Summer Project Research Development

Having decided on the theme of ‘Temporary Patterns’ for my summer project, I began by collating all my photos from the beach and seaside in Northumberland and editing these on photoshop. I always find that at the start of a project it is helpful to gather my images on mood boards, to present a clear vision to myself and others of the direction of the project.

After doing this I started to draw from the photos, sticking mainly at first to drawing in fine liner and pencil. I tend to gravitate towards these at first as a traditional response to primary research, however I soon found that I was unsure of how to move on from simple line drawings. In an attempt to create more intuitive responses, I started drawing with pastels, gouache and water colour paint, as well as paper cutting. I definitely found that this helped to kickstart some more imaginative thinking regarding my research, but I still wasn’t happy with my drawing work.

Initially I went straight for an A3 sketchbook in which to start drawing. I didn’t question this, as I have usually gone for A3 and found it a good size for doing both detailed and larger scale drawing but something about the size was holding me back.

To try and get out of this rut I decided to move away from my sketchbook and work more with materials, so inspired by seaweed and patterns created by sea debris on the sand, I melted plastic bags to create abstract forms. This generated thinking about pebbles on the beach and other natural patterns.

Pebbles on the beach.

I have found throughout this project so far that starting to make early on is really important for generating ideas and samples. I want to embrace this passion for thinking through making as I feel it is encouraging me to take more risks and be more confident in my own style.

Spurred on by this revelation, I reached out to a friend who is an artist and has a studio, and was able to spend a morning with her, using her embellisher and sewing machine to start responding to my theme through fabric. This has been fantastic for me and I have realised that I love to make samples which are textural and combine stitch and 3D elements. This is following on from a bolder approach to sampling which I have developed over second year and has involved working with paper and Perspex to create more sculptural samples.

Embellished samples.

Adding embroidery to embellished samples.

Over the next week I plan to continue ‘drawing’ using embroidery and embellishing, collecting old fabrics with which to build up tactile surfaces and backgrounds.

Another thing which has freed up my work has been downsizing to an A5 sketchbook. For some reason it hadn’t occurred to me to work smaller, but actually I have found it strangely liberating. I think it is forcing me to consider composition more and think about colour and texture more critically, as I feel the pages side by side ought to tell a story, unlike working bigger, when I treat each page separately.

As I have been so strongly influenced by nature, I decided to experiment with dyeing my own fabric to use for embellishing. I have started by using blackberries, blueberries, spinach and turmeric. The turmeric worked fantastically, the blackberries and blueberries were also good in terms of the strength of colour, although they both turned similar shades of purple, when I had been hoping for a bluer tint. Despite leaving the fabric in the spinach dye for several hours the dye was not very potent, and only gave the fabric a slight khaki tinge. Over all I found the process worthwhile and interesting and I will be experimenting with more fruit and vegetables over the coming days.

Dyeing process, from soaking fabric in salt to fix it, then putting it in the dye, to drying.

Along with dyeing more fabric, my plan is to continue working and sampling with fabric and embroidery, as well as trying to introduce a more print focused element to my sketchbook work. Additionally, I plan to use dissolvable fabric to create delicate embroidered forms to draw from and photograph.