect to them. I came up with the idea to look into a well known fairy tale and turn into a modern story. I took the story of Cinderella and turned the beautiful ball she went to, into a trashy night out clubbing. I wanted to capture Cinderella at different stages throughout the night In which many young women find themselves in while on a night out. I got the idea for this after I saw I image online from new years eve capturing Manchester city centre that night. The image showed a man being pinned down by police, a women arguing with the police and another man lying across the road reaching for a pint. What I really love about this image and what inspires me is that this one night of the year Is meant to be very magical and full of wonder and I feel the image captures what really goes on, on this night.  I wanted to keep it very illustrative so it would be in keeping with my new direction of working, very figurative and fun. 

Preserving the Past.

By changing to work on photographs rather than with collections I feel it has helped my work to become more relatable. I tried working with different medias such as printing, hand and machine embroidery, appliqué. For the size I was after what I found was that screen printing didn’t quite work the lines were too thick and it distorted the images.

I have been trying to think of ways in which I want to display my work and what I want it to show. Talking with my lecturer we discussed how by using the same image and developing it in different ways might be interesting. By doing this I’m hoping that at first viewers might not realise that it is the same image until taking a second glance. This also allows me to play around with different techniques and colour combinations. I wanted to not just have my final samples slapped right in the centre of the fabric I like the idea of having quite long almost like scrolls with the embroidery at the bottom. For displaying my work of assessment I decided to mount them onto mount board but for an actual exhibition I feel this wouldn’t be the best way to display my pieces. I would like to actual transform these individual piece into one piece. It was photographs that first inspired me and I want to relate it back to that I can envision them stitched together forming a sort of photo album of my work. 

Richard Billingham.

Richard Billingham is a photograph who documented his family’s life, mainly his mother and father. His parents were heavy alcoholics and although some of the images document this they also show the love and care in which they have for one another. Richard Bellingham captures perfectly their lives even though some images are quite hard to look at when you understand the pain that they must put him through on a daily basis through their addictions. I feel that my work on some level is similar to that of his, through captures these moments in time although he Is the one taking the photographs I work from old family photos. 

Laura McCafferty

There has been one practitioner that has had a big influence on the work I have recently developed, Laura Mccaferty’s work is also very illustrative and works similarly to me using a mixture between screen printing, embroidery and appliqué.  She finds inspiration from her travels around the world as well as her life at home. I aim my work to be a form of preserving the past, I feel this comes from some deep emotion in me from which I don’t want to forget memories of my own family members. One idea was that this work could be developed into a photo a album for kids with special needs, a tactile album which they can hold, feel and play with. I need my work to be fun and playful working with bright colours and textures so that they can feel the images. My work tells the story of my family but using another families photos it can tell the story of other families and can give those with special needs their photos and memories which they can then too cherish. 

 

Both images above are of work of Laura McCafferty.

Experimenting with new techniques.

I really wanted to push myself this year to develop my skills and learn new things, I wanted to experiment with fabric dying. Within my own practice a lot of my illustrations involve a lot of block colours. To start with I began buying dyed fabrics and then I went onto dying them myself. I knew I wanted to work with natural materials throughout my work so experimented with different weights of wool. I began involving them throughout my samples.

Another technique I used in which I hadn’t before was to get into screen printing, I have done a lot of digital printing before and I began using it within this project as well. The problem was the digital printing in University is very limited with the fabric in which you can print onto, I chose to print onto cotton but to then try and work the cotton into the heavy wools I found very difficult. Eventually I decided against as I felt it didn’t flow properly. I found screen printing very easy and it was a quick way to get work done. I eventually moved away from both techniques as I wasn’t getting the desired look that I wanted.