Retrospective: Diary Project (Some!) of the Final Pieces

Good afternoon from a cold little corner of Norwich-brrrrrr!

A trip to the shops with the Pup for some dogfood turned into a morning/afternoon of visiting Grandparents and Parents. Now very tired! So here I am, all ready to add a follow-up to my previous post. These are some of the final Illustrations which were exhibited Spring 2007 at St Margarets Church of Art.

I spent a large amount of time planning how my work would be hung, what it would be hung in and my area of display as a whole. So you could say that the Illustration development was influenced by my exhibitions plans and vice versa.

The Illustrations were mounted in a various array of frames which were either given to me, bought in Charity Shops or found. Which was much like the materials I used within the drawings.

At this point I was honing my skills on Adobe Photoshop, which is something I very rarely use now (an Adobe Illustrator convert....how did I mage to complete my whole degree without it?!). Using layers I would build up the line drawing into something which resembled applique, which for the sake of it having a name I called 'Digital Applique'. I don't even know if that's a technical term for it, but basically it does what it says on the tin! A lot of the textiles I used were scanned and catalogued from various sources including fabric shops, very kind upholstery shop owners, family members and old clothes. So I had a really expansive collection of pattern and colour to use in each piece of work.

The fact that there was no initial selection process when it came to the materials was very exciting for me, because inevitably I ended up with swatches which I would never have dreamed of picking but ended up working really well. Of course, a lot of them were pretty awful and never saw the light of day, but I think that's part of the fun!

Some of the Illustrations are very heavily built up with colour and fabric, while others are very sparsely coloured. Also I had a few which were screenprinted outline on fabric which you could pick out in some if the applique Illustrations.

I have photos of the exhibition that I will add to this post when I can aquire them from my little degree laptop which has been exiled to the back of a cupboard.

But for now hope you like!

'Bar Art'




'Gayglow 700'

'Lampshade Ironswitch'

'Counter'

'The Awkward Chair'

'Warming Up'

'Hanging Out'