REFLECTION ASSIGNMENT 1

Final assessment:

On the first, introductory part of my course, I had the chance to start thinking outside of the box.

All these years I was creating fabrics and stitches without having
on the back side of my head the creation element I’ve used in this course . It was sort of a revelation to me as I’m working in a fast paced environment were I really haven’t got time for second thoughts, time to use my imagination in a whole or look back and rework on what I’ve created or even oversee what I’ve done in a different perspective.

Especially in the task that we had to draw with our hands closed or with our left hand, I had the feeling of being free from any kind of restriction, were time didn’t matter as much as the joy of playing about with your imagination , a sheet of paper and a marker.

I faced two things I’m not familiar with: craftsmanship were I had to create a collage and hand drawing which is something I haven’t practiced since I was a child.

I managed to master these ”fears” and finish my tasks after working around them where I realized how much I enjoyed doing this course ,what a great choice to take textiles it was and how many things I can gain not only as a student but more than anything else as a person…

FIRST ASSESSMENT FEEDBACK

Overall Comments

Congratulations on completing this assignment Alexander. Like we discussed in your Tutorial, there are a few aspects in your work that you need to be spending more time on.

I am going to highlight the main points of action. First of all it would be good if you could send your work to me for each assignment, I only received a few drawings of your Introductory project this time which is not relevant to Part 1.

In this first stages of the course I would like you to spend more time on each part of the journey: Useful and relevant Primary and Secondary Research, Drawings and Paintings coming from your sources, Learning techniques and generating a broad number of textile/material experiments rather than focusing on creating finished professional machine samples. Like you mentioned on your Learning Log and on our conversation, you are finding it difficult to come out your comfort zones. As a professional Knitting technician, you are able to produce very good and well finished machine jacquards, that is the reason why I think you should be trying to work differently to what you are used to and focus on learning and improving what it is new for you and those aspects of your work where you feel less comfortable. I think by working this way you will be able to create more exciting work and you would be able to combine your new skills with the ones you already know in future approaches.

Learning Log and Research

Context, reflective thinking, critical thinking, analysis

Your Research on this Assignment is not enough, both your Pixel generated drawings using a software and Machine jacquards have been developed from flowers of images found on the internet. I would like you to collect a lot of good quality Images and information from different Artists, Designers, Creatives, Art Periods and Visual culture from books, magazines, Online, Exhibitions, anything that inspires you and that could be useful to each assignemnt. All of this can be posted on your Learning Log, you can also printed and send it to me to review at the end of each assignment. Also make sure that your Paintings and Textile approaches come from your own sources, I think taking photographs can help you and give you ideas to develop future experiments and develop future work.

I would also like you to spend more time on your Learning Log, Make sure that your photographs have a footer with relevant information and that each exercise its clearly updated with good photographs of your work.

Engagement with textile techniques

Demonstration of technical and Visual Skills, Quality of Outcome, Demonstration of Creativity

You have learned some new techniques, working with paper and you have also developed some Knitted Jacquards. There is evidence in your work that you can generate very professional machine jacquards, but working this way is stopping you from using other techniques and engaging with hand made textile techniques. I would like to encourage you to take risks, and start experimenting and generating a lot of small experimental swatches instead of putting your time towards finished looking pieces.

I would like you to think about introducing loads of different materials and yarns, to use different qualities, textures, colours, thickness…

Make sure that your work is well presented, mounted on paper and clearly labelled with important and relevant information of each piece. Some of your Paper manipulations have a written on top of them, the information is confusing and hard to read and it also distracts from your pieces, always mount your work on paper in a form of presentation and attach a label to each piece of work.

If you are particularly interested in Knitting, I would like to look into Artists that work using knit in different fields, Art, Public Space, Interiors, Fashion, Arquitecture… That can also be inspiring to you when using other textile techniques.

