A Slight Change of Plan...

So after a lot of thinking I have decided to alter my project slightly... At first I thought it was going to be a drastic change to my project but after talking to Pete in our Work in Progress session on Thursday it's not as big a change as I first thought it would be...

On Thursday before our WIP I was browsing the internet when I came across a trailer for the film Midway which s due to be released either late this year or early next year (trailer below). The film is about the Midway Islands in the the North Pacific Ocean, which are some of the most remote islands on earth, and how our littering causes a tragic effect on the Laysan Albatrosses which inhabit the island.

When I first saw this trailer I found it extremely emotional to watch, yet a real eye opener at the same time. The photographs shown in the trailer, though they were unpleasant, gave me some good ideas for images I could create for this project.

Over the last few days I have continued to come up with more exciting ideas for what I could do related  to this film.

I am no longer going to create cuddly toys of birds around the world, as I stated in my previous post that I was starting to find that idea repetitive and unmotivating. However, my idea has not changed drastically. The Laysan Albatross is currently not endangered like some o the previous birds I was studying, but instead they are threatened by and are suffering due to humans. So my main idea for this project is to create a series of images to make people aware of what is happening on the Midway Islands. I'm not sure what media I am planning to work in now, although I may work in collage so that I can include some textile pieces still. However, I am no longer going to work in 3D and shall go back to working in 2D. I don't feel that I have wasted my time in the last four weeks of this project though. Everything I have worked on is still related and from working in 3D briefly I have learnt that my strengths lie in 2D instead which is why I am going back to working that way.

The First Final Piece

So this week has been an interesting one...

I spent the first three days in the print rooms solid from ten until five, and not really getting anywhere. As I've posted before, I attempted to do a shoebill print which went wrong. I then tried to prepare my screen to print onto a Macaw, which I was going to make as a possible final piece to see whether or not I should continue down the 3D route.

Above are the prints I wanted to put onto my Macaw. I spent the whole of Tuesday trying to prepare my screen, only the first time I hadn't let it dry properly. The second time I then had the setting on the jet washer too high so I ruined my screen again, but eventually I got it right the third time with a little help. 

On Wednesday Jon then helped me print onto my fabric. It took a couple of attempts to print it onto the felt for the beak correctly as I wasn't pressing down hard enough. But eventually I got there. I was planning on designing further prints for the wings, but I was getting too frustrated trying to screen print and decided it wasn't for me. 

I have spent the last couple of days sewing my Macaw together, sewing detail onto the wings and incorporating felt as I decided to no longer screen print on there. I'm not overly pleased with how this toy has turned out. I had trouble sewing the beak on this time, and the tail was too short. Even though I have previously made a smaller, more successful Macaw similar to this, this one just really hasn't turned out too well. I also found I was getting bored of making this toy, and really couldn't see me being motivated to make another six like I originally stated in my personal statement.

Although I find the technical side of this project challenging, I'm not really finding the subject too motivating. I'm just currently making and decorating toys and feel I need to alter this project slightly to make it more exciting. 

It's been a bad day...

So today I went back to the print rooms, and spent the entire day attempting to do a screen print (completely unsupervised this time!) of a shoebill.

I don't think I cleaned the screen properly to start with. None of it printed properly, which is annoying because I was so excited to do screen printing today. So basically, it's a bit rubbish. What is even more annoying is that I hoped to put it in my portfolio if it turned out well, seeing as we had our portfolio tutorials today and I'm lacking decent work to go in there. 

So overall it hasn't been a great day for working. I left uni feeling pretty annoyed, and uninspired. Hopefully things will get better in the week. 

Bird World!!

Completely forgot to mention that I went to Bird World yesterday!! I had an amazing day out and got a fair amount of life drawings done, but they weren't that great though. Here are some photos of a few...

The next three photos are of some life drawings I quickly scribbled while I was working at the falconry...

Text Experiments

First thing this week I had my proposal tutorial with Pete and Jonny which went well. Jonny was a bit concerned about me doing 3D for my final pieces, as I haven't really done 3D before and he was pleased with the outcome of my previous 2D project. However, I've been really excited about my project idea, so Jonny said to get on with making one of my final pieces soon to see how it turns out. If I decided to go back to 2D, it won't be too late in this project.

I've decided that as I've already made a dummy Hyacinth Macaw, which turned out pretty well, that is going to be the first final piece I shall attempt to make. However, I haven't really experimented too much with text up until this point, and felt that I needed to before diving into making a final piece.

So for the last week I've been busy working with text. I haven't really used text in my work much before now, but I'm surprisingly enjoying it.

 One of the first things I did this week was make my own stamps which Pete suggested making out of rubbers in our tutorial the previous week. At first this confused me slightly, and I accidentally made the stamps so that they printed the letters backwards.

Once remaking the stamps I had made wrong, I printed each one using acrylic paint and came up with this letter set above. I do need to remake the "Z" though, as that confused me a lot when trying to make it. Overall, I am really pleased with how these have turned out, and it's completely different to anything  I've done before. I will definitely think about using this process again in the future.

Slowly throughout this week I have been making this piece above, using a variety of different medias and methods to write out words onto material. I will be adding to this gradually throughout the next week as well. I'm looking forward to seeing how the finished thing turns out.

