Flower printing in photshop

Today we had the privilege of being shown how to design prints in Photoshop by a graphic illustrator/designer. Luckily I knew my way around Photoshop so It wasn't too difficult for me to understand but there were some new buttons that I was learning about. I learnt more about creating beautiful layered images to create one new image. This lesson fit in perfectly with my floral project I was in between doing, It was something extra to add to it. It was so much fun to play around in Photoshop and create a beautiful pattern that could be printed onto a garment.

  

Back to the Museum

Today for my Native American final major project I had to go back to the British Museum to get some drawings done. I went to do some drawings at the beginning of the year but they were more quick and sketchy. I thought It'd be a good idea to go back and refresh my head for this project. My mind was more set of getting good drawings done and I managed to achieve that when I went today. I choose to draw a range of objects with different shapes and texture. I chose not to focus on the colours just because the shapes were beautiful in itself. I'm happy with all my drawings especially the weapon because I feel I got the textures right with the fur and the feathers.

Samples, Samples, Sample

Once again it was a busy week for us as the final weeks creep upon us. This week it was all about samples and trying out a few new techniques. This week I tried printing with freezer paper, both as a stencil and as a transfer paper for mono printing. Both techniques worked quite well in applying shapes of colour. Using freezer paper as a stencil could be a technique use for one of my final garments. As you can see from the images I used the two top left samples to inspire two garments which I think looks really pretty. I then looked at feathers which I took inspiration from the Native American headdresses. Rather than going out and buying quill feathers I thought I would try and make my own. The first sample I did was by using the free-hand foot to create feather shapes on dissolvable fabric (freely sew a feather on plastic that dissolves under water, leaving the shape of stitches). This technique worked really well because the stitches created a feathers texture. One of my tutors suggested that I try the technique of heat pressing plastics together. I had never tried this and was intrigued to see what the end results where. The image above only included some of the samples I ended up with. When I layered these pieces of plastics together and put them under the heat press they had fused together, like one new piece of plastic. I loved how these samples had turned out. When I heat pressed the plastic onto calico fabric it was like it had been printed on, like those T-shirts you get with the plastic/rubbery designs. It was amazing to see how something as cheap as a plastic bag could create such beautiful samples. 

Here is the sample where I heat pressed plastic onto a piece of calico. Because this is a quick, cheap, easy way of making prints I am considered using this technique in one of my final garments. There's no need of paints, stencils, screens just some plastic bags and a heat press. My next step is to create a few more samples and then get designing, hopefully by the end of next week I have three final designs and know what fabrics I am going to be using. 

Almost forgot, on Wednesday we had someone come in to teach us how to use illustrator. I already know how to use Photoshop fairly well but it was great to pick up some tips and tricks and learn about a few new tools. This is something I created using illustrator. 

6 weeks to go...

With 6 weeks left of school left its hard not to get a bit stressed every now and again but like most things you have to just get on with it. On Sunday and Monday I was working on my floral project and ended up with some drawings and prints. After drawing and adding colour to a flower I wanted to look at just the shape of them. I took inspiration from a rose because its a well known shape that people would recognize. Using tracing paper and a bold pen I did repeat pattern of the rose shape. I made them overlap slightly to give it another form and look. I then decided I wanted to make a stamp of some sort to capture the lines and shapes I had just created. I looked around my house and found some cardboard and sting which I used to create a simple but recognizable rose shape stamp. I used this stamp to print onto paper and fabric. Because I did not have fabric paint I had to use acrylic which I had to play around with water to get the right and consistency and to delay the drying time so the paint would transfer onto the paper/fabric rather than just drying up. It was a fun technique to do and I quite like the look of the printing on the organza.
Because Monday was a bank holiday we were in the studio for only 2 days. The first day I went back to my Native American project and did some more research and got inspiration. This final major project is a development from a project I had done a while back that I liked looking into. Because of this I decided to make myself a sketchbook rather than working back into the sketchbook or spending time on portfolio sheet. This way its a bit more free and less cluttered, it will allow me to focus on just drawings and sample rather than the presentation of how I lay things on a page. Starting a whole new clean sketchbook would just make me worry about filling all the pages, this way I can control how much work/pages I do. If I want to I can even add a few more pages at the end and continue. This time round I need to focus alot more on the textile samples and developing them into design Ideas. Hopefully I have enough time to do all this on top of designing and creating some final garments for our fashion show.

Portfolio week

 

With the end of school creeping up on us we had to schedule out our week so we knew what we were doing when. So this week I planned to work on my portfolio. I had a lot of it done already but I still had a few pages to do and finish. I managed to end up with 10 finished portfolio pages. I just have 2 more to do and I'm done. Part of my pages I did a beading sample that took me around 7 hours over 2 days it was very time consuming but what I ended up with made it worth it. It was discussed that because it took long to make that I could look into other ways of sampling to make it look like beading which could be interesting to explore. As part of the portfolio pages I did I drew and image of a collage I did inspired by a graduated work. I loved how it turned out , it's very similar to the actual collage. Overall it was a well gathered week of completing my portfolio.