Peckham Meets Indian Culture.

This three week project was also another topic I found to be quite exciting and fun, when it came down to the development of the work and experimenting with pattern and repeats.  I went out to find two concepts which would work together in some form to create one project. So I thought it would be much more interesting to find two concepts that were in contrast to each other, i took myself to a local area i find most fun and exciting yet is looked upon as quite a rough area a lot of gang formations and a place you wouldn't see yourself walking alone at night. However i tried to highlight Peckham in its positive lights and show that it isn't at all like this but full of culture and vibrance, a place which emits atmosphere and a community. Especially with its massive fish and meat markets oozing with colour as well as the endless amounts of fruit and vegetable stalls which take over most of Peckham. I took many primary photos of the area and also photos i had taken from Peckham on nights out where it is a fantastic night life for going for cocktails with your friends and local hidden clubs which are packed full with students from around south London. I mainly focussed on the train station as from time to time i always travel from Peckham to central London and find its station the main meeting point it has a beautiful feel to it form the symmetrical circular windows and the old brick which formulates the building. I also zoomed into key detail of the metal works which are the detailing around the windows of the station and used this as the key element to my digital prints. Another link i took form Peckham was the amount of hair salon shops that are com packed tightly next to each other row after row, i took the glitzy side of Peckham and picked part of a sign which incorporated sparkles and put this onto photoshop with the metal works from Peckham rye train station. I produced five digital prints from this, i got so carried away with focussing on the Peckham side i didn't manage to make a contrast with a different concept which i thought to be quite disappointing with myself. But however my prints came out successfully and so i carried the indian culture project out as a separate one.

It may have been a lot more interesting if i had interlinked Peckham and indian culture in some way, this could have worked if i had had another week to try and conjoin them in some way, but i didn't have enough time. So i decided to take the indian culture project and do the same as i did with the Peckham one i took elements on middle eastern jewellery from the British Museum and focused on intricate detailing of a specific piece of jewellery and experimented with my observational drawings repeating them and focussing on how i could possibly make this into a pattern if it was for an interior design, with the help from Daniel a tutor who worked with us on how the eye focusses on certain points of a piece when the eye leans more towards colour on a pattern and how to balance out a piece of work. This was a great technique learnt as now when it comes to creating a pattern i will focus more on layout and what works well when it comes to layering for example. I then scanned in my print and manipulated it on photoshop to create five different digital prints this was the most exciting bit of the project i have found something i never thought i would love so much, but the out comes were great and i adapted them to garments if they were put forward for fashion design prints.

Here are some images below of my Peckham project and culture project.

Sports Wear Project.

This has to be one of my most enjoyable projects yet. One of the reasons being is because i am a sucker for sports wear labels especially when it comes to vintage classics like Nike and Adidas for example. For this two week project seeing as it wasn't a very long assignment, i had to conjure up two main ideas which i would work with and finally produce an end out come - which was Digital Prints.
my idea generated from my research into colours, textures and fabrics which are currently in season for sports wear so this was colours like nyons bright yellows and pinks - all taken from companies like Nike Town and Trainer shops on oxford street like Office and OffSpring. Aswell as Electric blues and greens, i also made sure i researched into fabrics as to what was currently popular when reverencing sports wear and fabric, this happened to be Air-Tex a criss crossed fabric that normally is used for basket ball players or football sports wear. So i wanted to work with a palette of nylons and airtex, but i had to find my other side to my project which would contrast to what ideas i had for colour and texture. I decided to head up to the science museum in sight of inspiration for an idea, i thought of looking at the human brain where i produced a few observational drawings as well as taking photographs within the museum of real life contained brains. 

Further into my research i took my sports inspiration of basketball and focussed on numbers within sports wear for example like massive imprinted number fives which resemble the number of the sports player, then linking this to my human brain idea. By taking my pictures from the science museum and playing around on photoshop i used the magic wand tool and highlighted the brain cortex structure rather than the whole brain itself. Manipulating colour so i could branch right out of my comfort zone, initially i didn't quite like the colours as they personally were not something i found most appealing but the idea was that i could play around and experiment with colour from the brain cortex as well as putting the number five i had taken a picture of and manipulating it into a digital design. I produced seven digital sports prints from this project and thoroughly enjoyed working with my ideas. Even though i didn't quite like my designs at the beginning as i thought they were to basic and bland the more i experimented on photoshop with my photography the more i seemed to enjoy and like my work. I think my concept worked well because i had two ideas linked together which initially were quite contrasting.

Reconstruction & Deconstruction.

After the christmas holiday peeriod, a project was set out to research and gather materials for the concept of - Reconstruction & Deconstruction. Exploring various charity shops for clothes that where to do with, knit, evening wear, sports wear, Casual wear & tailoring. I picked various old clothes of mine which contained alot of lace on some some of my chosen garments aswell as picking knit wear from a charity shop which had quite alot of texture to it. I thought this would be quite experiemtnal and intersting to work with. Students where then asked to record and develope at least 20 design ideas using the bought garments and to then produce some developed and changed pieces of outfits deconstructing the garments and reconstructing them afterwards. For example parts of the sports wear connected with evening wear onto a manikin. This was exremeley enjoyable as playing around with all the clothing was most exciting unpicking shorts and making it into sleeves or a boobtube with cut lace from the evening wear. Aswell as experimenting with colour and seeing what works well togther, as I seemed to have a lot of navy wear. The pictures below represent my sketch book work and my design ideas for each of the cut garments I reconstructed togther. 

 

Another task given was to produce some cut out collages of our scanned in charity shop deconstructed garments and create unsual cut out shapes which didnt represent anything in particula. I produced these cuttings by joining the seam lines and other lines resembled by folded shapes creating the most bizzare outlines. These five images below are from my sketch book.