Secondary Imagery: Wedding Dress

This sketchbook page looks primarily at the idea of fashion as concealment. The pictures are taken from my grandparents wedding and therefore combine with the aspect of concealed memories. At this stage, I was very interested in the symbolism of the veil being a sign of purity and concealment before marriage and later on in my sketchbook I use a wedding dress in my final piece to represent the motherly figure.

Cocoon Sculpture

Reverting back to the idea of metamorphosis, I made a cocoon sculpture that is based more on a moth cocoon than a butterfly cocoon. I like the rough textures and bland colours in moth cocoons and I tried to replicate this using hessian, cotton wool and fine string. I have also looked at many butterfly cocoons in my sketchbook and will be making one to identify the best for my final piece.

Oil Painting

This is an unfinished oil painting looking at the initial thoughts of conceal. It is based on Alyssa Monk's underwater series which I think works well with 'conceal' by only only revealing sections of the face. Although this piece is unfinished, I wanted to include it because it shows another media I am fond of which allows me to get great detail and beautiful colour. It also shows another initial aspect of my project. 

Life Drawing

These are a couple of my life drawings, which are two completely different styles. The left drawing was a thirty-minute drawing, produced with graphite powder, charcoal and a rubber to create the tones. The drawing on the right was a quick sketchy drawing using graphite pencil on brown paper. Life drawing enhanced my skills incredibly and gave me more of an insight to drawing the human figure, which I believe to be very beneficial to fashion as the human figure is the basis of all garments and illustration.

Lino Printing

 

I created a lino print of my mother in the style of the artist 'Kathe Kollwitz' to show development from the idea of the protection of the mother through life. I experimented on different materials as I wanted to lead from printing to the idea of garment material and textiles.

Development: Symbols of Protection

After looking at Louise Bourgeois, who uses symbols to represent memories, I decided to use the symbol of metamorphosis of a butterfly to represent the development of a child in the womb and eventually throughout life. I then reverted back to 'concealed memories' and linked this with the idea of the protection our family provides us when we grow and develop. It also associates back to my initial drawings of wrapped objects because of the similarity in a wrapped creature or human.

Development: Layering and Henry Moore Exhibition

This sketchbook page shows a visit to the Henry Moore Exhibition where the themes of mother and child and the foetal sculptures play a big role in influencing my final piece. I also looked at the anatomical structure as it is concealed through layering and this idea relates to my final piece because I am looking at the layers of a wedding dress and how dresses can be symbolic of a mother figure. 

Development: Ageing

For my initial development I looked at ageing because as we get older we have more memories which are concealed by façade. The wrinkles represent the depth of the memories so I produced a double page looking at both detailed portraits and exploration of materials that create a wrinkled texture. The exploration of materials is something that would help me when looking at fabrics for garments. 

Artist Copy: MC.Escher

'Dreams' was another sub-topic in my project because they are a result of concealed memories in our unconscious. MC.Escher is an artist I studied due to his dream-like pieces with impossible constructions and explorations of infinity. I copied it in pencil to get the tones of the reflections and the detail in his work. 

Initial Drawing: Human Form

I looked again at the way material drapes off the body by experimenting with a mannequin torso and material covered in plaster. This gave a still life so that I could create observational primary drawings of the material folds. This developed my understanding of materials and moved my focus from object to figure to link with fashion. 

Initial Drawing: Objects

These drawings were from my project 'conceal. These are initial drawings looking at wrapped objects and the folds created by the materials. The folds relate to the fashion aspect of my project because they show how material can shape an object or body and drawing this will help when drawing other garments.

Final Piece AS 'Organic'

This is my final piece from both angles, which was produced with acrylic on board and then screwed onto a structure that I made. The left-hand composition shows all emotion being kept in my the emphasis of the straight face, the clenched fists and the concealed feet. The composition on the right shows the exposed emotion of anxiety and the boards differ in that they are placed randomly to show the unstableness of mind. This piece is an example of how I link my personal experiences of my anxiety into my work to make it more authentic. 

Final Piece Presentation

Before making my final piece I produced a page exploring different ways I could present my paintings. I knew I wanted more than one triptych so I would have to create a design to show both pieces and this page shows clearly my thought processes and the dimensions needed to make all three structures. 

Final Piece Compositions

This development page to my final piece combines many primary photos to create different compositions and compare them to decide which works best. This shows the refining of my ideas and experimentation before jumping straight in to the composition. The idea behind the different compositions is that the first three show emotion being held in and the last represents the exposure of emotion that no one sees which is why I chose to have bare feet. 

Artist Copy and Development

This development page shows my ability to convert research of an artist into my own original composition. Moving on to emotion and human form within 'organic' I used the idea of Adde Adesokan's triptych and combined it with my own idea representing stress and anxieties. I also experimented by printing on acetate using a medium called digital ground which allowed me to present images in different ways and use the transparency to add layering of drawings and colours underneath.

Adde Adesokan is German photographer who focuses on triptych's to show the personality of a person from just three images. Adesokan's concept influenced my final piece of the project and helped me to display emotion in an original way. Using artists in my work greatly influences me and helps to ignite my own ideas.

http://www.adde-adesokan.de

Digital Work

This digital piece was from my project 'Organic'. I looked at anatomy and animal skulls and layered them with ink experiments using the transparency effects on photoshop. The layering adds a new dimension to the photo and gives it an organic feel with the tertiary colours of the ink. I like the fact that it is not immediately identifiable and the contrast of the sharpness of the teeth and the ambiguousness of the rest of the photo is interesting.

Gel and Gesso Experiments

Gel and gesso mediums provide many ways to create textures for backgrounds. On the right are gesso experiments using a paint brush, palette knife and tin foil, which have been left to dry before adding ink to enhance the effect. I have experimented using the matte gel medium and ink on the left which can be used for both texture and gel transfers of photos. These experiments helped strengthen my sketchbook work by making them more interesting and shows my ability to use different materials and effects to influence the presentation of my composition.