Approaching the exciting part!

On Tuesday, I researched three textile artists that I find influential and that sort of associated with protection in nature. One artist that interested me based on her fabulous work was Rachel Reynold. This page is intended to be more visual, therefore I attempted to enlarge aspects of her pieces illustrated in the photos. I used masking tape to produce the blue print displayed at the bottom and I am tempted to incorporate a bit of green in there too. For the page on the right, I taped down some fabric to experiment with overlapping layers and then expanded the flower-like pattern over that. Also, I began to apply grey paint but I'm now wondering whether I should complete it or just leave it as it is (considering I still have two more visual artist research pages, production of samples and planning for final piece).

I did fail to mention that the page before that, I did some research on digital textile printers. To tell you the truth, I was already quite familiar with this machinery but it was interesting to research about how it actually works. I've now understood that the heat transfers the dye onto the fabric and the process of this is named sublimation.

I'm excited to hopefully try this in the near future, I reckon I could take a lot of advantage over this and create some fantastic pieces produced on photoshop! :D

Swiftly moving onto sample work now. The two shown on top of the page were produced on Thursday. I intended to experiment with textures as this is what my final piece will revolve around. For me, producing textured pieces is all about layering and patience is certainly the key! The objects that I have decided to focus on are; a pine cone, feather and shell.

Below is a piece I experimented with today. Prior to working into the fabric, I was introduced to fabric dye yesterday and I absolutely loved it! I won't ever stop doing it now. It really makes a difference. Today, I was at the sewing machine for a good few hours attempting to come up with solutions as to how I am going to express the texture of the shell in my final piece. After a few hours of thoughts, mistakes and interruptions, I finally came up with a solution which I briefly explained through annotation. I must also mention that I formed another sample based off of the feather again as an improvement from yesterday's one. I was able to really break into the fabric and emphasize the softness and delicacy of the feather. This will be strong for when it comes to producing the final piece as I will have textures that will conflict with each other, it will definitely contrast with the roughness of the pine cone.

I got a bit ahead of myself and started to map out the layout and arrangement of the fabrics. After taking the photo of the page, I did staple another sample underneath from which I produced yesterday. It is yet to be annotated.

Tomorrow, I hope to work on a larger fabric piece and if I have time, try and complete any uncompleted work (particularly completing the other two textile artist pages) throughout the sketchbook. There are a few gaps that I need to return to. I'm also going to complete a full sample piece of hopefully what the texture of the shell will look like using the method explained in annotation.

#textiles #experimentation #samples #research