Fashion: Charcoal Drawing & Development

 In one of my last lessons in Fashion, I was tasked with producing 2 quick 15 minute sketches of paper manipulated dresses with charcoal. After producing two then I was to work into one of them with paints, inks, newspaper etc but keeping in the theme of Mono Mania. So black and white.

Above is the first of my charcoal drawings and the one I didn't work into later on. This was my first quick sketch and as such isn't complete as I missed judged the time I had to get down all the details I needed to make it fully complete in my eyes. It did help me though as it let me experiment with different stroke types and smudging techniques before moving onto my 2nd piece.

Above in my final piece I produced from the morning. It started off as a charcoal sketch very much the same as the one above but as I finished this one and had put more effort into it in the charcoal stage I wanted to take it even further. So I worked into this one more. First off I added newspapers to the scraps in the middle to give the piece more depth. As well as that I added wax [Which i had experimented with in my Batik work] to the bottom section of the skirt to give it some extra interesting detail I couldn't get with the charcoal. Next I added white paint around the edges of the main stem straps to help make it pop off the page as the original piece I worked from had almost highlights in those places from the natural lighting in the room. Lastly I added ink over the wax and white paint to bring back the original charcoal shading I had added on, finally going back over the piece with charcoal adding in details here and there.
I really like work with mixed media and it's something I consider to be one of my strongest strengths. I like the idea of mixing multiple techniques together to see what new and interesting effects can be made. Which I think worked really well with this pieces skirts. The mixture of Ink, Wax and Charcoal really bring the skirt to life.

Printed Images - Manipulation linking to Bridget Riley & Victor Vasarely

Following my Monomania foam printing work, once all the prints on fabric and paper had dried I went onto photocopying these pieces in A3 and A4 sizes and went to work with the scissors once again and taking what I learnt from the original paper manipulation and mixing that in with these new prints, I aimed to create a bunch of different unique patterns. Doing so by cutting the photocopies, mounting on card, weaving, overlaying and all round working with paper on paper.

So my main goal with these pieces was to try and recreate some of the techniques seen in Bridget Riley's and Victor Vasarely work. By using the same sort of line structure as them. Using waves and very sharp straight lines. To add my own spin on that I aimed to layer these techniques and using the original prints as back drops.
As well as doing that I added in paper and card to to help break up some of the more intense designs so not all the detail was lost. For example the first image, since I purposely used a waveform that went against the striped print it really pulls your eye in, very much like the OP art I've been researching and trying to mimic here. But by adding in the bland newspaper it helps break that down a little bit and once the viewer pulls away they can look into the less detailed part and this helps let the design pop out.
Following that the same sort of thing happened in the second image but the use of newspaper was more to pull the design off of the black back ground as the print was printed on black too. So by adding newspapers it helped further push the design to the front and lets the spaces between the cut strips go to work in drawing in the viewers eye.

Now for the last 3 they were the first 3 I worked on trying to recreate the very essence of Bridget Riley's work and how she used her lines to create movement. However I wanted to do that in revere with the first 2 prints. Having the prints as the background and working with cut paper to create a sense of movement in the work. I feel this worked best in the first piece as its a very simple overlay which creates this sense of stubble overlap that lets the design really pop off of the page. However in the second piece I feel the overlay is a little to extreme and the sense of movement is lost, but it came in handy as a learning tool to know what not to do next time. because of this when it came to having my sewing machine induction I used this piece to test out the different needle widths, lengths and zipzag spacings which can be seen below.
Lastly is a very simple but effort use of straight cuts of one of my black prints put onto white card which really helps break up the design and lets the white ink almost blend into the background. I feel this piece most represents Bridget Riley's work in my own style.

