Fashion&Textiles - Styling and Photography.

Our first day of Styling and Photography, I was keen to get started on this as I  have always been very ambitious when it comes to mixing and matching clothes. Im always considering what i think looks good and what people suit ect, i can't seem to help it. Doing this was a treat, we were asked to bring in some old clothes of ares that we didn't mind styling students in for a photoshoot.  We were also asked to bring in a collection of Photo Booth photos of ourselves emitting our personalities in different ways. This was a fun challenge as i tried to capture the humorous side of me and the charismatic side of me. I also did a eccentric posed side as everyday life seems to be about what looks good, and how people present themselves to looking good, i.e over Facebook, Instagram, twitter this was asked to be done as part of our projects outside of Ravensbourne is to produce our own photo shoot evoking ourselves for example clothes that represent us and the location and colour we choose has characterise us in some way. 

Firstly we were sent out to discover locations we thought fit for our photo shoot, being surrounded by the o2 arena and building sites we had a very good opportunity in finding some good places to use as a location photo shoot. This was a great task engaging with other students and taking in other peoples opinions on what they thought would be good, or what they didn't think would be good i.e just shooting it on some grass with an old lamp post on the side, would be boring. Most of us found some interesting places and took some snaps, below our some of my pictures i had taken and edited as if i was going to use them for a location fit for my shoot, depending on the concept.

After doing this, we were told to get into pairs and style one another having only five minutes each using the clothes we had brought in. This was quite a challenge as we had such little time to come up with an outfit. However saying this, it worked really successfully once we all started everybody got into the flow of things and went extreme with the way we used the clothes to fit each of us. This was a very exciting task and i let loose, not caring about what look hot, or pretty, but what look the most extravagant and adventurous I thoroughly enjoyed this task. After this we put ourselves into groups of four and went round the building finding spaces to shoot each other in, we mixed and matched clothes and styled our colleagues, yet again i really enjoyed this task, especially the editing of the photos and styling.

This was a new experience and exciting project overall. 

Our next task was to produce five mood boards for our own photo shoot styling project on our identities. This had to include Location, Hair, Makeup, Stlye & poses to show mood/ attitude swell as props.

Design & Media - Summary Review.

Overall the art foundation exploratory stage has been brilliant. At first knowing I was going to take the Fashion and Textiles foundation pathway, my courage to change that pathway and take Design & Media was in fact a great choice made. My skills have branched further by being able to experiment with a wide range of creative pathways, for example like 3d design which I have never done before. Aswell as Graphics, graphics opened up my illustrative skills as well as thinking about applying colour in different ways for suited clients and their particular needs. 

The course also enabled me to express my creative skills in different ways, like building Bridges with only two points on the floor and only thirty bamboo sticks.Or designing a garment using tissue paper, string and tin foil, however basic my materials were it made me interact and connect with others in my group forming tight friendships.

 My sketch book really reflects all of my practical work and how every page is unique embracing all different textures and techniques presented through out. I put my all into each subjects( even if i didn't find it the most exciting activity)I knew by working hard it would broaden my skills further had i of just put my all in to one particular pathway. With 3d design I built a paper pop up bridge in my sketch book on top of that i did a few continuous line drawings of my own created bridges, which turned out successfully. In addition to this, I can fully agree that taking the art foundation challenged me and made me tackle creative situations I have never done,but also made me more determined to do well and challenge myself even further.

I am extremely excited to take the Fashion and Textiles pathway, coming in with other skills brought in from doing Design & Media. I am ready to work hard and gain a fantastic outcome at the end of the art foundation at the end of it.

Graphics - My Final Exploratory stage.

Graphics being my last exploratory stage opened up my creative skills when referencing to illustration. It challenged my drawing skills, aswell as my perception of colour, layout, format and presentation. Our first experiment was to do a selection of pen or pencil drawings of the person sitting opposite,next to or diagonal from us using a different medieum for each sketch when capturing their face. One way was to use the opposite hand I usually write with, so I used my right hand to draw with this was a challange as i am not use to using my right hand in creating art peices or for example my friends face. Another way was doing continuous line drawings, using our mouths, and also keeping our eyes off the page and fully on them, which was quite an intense challenge. I did enjoy this as it was entertaining and intresting looking back at my pieces of work I had produced using these different mediums. I had some abstract, quirky pieces which I admired, however some of my pieces where not in proportion to the face. On the other hand it could also be looked at as a  succesful experiment as I let myself loose. 

