Unit evaluation

Overall I am happy with the work I have achieved. Balancing various projects at once was quite hard at times as I sometimes lost focus on one and forgot about the other so had to keep going back to remind myself. I have explored various techniques such as dying with different dyes in the print room and working out what works on certain fabrics and what doesn't.

The start was slow as I didn't know which direction I was heading in and I seemed to take a while on deciding what it was I wanted to explore. After spending a few weeks in the print room I have gained the knowledge I wanted to feel confident during this unit. 

Because of the nature of screen printing, things take longer in the print room, As I was trying to create complex designs. I didn't really get the full result I was looking for with my screen prints. I feel that they aren't consistent enough with the colour or size. In the future I will stick to only one size of fabric and a few different fabrics. I definitely feel that I explored all the techniques I intended which I am happy with. For a couple of weeks I spent experimenting with colour and dying fabrics so I was sure the techniques would work on my final samples. During printing a few samples didn't go to plan but I tried to rectify them but in the end I didn't want to use them. 

 Exploring digital print on the branding brief showed I could push myself to create prints out of my comfort zone. In the future I would need to give myself longer for visual research so that I had plenty of varied designs. As ever, things take longer than expected so in the future I need to be a lot more organised. I really enjoyed completing the digital prints and definitely want to do more in the next unit.

When designing the art work for Bradford textiles I found it a struggle at first becacuse I had to repeat the design and start from scratch. This taught me that I can go out my comfort zone and push myself. It took a while but I suceeded. I need to better my skills on photoshop and repeat design.

This unit has been a learning curve which I definitely needed. I didn't think I would learn so much from mistakes (as I have had many during this) I've learnt that I need to stay focused, need to know what I want, be more decisive and organised to achieve the result I expect from myslef. 

In the next unit, I want to work on a larger scale with bigger more bold abstract drawings organising into different print techniques. My visualisation skills need to develop further.

'keep up, don't catch up'...  

Samples

A few final samples...

 Bottle green, discharge, flock.

 Light grey, discharge, Orange reactive.

 Light cotton, orange &black reactive through stencil and screen. grey flock.

 Bottle green, black reactive& flock.

discharge on black.

Bradford textiles

 

Digital design

 

Final repeat design for print. Upholstery.

Moodboards

'Don't do it because it's easy'

After my tutorial I realised I had a lot of experimenting to do in the print room.I worked with reactive dyes, pigment discharge and neautral discharge. after making the pigment discharge and printing it; I no longer felt it was necessary to use and would rather stick to reactive dyes to add colour.

 

Sheer cotton works so well with my designs. I like how delicate they feel and are perfect for floor length light weight curtains and room deviders. I made full strength orange reactive dye. Happy with how bright it turned out after finishing the sample. The contrast between the full coverage of the grey fabric and the discharged 'textured' design also works well.

 Remove, Replace.

*Left design- First i discharged out the A3 'splat' screen, steamed then made a stencil and used a blank screen to pull the discharge through creating a bold stack design. 

*Right design- I cut out circles and used them to block parts of the screen off. I don't think this works as well because the background pattern is slightly too busy.

Using stencils with a black screen is an added bonus to screen designs, it means that i can create other motifs to use with my screens varying the designs. I wanted to keep my designs simple because the techniques I am using are more important.

Screen designs

Screen designs.

I want to create my designs showing layers by Discharging out the colour and replacing with another colour and motif. The reason I made the designs A4 is because I want most of the fabric covered in an all over pattern leaving a gap at the bottom to add strips of colour.

 The idea behind Blocking out parts of the designs and having it in strips came from my drawings of books etc.Mae Englegeer influenced my work a lot during designing this. Leaving the designs quite simple will able me to move my screen around in different places and add more techniques without it looking over busy.

The circle designs are more for Bradford textiles. I want to use heavy weight cotton for upholstery. Using the same techniques as my self initiated brief still showing remove and replace.
It took me a while to get the grey I wanted, after tweaking the strength of the direct dye and times I left the fabric in I got the right shade. I still wanted different shades of grey as concrete is my colour influence.

Using stencils with a blank screen to discharge out the dye. It was tricky to repeat the circle design as the screen was hard to place in the right position. next time I would prefer the designs to be on smaller separate screens.

Branding evaluation

Throughout the two weeks I gave myself to complete this brief. I have pushed myself to create something I wouldn't normally. Working on photoshop to create digital designs has always been my weak point because I never really feel that it will benefit me but after this, I have changed my mind! Creating digital samples abled me to get the finish and colour I wanted, as Marimekko use bright designs.I struggled at first with my drawing and wanted only bold illustrator designs but then started to think about florals. I kept my floral designs modern and abstract linking them with the Marimekko style. I feel like I have explored different designs throughout and picked my strongest ones to print. I am glad I pushed myself to do the branding brief as well as Bradford textiles and my Self initiated one even though I've struggled slightly with time management, but have overcome this by catching up in uni. The only thing I would change to this project would be having more motifs for design. Drawing more flowers would benefit me and scaling up. Overall it has been successful because I have worked in a different way. I feel that the prints came out better than expected and the colours came out exactly how I wanted them.