Group Feedback Session 20th October 2017

I was nervous about the group feedback session, mainly because I was worried that I hadn’t done enough work, and had been focusing on the wrong things, like too much drawing instead of sampling and trying out different materials. I was also worried about other people looking at my work and not being able to understand my reasons for doing things. It was reassuring to realise that most other people felt the same way. One of the main things I found was that everyone is self-conscious of their own work, and we’re all naturally much more critical of our own work than of others’.

Another daunting thing about feedback sessions like these is that you’re showing your work in progress, not the finished collection, so it can feel like what you’re showing is messy and incomplete. That can be true, but it doesn’t mean that it’s not worth having other people look at it. In many ways, having objective views on your work in progress is the most helpful thing because it allows you to act on the advice whilst you still have time to experiment and make changes.

 

I loved looking at everyone else’s work, because I find it so interesting to see the variety of ways that the same brief can be interpreted. At the start of the project I thought ‘Floral Geometry’ might be quite a narrow theme, but everyone has made it their own. Looking at the work of people in other specialisms is incredibly beneficial. My feedback group included print and embroidery students and looking at embroidery work made me think a lot more about texture. I don’t tend to use embellishment in my work, but looking at embroidery made me want to incorporate much more texture into my designs.  It also made me want to start sampling onto fabric, and trying out different materials and surfaces to print onto. All my work so far has been paper based, and while I do really enjoy this, I don’t want it to be the sole focus of my project.

In terms of the brief, I noticed from other people’s work that natural drawings and colours were much more evident than in my work. While I have leaned more to the geometry side of the brief, I now want to include more organic and natural imagery and textures into my samples. I aim to do this by using natural fabrics to print onto and by dying them using colours particularly inspired by lichen. One thing I realised was that, by working on A2 sheets instead of in a sketchbook, it wasn’t very clear to the people reviewing my work where the ideas and drawing development had come from. This was the main thing I need to improve on from my feedback. I have been collating imagery and artist research digitally but I now realise I need to print this research and compile it in a folder so that I can physically see it whilst I’m working. I need to be able to draw on my research more so that the link between my contextual research and drawing and sampling work is clearer. With the design development in terms of material sampling I now need to try fabric sampling as I have only worked on paper so far.

Additionally, I’m going to now work on a more specific colour palette, based on natural sources of inspiration like lichen and fungi. I’m hoping that from these sources I’ll get a combination of brighter yellow and green colours and more earthy, subtle colours like blue and grey. So far, my colour palette has been limited to the colours I established from my summer work photographing bright and vibrant flowers. Whilst I like these colours a lot, they don’t relate to my current areas of inspiration.

In terms of experimenting, I have been using maps as a way of interpreting the geometric element of the brief. I have been paper cutting into these and printing them onto acetate to layer on top of mark making and line work. I’m thinking that my designs may end up as designs for interiors and furnishing fabrics, however, the brighter, geometric photoshop designs make me think of children’s clothing, so I’m not sure yet what direction the collection will take! I do imagine my final prints for interiors, however. I think it’s fairly clear how my initial drawings were inspired by my sketchbook work, but my main area of focus now will be clearly highlighting the link between my current research and the direction my work is now taking, combining geometric lines and grids inspired by maps and mazes, and the natural, curved forms of fungi and lichen.