Armoury Museum

Armoury Museum (5th blog post)

This week I have completed my African Artifact work, which followed on from the Summer project, so that I can make a fresh start with the Armoury Museum project, which I am really starting to enjoy.

I have done drawings inspired by the Armoury Museum, and most of them are monochrome, using black and white, so I have chosen that for my colour theme.

Also, I got so exited that I have started sampling.  I could really see the armour in knit, especially the chainmail, so I have started by developing knitted samples using different materials such as thick cord, normal yarn and fabric ripped into strips and sewn into a continuous line, to prepare it for knitting.  The normal yarn I have used is in shades of grey and the technique is from a Youtube video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5yokI-YqqU),  the loose stitch links the different sections, and the sample is inspired by Japanese armour.  I also really like the knit with white cord for its weight and the way it moves when you hold it.  

In the next week, I need to develop more drawings and move on to use embroidery for some more samples, but I am very pleased to be doing Embroidery and Mixed Media, so that I can expand into other techniques, such as knit.   Another aim is to start my creative CV and covering letter.

Intention Blog post 4

Intention Blog post 4

This week has been quite busy with workshops as well as producing my own samples.  The Monday drawing session was good because it was all about loosening us up with drawing, within still life. After that I attended Elnaz Yazdani’s workshop on machine embroidery. Some of the techniques I had learnt last year but cording was new to me. Altogether I learnt tailor tacking, pin tucking, cording and smocking in the workshop.  I missed the slashing workshop, but I caught up on it on Youtube and tried it out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HaPsMLE2FQ8 .  I find this absolutely fascinating because it involves recycling which I’ve always been interested in and I want to experiment more. 

For these samples I’ve used pigment dye. I put masking tape on the fabric in parallel lines and hand painted in-between. 

I was going to throw away the masking tape afterwards, but I put the strips of peeled off masking tape together for it to create another pattern. I was really pleased with this because I learnt another technique of mark making.

Theses samples were continuing the theme of slavery museum and African artifacts and I went to another talk this week which was part of Black History Month.  It was really interesting because the talk was about a book called Brit(ish) by Afua Hirsch.  In the conversation she said how people keep asking her where she is from, which is what I get.  This Summer, when I was working at the Co-op, a couple of white men asked me which country I was from.  When I said I was from India, they shook their heads and said that no, I wasn’t from there.  This I found silly and funny at the same time.  The most upsetting thing I find is when people find out where I am from they ask if I can speak the language.  When I say no, they get really cross.  I can’t keep explaining to everyone that I have been adopted and brought up by a white mother who only speaks English!  

From Wednesday this week, I have started drawing getting inspiration from the Armoury Museum.   

Intentions - Blog post 3

Intentions - Blog post 3

I went to the Royal Armouries Museum on Monday with the Uni group.  It was fascinating because I’d never been before and there were just so many things to see.  I particularly loved the Japanese Samurai armour, which I learnt was made of iron, silk, leather and bronze, from a presentation given by museum staff and from https://someinterestingfacts.net/how-was-samurai-armor-made/

This week I didn’t have a tutorial, but I’ve been experimenting and working on my samples.  From the Tuesday morning lecture given by David Nelson, we were advised on how to create a creative CV.  I have a CV that I’ve used for part time jobs in the past, but now I need to recreate another CV to include all of my artistic experience.

Last week I made some clay buttons cut out in different shapes, getting the inspiration from one of my African artifact drawings.  Since then I don’t know what to use them for, but I hope to get more inspiration to use them.

The tie dye sample hasn’t come out the way I expected.  I first dyed the fabric yellow using acid dye and then used elastic bands to make little scrunched balls to be dipped into indigo.   When it dried I was expecting for the creases to still show yellow connecting from one circle to another.  However, I’m quite happy with the outcome.  I like the colour as well because it fits in with my autumn colour theme.  I like it that they haven’t come out uniform either in colour or shape.  

I worked on Sublimation printing where I painted on to paper using sublimation ink and used the heat press for 2 minutes to transfer the design on to the synthetic fabric.  With this technique I’m always unsure of the way the samples turn out because the colours on paper are what I want, but on fabric it seems to always come out lighter, to my disappointment.  It does fit into my colour theme but just not the colours I wanted.  I need to improve on this through doing small test samples where I can experiment with mixing colours to get the outcome I intend.  

Intentions

 Intentions 2nd blog post

During this week I have developed the theme of my inspiration in African history and artefacts; established a colour scheme and started to produce samples.

I went to a Black History Month talk in the Central Library, “How Our Schools Fail Black Children… and what we can do about it”.  The thing that caught my attention was the video playing of children drawing.   The drawings of themselves, their parents and other figures were always white and this reminded me of my childhood when I used to so the same, because people with white skin were more looked up to in India than darker people.  What interested me was that the presenter of the video said that if a child draws a figure white, it shows that they want to be white.  However, now I am very proud to be dark skinned.

Africa inspired me because I went to the Slavery Museum in Liverpool and drew artefacts that I found fascinating.  Recently I have also used a library book to get more inspiration for the drawings (Danto, Gramly et al, 1989)

As Autumn is starting and I absolutely love the natural colours - shades of yellow to brown, from light to dark green, the darkness of the branches and the lightness of the sky - I have done a yarn wrap from a picture I took in Alexandra Park recently. 

The tutorial I had on the 2^nd of October really pushed me into action because I didn’t have a colour scheme and hadn’t started on samples.  I learnt that I don’t need to make a sample looking exactly like my drawing, which was keeping me from developing samples.  As Mark explained it to me, I can pick out a detail, a shape or a pattern and develop that into samples.   This helped me into sketching ideas and producing the colour scheme.  I have started producing samples based on these ideas. 

Danto, A, Gramly, R.M, Hultgren M.L, Schildkrout, E, and Zeidler, J. (1989) ART/artifact. New York: the Center for African Art and Munich: Prestel Verlag