– Ana Teresa Barboza >>> FLORAL -TEXTILE

– Vanessa Barragao >>> RUGS

– Anita Bruce >>> CROCHET CORAL REEF

Freddie Robins >>> FULL BODY KNITS
Jacqueline Fink >>> EXTREME COAARSE KNITS
Ellen Schiffman >>> FIBER PAINTING
Barbara DePirro >>> KNITTED FLOWERS AND ROOTS
Toshiko Horiuchi >>> TEXTILE PLAYGROUND
Joan Dulla >>> CROCHET WIRE JEWELRY- FOOD-LAB ANIMALS
Carol Milne >>> KNITTED GLASS
Channing Hansen >>> KNITTED PAINTINGS
Stephane Martello >>> CROCHET KNITTING
Alexander McQueen

Drawing and Painting

Demonstration of technical and Visual Skills, Demonstration of Creativity

Drawing helps you to plan prior you make and also to understand and learn more of what you have created after your making. You submitted some drawings from your introductory project, most of them are quick and poor quality drawings of jumpers but it starts becoming more interesting when you use collage adding some unusual papers. You should be spending a lot more time on it.

You have developed some drawings digitally using a pixel programme to develop jacquards, all those drawings are inspired on images of flowers found online. I would like you to start drawing life and draw and paint directly from your own sources, spending a lot more time on each painting. Think about engaging with different techniques and mix techniques, Watercolour, different pencils, rottings, Gouache, Acrylics, Chalk, Pastel colours… At the moment all your drawings are either digitally created or developed on A4 thin paper, I would like to encourage you to use different papers and surfaces to paint on, think about papers specific to the technique you are using, Watercolour paper, Drawing paper… Think about the thickness of the paper, opacities, textures, recycled paper. You can also reuse card or paper from waste, newspapers, magazines, plastics… and use it to create collages or to paint on them.

Like I mentioned in your tutorial, I would like to recommend you a book, “How to draw with the right side of your brain”. Betty Edwards. This will give you ideas and help you improve your Drawing and Painting skills. Another interesting book is “How to Draw What You See” by Rudy De Reyna.

Well done Alexander, Looking forward to your next Assignment.

Tutor name	Pere Bruach
Date	9^th March 2019
Next assignment due	15/04/2019

1.8

1.8 PORTRAYING BY DRAWING

At last ! I’m able to use the computer!

The only way of drawing I can perform, understand and deliver is by grid drawing, a sort of mosaic creating kind of thing:

My problems where two:

firstly how to portray a physical design and to convert it into a two/ three color jacquard.

second hurdle I had to overcome was to find a way to transfer the .tif file I’ve created into the blog as drag and drop didn’t work.

Finally I found out that .gif file was acceptable but with the down side of not having a clear picture (that’s why all pics are a bit blurred).

my goal was to create physical looking graph which can be used by a knitting machine and convert it into fabric if required.

*a very popular tree from my home country : plane tree leaf design*

flower design created by erasing every other column

1.6

Exercise 1.6 Detail and definition

The purpose of this assignment is to capture details on the selected fairisle styles.

Again, I have to manage the difficulties I encounter that have to do with drawing.

In this exercise I went really deep into the details.

I tried to capture stitch details like a magnifying glass .

*this is the style I tried to capture details from*

*style number two: I’ve reversed the fabric and I tried to show the stitch float details*

knitting construction detail 2×1 (2×2) rib.

1.5

Exercise 1.5 Collage and creases

Pare down to the essence, but don’t remove the poetry. (Koren, 2008, p.72)

WABI-SABI :the art of simplicity.

Poetry ,in my opinion, is a form of wabi-sabi .

It’s the art of trying to say and imply many using only few lines.

In modern Greece there is a phrase left from the ancient times: << LAKONIZEIN ESTI FILOSOFEIN>> and it is about the ancient Spartans who were living a simple yet glorious life. The meaning of the saying is that if you live like a Spartan you tend to live like a philosopher!

It’s really hard to achieve simplicity , especially when it comes to apparel designing.

On the other hand simple things are the most popular and have the best sales !

People love them because it’s easy to see the concept behind and the use of them.