MonoMania Research Clips: Victor Vasarely & Bridget Riley

Victor Vasarely:



First clip I watched is an 8 minute piece showcasing some of Victors work to music. The first thing i noticed about his work is that it is very crisp and clean. All the lines and colours a very prominent and his work feels very complete, it has a very mathematical feel to it. The pieces are very strong on your eyes because of his use of vibrant colours and visual effects. He uses scale to some other level, you tell can he has put a lot of time and effort into his work perfecting his scales of shapes to gives off these extreme illusions to the human eye making the pieces feeling and seem almost 3D.
I wasn't to fussed on the music as it felt like any other ambient transition music which at first worked with his pieces but ended up bringing down his work i feel as it drew my attention from looking at his work to zoning out because of the music. However his work is very pleasing to the eyes as long as you can stand the colours and illusions. I personally quite like it and I feel it has influenced me in such a way to try making more colour pieces out of just shapes and crisps lines/colours.



Next I watched a 4 minute interview with Victor Vasarely as he explains his mathematical concepts. This video very much speaks for itself and i can't really put it into better words. Victor Vasarely basically explains how he came up with his idea for his pieces by relating it back to the most common of human knowledge, maths, the alphabet, music and basic shapes the circle and square and with that in mind he added numbers to his colours creating his own colour alphabet and by studying basic geometry he came up with his idea. Honestly I'm not sure if its the way the translator spoke or just his metaphors but I can't take much away from this interview as it feels very lackluster to me and i can't put my finger on way. He used basic geometry to create shapes, maybe he was the first but in modern art and graphics of today you can create pieces like this is an instant. Maybe I'm over looking the fact but I enjoy his work but maybe i just don't like him.

Bridget Riley:



A short minute clip of Bridget Riley speaking on her work and how important the concept of movement and shape are. I really enjoyed this video the way it has been edited works really well as its showing everything she is saying in a visual way. For example how the camera pans out on a bunch of wavy lines to show the effect they have as lines groups of lines to being amassed together and the effect it gives. She very much has a way with words. The use of making the lines larger or smaller give the final piece a life of its own and the way its put across is very visual in this video and i think it work really well. It really make you think about your own work and how changing a lines thickness or thinness can give your piece and completely different look.



Finally I watched this video, a clip of the art critic Andrew Graham-Dixon enthusing about the work of Bridget Riley. What is really the most interesting out of the 4 videos I've watched and that is mainly down to the fact of the link to traditional art. How the traditional art show casted and Andrew clearly points out how it is extremely related such as the flowing 'musical' feel of the first piece shown and how that is represented in her own work with the flowing of her own wavy piece. The thing i most definitely take away most from Bridgets work is knowing when and how you can change lines to add more depth and feeling into my own work. Having seen how she was inspired by traditional art and adding her own ideas and style to create something related to the original but completely her own I feel nothing but motivation to dive straight into doing even more research.

Monomania - Mood Board

Following my work with paper manipulation i was tasked with collecting and researching images for a Mono mania styled mood board [Black and white images] that would be all well an easy but i linked it which my paper garment and stuck with a theme of circles and spirals. I sourced most of my images from pinterest [Click to see my pinterest] Then went to work cutting out all the images and started to form my mood board in class.

After A LOT of overlapping, reshuffling and all round frustration i finally got my images into a way i liked. This involved cutting images out in spirals, cutting out perfectly and tearing the images out as you can see above. After taking a photo so I could remember how i wanted to layer them I started to stick them and in the process changing one or two things around. At this point I knew i didn't want a typical square mood board so i decided to start cutting again.

This is what I ended up with after a lot of trimming and trimming and trimming. I like how the shapes aren't perfect circles which gives them a very organic feeling however a problem arouse. I didn't have a clue how I wanted to mount my now 3 littler mood boards. After thinking of mounting them on their own or together I decided on mounting them together but over lapped so the original overlapping of images was skewed. Which I really liked how it turned out.

As seen above i overlapped to two small mood boards over the larger one and roasted them slightly to give an extra offset of images while also trying to have the colours of the shape bounce off the mood board below it. I first stuck them onto a white sheet of paper cut out and then did the same on a black piece to make the mood board pop ever so more.
I really enjoy making mood boards as you have alot to play around with and depending on the topic and/or theme you can really express the type of mood you want. In this monomania mood board I wasn't aiming to express a mood per say but more let it show the expressive side of circles and spirals though a different array of images from photos to paintings with ink to computer generated graphics and I think it worked out really well.