Compare & Contrast

New course, new campus, it's fair to say that I was pretty anxious on my first day of Uni back in September. As I was going straight into second year, the options of weave or print weren't there for me. I had skipped the first year where you are taught weave but had dabbled in print previously on my graphic design course. I knew that I had to specialise in print, although this wasn't a bad thing as this was exactly what I had in mind.

Those first couple of months I felt like I was just doing everything and anything I could to keep my head above the water, trying to catch up on a years worth of technical skills whilst also embarking upon the new brief and keeping up with second year standard was pretty daunting. Creatively I feel like I was able to excel because I had not experienced any set backs yet and knew not of the restrictions that certain processes faced. I relied highly on the girls in my class around me helping me out with fabric choices, which materials work with which print processes etc.

The brief, 'Compare & Contrast' kicked off by spending a couple of weeks drawing from still life. I then developed these observations into print designs and exposed them on to screens ready to begin printing. To begin with I learnt how to print using devoré, crimp, foil adhesive, and flock. I then taught myself how to dye with procion. The next step was to learn how to use rust for dying and printing, and then also how to dye using indigo. Finally I taught myself how to print using discharge, procion, and pearl binder. Once i'd wrapped those up it was a case of soaking up knowledge of cloths and just getting creative and having fun, of which I had a lot of, especially with foil (I think I may be a magpie).

My 'Compare & Contrast' seemed to gravitate towards the graphic shapes created from the likes of broken mirrors, to the textural patterns found in rust and old painted bars. I began to layer these techniques with different prints to show a contrast and to also primarily learn how they worked with each other, if I was to make any mistakes I want to find out sooner rather than later as I had a lot of catching up to do! Here are a few of my exploratory samples...