Some of the other tasks Andy gave us was to create a poster of ourselves in the future ( I made it 2027) as if we were holding our own art exhibition. I quite enjoyed this as i choose to do a fashion art exhibition, saying " what is being GAWJUS" i designed my own model that dominates most of the poster and have a colour code. i learnt that i could do things better, for example the colour coding not leaving a white postered back ground and making my typo more visible for the audience to see.

I brought in ten celebrity pictures and cut them up into setions of eyes head, noses, hair, lips, ect and create another face out of all the celebrities i had printed off. This task again was quite an odd task, but i did like it as everyones work was so different and quite strange with all these unique faces. I decided to use pen on top of mine to make the faces merge more into each other giving it an illustrated effect.

Creating Numbers and Words.

This involved me producing numerous numbers and letters all having a different font, and stlye. I used loads of different stlyes for examply flowers, zig zags, cross hatching, Thin coloured felt tips, and Fat felt tips. This was another successful experiment as yet again everyone in my groups work was completly different some people used 3dimensional shapes, while others used more simplistec shapes. Here are some of my letters and numbers I created below. It taught us how companys searched for people who could create words and letters for their advertisment for logos and presenting their products.

Overall graphics was great fun, and really helped me broaden my experimental skills when creating my own styles of fonts, and presenting my own Posters. I especially enjoyed the poster making as it got us involved using colours, and illustration which is one of my strongest artistic skills when being able to sketch figures quickly from scratch.

3D Design.

Our new topic was 3d design, an insight to something i have never experienced, and found quite a challenge. One of the first tasks we did challenged our imagination aswell as our design skills in constructing somthing from a completely different object of thing. For example ,choosing our favourite fruit and drawing it, but then changing that fruit into a hamsters cage. I found this exciting and quite an adventurous task, as it widened my creative thought process. Our next task was to construct a piece which would be able to hold up three plastic balls as hight as we could, using only a glue gun and spaghetti. This was another task i enjoyed, as it presented some beautiful minimalistic pieces, which were quite abstract. They could be looked at as new designs for lamp shades, or sculptures which could be put in a modernised home as decoration. Everyones work turned out to be quite different either being extremely flamboyant, or very simplistic have only a few spaghetti sticks holding the three balls. One thing i could have improved with was the structure designing it in a different way which would improve the look, As well as hold the balls up higher in a different way.

Our other project, proved to show how impatient i was with trying to make it work, This task was one of the least favourite tasks i enjoyed. I could not grasp how to make something which would hold my body weight up with three pieces of card board and masking tape. In the end me and my friend Masie, decided to combine our two pieces together to make a solid shape which I could sit on having my  legs in the air  with no part of my body touching the ground. This proved to work, for about five seconds most, catching a quick snap, the picture below show the structure of the shape and the size in contrast to my body, One thing i think i could have done to improve this piece was to plan it more out and think deeper into how i could construct it to maintain my body weight with only few resources.

Designing Paper Fold Out Bridges In our Sketch Books.

This was quite a fun task as we were getting involved in sticking a cutting up strips, or curves, or random shapes which we then had to manipulate into a design for a bridge. I decided to cut strips into my sketch book on a double spread out A4 pages, which then overlapped each other conjoining them together. This task branched my skills as it made me think of Design and how it should look wether it appealing to public or simple making it up as i went along. Also i had to think about how it would work as a structure all sought of things i would have to think about if i actually brought my design out to produce a proper bridge from it.

Constructing The Bridge. - Bamboo and Cardboard.

This and the spaghetti piece I enjoyed the most, this task engaged in working together in groups giving opinions and encouraging each other on how we could build this bridge. We had to plan and think about how we could  hold i together for a plastic electrical car to be drove over it. We all, as a group found this to be challenging but looked at it as a positive way in working together, I especially enjoyed constructing the bamboo and making a very unusual shape from it. The most disappointing aspect of the design we did was layering the cardboard on top, it completely wiped out the designed structure of the bamboo, and left it looking quite dull and boring.

ICT -  Photo Shop Experiment. Using me and a Different Background.

Practised merging ourselves into a background of where we want to be in 10 years time, I decided to choose a train track, being quite abstract in thinking where ever my life goes it'll keep moving forward towards new destinations.