So, trying to achieve wabi-sabi is trying to infiltrate, get to the core and make the most of everything .

TASK:

Again something I’ve never done before!

A collage!

It took me several days and time of research to understand what I need to do, as well as I had to short of “squeeze” my brain to put things in order.

Finally , I managed to come out with two decent designs trying to present as many features of two of my garments possible:

I’ve used carton to show the rib stitch detail as well as cotton wool to show the fluffy and hairy effect of one of the fabrics:

style one:

style two: shawl neck wool cardigan.

1.4

EXERCISE 1.4 -LINES AND EDGES

Here we go again, facing my demons(drawing)!

drawing with eyes closed and then creating dot lines with eyes open in order to create the following sketch through tracing:

Last and more challenging exercise is drawing with my eyes closed.

I found it really interesting as I’ve started with half a garment ,

but as I was getting more familiar with it I found that my sketches were improving:

shape was made with eyes closed but stitch formation was drawn with eyes open.

1.3

EXERSISE 1.3 :MAKING MARKS

I’m about to face my worst nightmare: drawing!

My drawing skills are not even basic, but I will try my best !!!

My task is to draw and try to demonstrate my vision regarding the garments I’ve picked above.

So, here we start then:

first fairisle:

Here I’m trying to give a small idea of how (roughly) the jumper looks like .

this is the jacquard preview (the way is been drawn on the computer in a grid mode).

texture with jacquard placement.

the second fairisle garment is a cardigan:

rying to demonstrate the shawl neck along with the pattern:

texture on the neck and a bit more detail on the body.

on the third fairisle I’m trying to demonstrate more of the yarn/stitch consistency

its a jumper with a nice shawl neck

on the last picture I’m trying to show a bit of the woolly handfeel of the fabric.

1.2

EXERCISE 1.2 SUBSTANCE AND STORY

All the garments photographed (exercise 1.1) were knitted using 80% wool 20% nylon.

Woolly garments usually need to be hand washed due to the delicate nature of the fabric.

In the exercise mentioned above I’ve photographed jumpers made in Chinese knitting factories for Tommy Hilfiger and Benetton using flat knitting machines for knitting and linking machines for finishing .

It’s hard to trace where these garments wool is coming from.

It can be Shetland wool , coming from Scotland, wool made in China , or Italian wool and because it’s a natural fiber it still keeps it’s shape, the elegant look and soft hand feel.

All these heavily worn jumpers belong to me and have been in my possession for many years: especially the beige jumper is 26 years old and it still plays a significant part of my life especially in the winter time when it’s on. Dressing in it feels like I’m wearing a piece of history , my personal one!!!

1.1

EXERCISE 1.1 THE ARCHIVE

THE FAIR ISLE JACQUARDS:

SOURCE : VICTORIA AND ALBERT MUSEUM

Fair Isle is a remote island situated between Orkney and Shetland to the north of mainland Scotland. Legend has it that Spaniards, stranded on the island after the break up of the Spanish Armada in 1588, taught the islanders to use the colours and patterns typical of Fair Isle knitting. However, there is also evidence that these design influences came from nearby Scandinavia.

The varied colours of Shetland wool have been a feature of knitting from this region since the 19th century. They came partly from the different breeds of sheep, but also from dyes. Madder and indigo gave red and blue, while lichens produced red, brown, orange and purple. Brightly coloured synthetic dyes, invented in the 1850s, increased the possible colour range but were used only in small quantities.

The early knitters produced stockings, caps and scarves. Sweaters in the Fair Isle style – as it’s known today – were not produced until the First World War. They are constructed by knitting bands of horizontal motifs from two different coloured strands of wool. The patterns are made up of motifs such as crosses, diamonds and eight-pointed stars.

There was a vogue for Fair Isle sweaters during the 1920s, thanks in part to the Prince of Wales, who wore one as part of his golfing attire, although natural shades like brown, grey and white were then preferred. The look continues to be regularly reinterpreted on the catwalk – the American designer Ralph Lauren included a Fair Isle sweater in his first collection.