ITS JUST THE BEGINNING _ an introduction to our project.

The morning panned out as expected- introducing us to the course and the marking criteria. However the exciting part was the pace ( and a little but horrifying) and got stuck in immediately.  What is trend? No one wanted to voice their opinion, me included. I've never been good with speaking to an audience, so when  team work was mentioned, my heart sank (I'm more of an I dependant worker). It was only discussing our made up trend, but my mind went blank- since when have I become such an unconfident person? Something I can definitely improve on, and I'm sure there's a lot more of voicing our ideas to come throughout the course. 
I was intrigued at the odd array of objects hanging from the wall- from bird wings to rubber gloves, you could only find this on a fashion and textiles course. All very confusing, but I think it became sort of clear when the current trends found on WGSN (world global style network) were discussed and the objects were tied in. So these were to be the source of inspiration! My busy brain didn't let me rest for today, and choosing one trend was hard when I had interesting ideas for many of them. I think what settled it for me was the subtle use of bird wings and feathers, from which I derived taxidermy, something I'm passionate about. This was based in the trend 'reworks of art', which included florals, binding with rope, peeling and revealing past artworks or eras and texture. My initial thoughts were to cover skulls in print, cut out skull shapes and develop a print from floral paper and so on.  I really did enjoy the prospect of working on this further and developing my ideas, maybe including crazy print and the idea of tying something up to manipulate the shape.

Afternoon soon came- I had a good feeling about this. The class consisted of drawing and mark making, an area that excited me. It was a wonderful session and I gained valuable drawing techniques  that would help me get my ideas down on a page, expressing my opinions in a creative way. The idea was to work in a big way, and focus on small areas of an object through a view finder. I just went with it, and the big mark and textural lines really came together. I liked the way we were encouraged to work on top of our pieces using different media, for example I created a pen and ink floral piece, scratchy and feathery, and then worked on top with bleach, which turned the colour almost yellow/gold and took away pieces to reveal an eye catching piece. It enlivened the drawing and I felt the watery feel from the bleach contrasted with the hard scratchy lines worked well together  Another technique which was really successful was continuous line onto a textural surface. The continuos line gave a sort of flow and cycle, but the textured background broke some of the biro line up, creating a really interesting contrast. 

I was probably a bit rusty, not having put pen to paper for a long while. The key is definitely practice practice practice, and of course I'll probably look back at these drawings and see how far I have come. That's the plan anyway, always striving for improvement me!