Opposites

I began this project by focusing on microscopic images found in books in the Science area of the library, I found the patterns and colours really interesting as they were not what you would expect. I experimented with different ways of capturing the patterns and shapes within this images through a range of drawings using different media. Although I was initially really interested in these images I struggled with how to develop my work any further. Over the Christmas holidays I visited many family members, and found many of their skins were very different, I found myself particularly interested in my Grandads skin as he has many bruises due to the antibiotics he has to take. I decided to focus on his hands, which are covered in bruises and his bent fingers due to breaking them so many times, comparing them to other members of my family of different ages. I experimented with hand prints, photocopies and zoomed in detailed drawings of the lines on the palms of their hands. I then began looking at my Grandads hands in more detail, concentrating mainly on the bruises, I found these really interesting because of the bright colours and the thin, fragile, papery texture of his skin. I decided to translate this through my Print samples, using my Grandads old skin and bruises as a colour palette against the lines of my own hand prints to create a quite abstract design, printing onto thin fabrics with open structures. My second workshop was weave. I really enjoyed this workshop as I felt I could push my ideas more and experiment a lot more with different materials. I wanted to create a weave that focused mainly on texture, rather than colour therefore I experimented with materials such as, paper yarns, plastic, plastic bags, elastic lace and a range of fancy yarns along with different textural weaving patterns, representing loosing the elasticity in your skin over time, which causes wrinkles to form. I feel my weave samples represent my work a lot better than my print samples, as I feel I knew what I wanted to achieve through weave more than print. I think I have realised I am quite impatient, Print was quite a bit of waiting around, whereas when weaving you can see your design developing quickly. I found myself looking at the Bloom journals in the library quite a lot this project and found a lot of inspiration from them as well as the very inspirational talk given by Shelly Goldsmith. I really loved that everything she does has a meaning or reason behind it, I feel as though I struggle to produce things within my work without a concept or meaning to them. In this project I feel I could have produced a lot more work if I had managed my time better and really used all the workshop time available to me, this is something I need to improve on for the next project.