Briefing of Stitch

In the morning, we showed our drawing from the last few drawing weeks to our tutor one by one, and she tried to teach us how to develop the drawing into a stitch sample. She also told us stitch is a hard block to start with, but it's also easy to play with your ideas.

After lunch, we were with the stitch technician Aimee Betts. She instructed us how to use the sewing machine and showed us some techniques for stitching samples. Then we got some time to practice on the sewing machine. It was the first time for me to use a sewing machine, so it was really rough for me. However, everything got better with the help of Aimee and my peers.

Stitch is a really interesting part of textiles. I believe I will enjoy it.

Three primary colours and LIDL bag collage

This is the second time to draw with Will Stevens, who is a really nice tutor.

For the first practice, we painted three primary colours on paper, which was folded to six squares. Then, we drew a person we like on the painted paper. We also mixed three primary colours like a rainbow.

On the picture below, the wall is full of our paintings that we drew the same person on a lidl bag. It was just like a gallery, it was also interesting to see different drawing styles.

The practice using lidl bags as a collage was interesting. We were separated into three groups, and each group worked together to create a collage of the image of Henry VIII.

After finishing the collages, we presented all of them in one room. Some peers thought our collage looked like Homer Simpson not Henry VIII. It was really funny.

I can see how creative my peers' works were. I had fun in this practice.

Really a amazing class

I love today's drawing exercise. 

At first, I had no idea about what would we practice. Everyone was given a small piece of a picture and, there was a number on the back of every picture, which help us to know the top and bottom of that picture. Then, we were asked to draw the picture with a graphite crayon on an A1 sheet of paper. 

When I finished my drawing, I still didn't know what the picture was. After all of us finished the drawing, John helped us to stick all the drawings together in order. Then we saw the most amazing part of today's drawing.

I also found my drawing in this artwork. I felt so proud to be a part of the work.

We moved the drawing to the centre of the square and took a photo with it.

It was so surprising to see the details matching together. It was a really amazing day today. I love this kind of drawing and group working.

Collage class

When I got the material list for today's drawing class, I knew it would be a collage class. And I was excited about this class. Because collage is a really creative and interesting way to develop work.

It was a really crowd class today, cause most of us didn't know the arrangement for group 1&2, so we chose to come in the afternoon. The tutor told us we should check the timetable before the class, but I'm so confused, sometimes the timetable is wrong, and we don't know how to find out the correct information.

We started with drawing colours. I chose the colours from my objects and tried to paint on different textures. After that, everyone was assigned a word to work on. My word is 'fragmentation'. This word was a guide, I should consider it while I was working. We were also asked for the size. There are three sizes for us to make collage. For developing my own work, I selected different kinds of materials to collage.

It is interesting to collage, it is enjoyable for me as well.

Assessment for print block

Today is the assessment for the second technical block. After displaying my own works, I walked around the studio and had a look other's works. Their works are really fabulous. It made me feel like I'm not good enough and my peers have all done much better than me. But some of my classmates appreciated my print works, which made me feel happy and get confidence again. 

In this print technical block, I learned a lot. I learned some basic but really useful skills of Photoshop and Illustrator, and I also tried to mix chemical colours and dye silk on a screen. I really enjoyed this technical block, I am looking forward to the next technical block as well.

Chemical dying day

It was a really rough day today, but I learned a lot in the class.

At first, we learned to pin every side of the silk to the table. The silk must be perfectly flat. Then we have to place the stencils we made on the silk. These steps prepare for the next step, dying, which we were excited about.

Then we started to mix the colours. The tutor introduced us to two types of dye; acid-levelling & acid-milling. These two dyes are good for dying silk. However, the main difference is acid-levelling works better on wood, acid-milling is nicer on silk. Before we mixed the colours, we had a look at the colour samples on the wall, and then chose the colours we wanted. In the learning stage, we used 100 gram recipes for dying silk. We mixed a little bit of Ammonium Oxalate, Perminal KB and Glydote BN with 70g Indulca, then added about 3g dye to them. It smells so chemical.

After mixing the colours, we started dying the screen or other kinds of materials.

I felt so tired after standing all day doing dying. But it was a really interesting class today, I enjoyed it.

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