UNIT X level 6 Evaluation

Anna Carver: 13136880

Unit X Evaluation

Throughout this unit, I have pushed myself to work in larger scale using various printing techniques, with focus on preparing my portfolio for professional practice. At the start of the unit, I didn’t feel highly confident about what I wanted to do and took me a while to do so. Not having as much time as the last unit has really been a struggle for me and has taught me that I need to work a bit faster and be more organised.

My concept for this project has been to hand print my designs as well as creating digital and hand drawn, all coinciding with each other. I mainly focused on printing my designs in large scale in the print room using my hand painted motifs for screen. This has really pushed my practice and improved my printing skills. Trying to stick to a time scale of two weeks in the print room was difficult, and did not get as many prints as I would have liked as the ones I have took longer than expected. I definitely produced what I wanted in terms of concept, and found my process of printing and layering each motif individually, beneficial to my practice and has grown to be a big part of my concept and development. Designing my prints to a large scale has contextualised my practice more in depth, and has widened my choices for certain interior products such as upholstery and rugs. This has also prepared me for the degree show; and how to produce work relative to the space we are given and scale.

 As I have spent the majority of my time in the print room, I feel that this has affected my time scale and time management. I would have liked to produce more large-scale digital prints, and a different screen printed design with slightly different motifs, but still feel happy with what I have produced and has taught me that in the future I need to be more organised with the initial stages of a project. I know that in the professional world, it is fast paced so would need to keep up with the workload.  

Having an online presence such as Instagram to show and share my work has helped my practice as it has kept me motivated to want to add things to it, and see other practitioners work.  It has made me more aware of my context and kept me on track preparing my portfolio. Creating professional photos for my portfolio and doing the photoshoot myself also taught me about time management and organisation. Having these photographs has built up my portfolio to a professional standard. I am in the process of creating a website and business cards in time for the degree show, preparing me for after graduation. Having been chosen to exhibit for new designers, this will be a great experience and a confidence boost, and to talk to other practitioners I think this will give me more insight of what I want to do after graduation.

Overall the unit has taught me about how and where to contextualise my practice, and prepare for after graduation. The skill and techniques of screen-printing has prepared me for a professional practice after my degree; and feel extremely motivated to find a job in this area of practice. I am happy and confident with my portfolio and what I have learnt during my degree and have enjoyed my time here at Manchester school of art.  

Print Instagram account

https://www.instagram.com/ac_prints/?hl=en

UNIT X

For this unit, I really want to narrow down and refine what really inspires me and how I work best. From my previous work I love to create texture, abstract marks and layers. For the rest of my practice and degree, I want to create large scale prints working with various techniques. I always start with drawing, collage and experimenting with colour.

Using previous architectural inspiration, I started to draw a few quick layered drawings. My intentions are to carry on drawing with inspiration from buildings, and places I visit. I want to create large scale prints whether this be paper based, digital or screen/hand print. I intend my prints to be made for upholstery fabrics, cushions and would like to explore designs for rugs as I feel this would compliment large scale/ placement print.  

Practice unit evaluation

This unit overall has been a success and I am extremely happy with the quality of samples and development work I have produced. The first four weeks, working towards the Bradford Textiles brief was a learning curve as it was fast moving and I found it quite difficult at first to keep up with the pace. Because it was four weeks of continuous experimenting and developing, I found it extremely helpful in gaining a full body of work. I worked in a spontaneous way in the print room, by using hand drawn stencils to create the prints. I found this much more exciting than using only screens because I was able to vary the design with a quick turnaround, as I did not have to design a screen.

After the four weeks, I realised this wasn’t the direction I wanted my work to go so tried to change it around and develop samples with a more hand painted feel. Using brighter, bolder colours with stencils, I brought in a brushed screen, which I used to mask off and print. Overlapping the shapes on a larger scale than I usually work showed a different perspective and enjoyed this. On the other hand, this still wasn’t the way I wanted my prints to look. I felt that I was missing my drawing quality and texture from the prints. I started to experiment with heat transfer prints. By painting the transfer paper showing the brush strokes, I was able to bring a painterly feel to the designs. After creating a large sample to show scale, I realised again that this wasn’t working and I found the colours too dull and wasn’t enjoying working with synthetic fabric. By doing this, I wanted to test myself and push something I had not done before but I was only disappointed with the results. After this, I felt like I was back to square one because I had spent so much time on these experiments so really had to research further and work out the quality of print I wanted to create. I incorporated my drawing style into my prints by drawing with discharge paste straight onto the fabric, at this stage I started to feel that the direction of my work was going in a way I wanted it to. By using my own photographs and primary sources, I was able to pin point what I wanted my prints to be inspired by and link everything together.

Working towards the Adamley silk brief was a challenge because I don’t usually work digitally. By translating hand drawn motifs to a digital design, I was able to see that digital isn’t a million miles away from hand printed and was quicker to create designs using brushes. I used bright colours to stick to the brief of ‘contemporary colours’ and enjoyed this change of colour palette. Working towards a menswear (pocket square) brief was a different context to what I usually design for but I found this refreshing, and shows a varied and diverse range to my portfolio.

In unit X, I intend to create prints in repeat by hand printing. I want to up the scale of my work further with intentions for upholstery. I want to expand my drawing skills and explore other concepts for the designs for my prints as I want to create more detailed designs than I have already produced.

West Elm

I have recently been inspired by the interior company West Elm. the products are contemporary and my prints are similar to some of their prints. I could see my prints working well along side theirs.

Digital samples

I have been creating prints on a large scale, I found this easy to produce digitally as I was able to play around with the sizes of brushes. I scanned my brush marks in and created brushes on photoshop.

                                

                                 

                                 

This process was quicker than hand printing and I was able to use brighter colours on top of dark backgrounds. These prints would work well on a large scale in the interior such as rugs. The bright brush marks contrast well with the muted backgrounds and can see this work in well as a focal point to a minimal room. I added copper foil over the top in the print room by brushing the glue straight into the print, this adds more depth to the print. 

develpoment

I have been experimenting with wax creating a ceramic crackled aesthetic, and did so by painting the whole sample with wax then once it dried, crunched it up then painted with black reactive.

                            

I also experimented with line drawing onto fabric showing my drawing quality. By using my photographs I took of architecture in Manchester; I created line drawings.

                             

                             

I experimented with layering the discharge paste and wax differently. 

                             

                             

By adding the discharge first then brush strokes of wax I was left with a great texture. 

                              

I wanted the print to show the brush strokes and have a playful aesthetic quality.