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.