Weeks 8+9

These past 2 weeks I have been continuing with the given projects in each of the projects ready for the formative assessment after Christmas.

Textiles- I have been continuing experimenting with screen printing techniques but I have had an issue with making my work meaningful because up until now it has been focusing on the aesthetics and has been more pictorial rather than having the conceptual ideas behind which I personally find really important as an artist.
Therefore I mind mapped what the abbey is and what it means and represents and I stumbled over the idea of 'health'. Using this as a starting point I drew fruits and have changed my screen a couple of times, in order to get different prints I can work into.


One specific task we were given was to take a plain sheet of cotton fabric and transform it from 'light to dark'.
My response to this was to simply layer the fabric starting with light colours and ending with the more vibrant colours. Using a blank screen I put plain sheet of colour but to add a bit of texture I printed onto a wooden surface as I liked the sketchy effect my previous piece had.

I decided to use a lot of techniques on this one piece to show all the technical aspects I have learnt throughout course, however my style is more minimalist and for me there isn't enough free spaces within the piece. I would like to develop this piece perhaps by cutting into it or by scanning and then manipulating it to create a digital print.



I have changed my screen to a very simple design with a circle cut out and I have printed on a range of fabrics in many colours and then I intend to stitch into them with different aspects relating to health.

Printing-
I'm carrying on working with my parrot plate and have tried painting with acrylic inks an image of the parrot letting the colours bleed into each other.
I like the un-perfect effect of printing over the drawing as it is difficult to get the images to line up however on this piece the images were so far off the image is distorted which I am unhappy with but will try again as I think there is potential with this technique.
Next week I will also do some more drawings ready to make new plates.



3D-

Casting-  Reflecting on my previous work, I liked the idea of making a series of bubble wrap panels so I made another square using the same envelope as before but this time adding pigment into the plaster mix. I'm not to sure why but there is a line of unmixed pigment through the piece, if I were to make another piece I would mix the colour pigment in more to make sure the colour is dispersed evenly throughout the plaster.

For the 3rd panel I made my own bubble wrap bag using a plastic burning tool so I could see the difference using the other side of the bubble wrap. unfortunately I ran out of time so made less plaster than I wanted resulting in this panel being smaller than the others and because I wrapped the left over bubble wrap around the plaster it created a bumpy pieces with different thicknesses of plaster throughout, which actually I really like, if i were to carry on with this technique I would experiment with using different thicknesses.

Ceramics- the pots which I applied glaze to have been fired in the reduction gas kiln which works by limiting the amount of oxygen let into the kiln so that the carbon does not have enough to react with so it takes the oxygen out of the glaze changing the colour as a result.

I am pleased with the results as you cannot control what sections of the glaze oxidizes I didn't really know how the pots would come out however I am happy with how organic they look.



This is my favorite design as I like how the oxide had worked on the oxide has worked on the carved marks- how the colour is intense in the deep grooves and lighter in the shallow marks.