Something amazing happened

For the first time in my three years at university I finally braved it into the print rooms (out of choice) and started experimenting with printing on fabric. I surprisingly enjoyed working in there, and I'm just annoyed I haven't worked in there sooner. Better late than never though!

The day before I had drawn patterns onto acetate and on Thursday Pete helped me and Jessie print screen our designs. The print screening process does annoy me, as there is a lot of waiting around, but I love the outcome of it. I did some quick patterns, one of feathers just to make the plain fabrics a little more exciting, and the other of illustrations symbolic to the Hyacinth Macaw, which would be explained further if text was to be added. These were just starter ideas so that I had something to print.

I'm going to spend the next few days in the print rooms. For tomorrow I've already prepared a print of a Shoebill I want to do onto paper, just because I've never done one before. Then while I'm waiting tomorrow for the screen to be ready I want to design some text and patterns to go on my final Hyacinth Macaw. I'm really looking forward to having another productive week! 

Cuddly Toy Experiments

So it's been a fairly productive week so far, the parents are visiting tomorrow but then i'll spent the evening and all day Sunday working on my proposal and other bits and bobs before my tutorial Monday.

 I started this week by making another plain dummy parrot and attempted painting with acrylics on it. Not a big fan of this, but I wouldn't have known unless I tried. I found it really hard to paint words on, even with my smallest paintbrush I still found there wasn't really enough room on the parrot.

I then attempted to make a Hyacinth Macaw. I am really pleased with how this turned out, I think it looks very similar to the real thing.

I also created this little owl yesterday with different bits of patterned material I found. It's very similar to the owl designs that are currently in fashion, so I won't let me influence my final designs. I think I just wanted an excuse to make one like this! With both this owl and the previous Macaw, I will be sewing text on some time soon, which is the main point of my project.

Yesterday while out shopping I came across these in Waterstones. I was really pleased to find these little stamps - which are already messed up because I couldn't resist messing around with them. I want to do a textile piece in the next few days using these and various other medias experimenting purely with type faces.

Tutorial with Pete

At the beginning of this week I had a tutorial with Pete which seemed to go pretty well, he seemed quite pleased with everything I'm doing so far.

I told him about how I was going to decorate the birds in a way that teaches children about them, and he told me to research into cowboy suits as the details and patterns on them tell a story. He also suggested looking into wrestling masks as they are similar. I am currently in the process of doing this. Other than that I'm going to keep making and experimenting with the toys.

I also had a tutorial with Derek at the end of last week, and he said I need to do some more life drawings. I've already done a few over last summer at the falconry, but he suggested going to another Falconry near Eastleigh. I've emailed them an they said to stay in contact as we'll b able to arrange something when the weather is better. I'm also planning on going to Bird World in the next couple of weeks to do a day of drawings there and will visit the a nearby rescue centre when I'm back home as they have a parrot sanctuary there which will be good for another day of life drawing.

Attempting to use a sewing machine...

So it took me most of a day to set up my sewing machine and to get it working... but I soon dived straight into working with it and came up with this:

Not the greatest piece of work ever, and it's not finished yet, but considering it was the first piece of work I've ever attempted with the machine I didn't think it was too bad! It includes 5 birds of Africa that I may use for this project. I want to sew words and detail onto there still.

I then created this Macaw with some of the leftover felt I had from my previous project.

I then went on to do some research about Macaws and instead of jotting down notes in my sketchbook, I decided to make this plain dummy Macaw and scribble all my notes on there. 

A Summary of the First Week

So last week I spent the first few days editing my Negotiated Study pieces slightly and making the labels for our upcoming exhibition. Then mid week I finally had time to properly get into this project.

I started by researching into birds I could possibly use for each of the continents. I also decided to try and use endangered birds so that there is more to teach children about (although there doesn't seem to be many endangered birds for Europe).

While researching I learnt about some exciting birds I hadn't heard of before. Two which excited me in particular were...

the Shoebill

and the Attwater Prairie Chicken

Definitely some interesting birds which will also challenge my sewing skills if I attempt to make them.

I then also spent a few days doing some artist research. I was talking to Ceri earlier last month about what I was planning for FMP and she suggested looking at Lizzie Finn. I found her work really inspiring. She does a lot of sewing work, but also incorporates other mediums into her work as well. 

One of her works that stood out to me was her cover for Moloko's album "Things to Make and Do".

I love all the little quirky characters she made for it, and they are similar to what I imagine myself making for my project. This also made me think about what I could do with the toys I make, whether I should put them into photoshop and do something even more creative with them.

Another artists, who I briefly mentioned earlier in this blog, is Kira Nichols. She creates a lot of bird inspired work which is mostly 3D and I can see myself creating similar sort of things. I follow her blog as I'm always keen to see her new creations. (http://www.oopsicraftmypants.com/)

This particular piece I love. I enjoy making quilt like pieces, and I would like to include this sort of detail and decoration into some of my toys.

Towards the end of last week I decided to jump straight into this project and start creating things on my sewing machine. However, I only just bought it the week before and have never used one before so spent a whole day learning how to set it up and use it! Photos of finished sewing machine works will be uploaded soon. 

Also, here is my timetable for what I plan so far. However, it is likely to change as I progress with this project.