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!