Unit X Blog Link

The final part of this year was taken up with a project called 'Unit X'. All of my unit x work is self-contained in the following blog: http://unitx2013.blogspot.co.uk/

Portfolio Presentation for Print

This post is just to document a tutorial we had on presentation skills during the Print block, so I'll have it as a useful reference guide later.

For Paper Designs


Pick a standard mount size to mount with - A2 or A3 usually.
Leave a larger gap at the bottom when mounting.


Put sellotape along the top edge on the back of the work, then use double sided sellotape to stick it onto the mounting card. This way it can easily be removed later without damaging the work.
Only attach at the top of the work, again so it can be rearranged or removed later.

For Fabric Designs

Iron fabric before mounting.
Before cutting, mark area to be cut on the back of the fabric.
To stop edges fraying when cut, put sellotape on the back of the fabric, all the way round the edges. There should be 1/2cm over where the edge of the fabric will be. Press sellotape down hard so it is attached to the fibres in the fabric.

Making a Header

Measure, cut rectangular piece of card a few centimetres bigger than the width of the fabric. Fold in half and crease. Open it up, lay fabric on the bottom half, measure so the gap on each side is the same width. The fabric should be about 1cm into the card. Again use sellotape and double sided sellotape to stick down. You can mount 2 pieces of fabric in the same header. The header can be rolled up for transport and doesn't need to be mounted on card.

Whitworth - John Piper and Richard Long

John Piper - The Mountains of Wales

whitworth.co.uk

The drawn quality of these paintings is extraordinary - the delicate lines over washes of colour stand out well. The ones that I liked most had obvious tonal contrast, and rich rather than earthy colours. They were framed in different colours of frames, made of different materials. This actually worked well when the frames were correctly chosen as they brought out the best features of each painting. There was a particularly nice frame that I preferred to the painting; perhaps this was a bad choice. However, these works are part of private collections so would not have been chosen by the artist, and they still felt like a collection. The space they were in was quite dark and atmospheric; although adding to the drama of the work, it was difficult to see detail, and I had to get very close to the paintings to see everything clearly. This shows that lighting is extremely important when putting on an exhibition.

Richard Long - Land Art

whitworth.co.uk

These collections of stones were presented in a wide open, neutral coloured space, which helped me to imagine the inspiration behind them; the Cairngorms mountain range. Because there were no barriers around the work, I could look closely at each individual stone to see its unique colour and shape. They were contained in their own room so there were no visual distractions, which was good. The path - like piece was placed in the centre of the room so that it led your eye towards the other one. This made the layout more interesting and made sure that my attention was focussed on both pieces from the start.

Feedback for Print

I really enjoyed the print unit, and felt I learned a lot. The feedback session was extremely useful, and will help shift my focus for future projects.

Generally I am quite risk averse, and although I made a successful, varied collection, I could have pushed things further. When researching other designers, I need to focus on a few that really say something to me, and document my analysis to say exactly why I like their work, and relate it back to my own.

I took the instruction ' be selective ' too far; I left out pieces that helped add variety to my collection that would have enhanced the presentation for the sake of ticking a box. This is probably the most important lesson; it also applies to my technical notes as well, as I focussed on making sure that everything possible was there, as I thought that would be more important for marking than making it useful to me. Next time I will focus on working in a way that is useful and interesting, not trying to make my work fit into what I think the university is looking for.

I did start to feel like I was starting to own my work until it was time for presentation - I then went back and added notes and extra pieces to tick boxes. Next time I'll think 'useful' from the beginning so there might be fewer examples or notes but they will be useful to me and succinct.

It was pointed out that the students who get hand-picked for jobs aren't usually the ones who get a first; they are the ones who do placements, have experience, pay attention to trends and and make designs that are suitable for a commercial market. I need to focus on my career rather than my degree; a good job is more important than a good degree, and if I see my time at university as a way to develop skills to take into a job I think I will become more successful than if I slow myself down trying to tick boxes.

The layout of my blog is not entirely consistent; this is because of a glitch with blogger; when trying to put photos side by side and in a particular order or with subtitles, there are sometimes problems. In future I will just lay photos out vertically so this doesn't happen. It 's a shame that such a useful feature doesn't work consistently.

I would like to revisit print in future projects, but would also like to incorporate embroidery in some way. I tend to enjoy doing a mixture of things, and also enjoyed paper cutting and digital work alongside hand drawn images. Unit X should help me to try out different combinations of materials and techniques.

Learning to Print

I have really enjoyed the challenging process of learning to print, and thought I should reflect on my experiences so that the next time I am in the print room I can produce good quality work efficiently.

Learning from the embroidery unit I tried to go with the flow more and not feel interrupted when learning several new things at once. It was difficult, being shown several printing techniques and learning photoshop and illustrator from scratch in the space of a few weeks but I managed to take in the information and focussed on how I could then go on and use it to develop my work.

Working in the print room has taught me many things that will be useful in the future:

use a small squeegee as it makes things a lot easier
wash screens as infrequently as possible
have a plan as to which fabrics to work on and which colours to use
work horizontally in the space rather than vertically (more fabric pieces can be pinned out at once)
it is better to use reactive dye to make backgrounds at the start of a project
think about working in layers rather than one final result
keep everything clean so nothing gets accidentally stained
check surfaces before putting fabric down
always wear an apron and tie back hair
when using white pigment work quickly to get as many good prints as possible from one motif
use 2 screens at once so that no time is wasted
test out dyes on fabric for colour when mixing them
try to book the same table for 2 days in a row to avoid putting a backing cloth down twice
wear waterproof shoes, as they will get water on them in the screen wash room
bring everything you could need with you
mix all your colours before starting to print
have a wide variety of colours, light and dark
book a table far enough in advance; before a deadline it gets busy

For motif development it would have been helpful to see how my motifs all worked together before putting them in to be put onto a screen; I didn't use one of my motifs because it didn't look right next to the others, and so there was wasted space.

To speed up working, I used a heater to dry fabric when appropriate, and covered any almost dry prints with newspaper while I printed the next shape onto fabric. This enabled me to quickly build up layers of colour without contaminating the fabric side of the screen.

Printing has taught me to not be afraid of using bright colours in a bold way; to begin with, prints that I deemed busy were seen as simple by the tutors, and comparing them with my photoshop work I can see why. Although it will always take longer to build up an image by screenprinting, it is worth creating an interesting background and using multiple motifs to make pieces bolder and busier. When I started to do this,  my work became more interesting and exciting.

Digital Print Sample

I chose one of my busier photoshop designs to put forward for digital print. Unfortunately the colours in my original file became distorted, so they no longer match my colour palette. The reds became orange, and generally the other colours are wrong; although the shapes are still well represented, I don't like the final result. In my feedback, the group said that they really liked my digital print, but they did not elaborate on this, so I don't know what they specifically liked about it; shape, colour, texture, mood etc.

The right hand image is closer to the true colours of the design; it is a photograph of a paper print out of the file, so is not perfect in terms of colour representation but is close enough to show the difference. According to Sally this is most likely due to the difference in settings between several computers. This discolouration also happened to other students, so there were no actual mistakes made anywhere in the process. In future I will have to check the colour and monitor settings when switching between computers to ensure consistency when digitally printing samples.

In general (colour aside) the design translated well onto fabric, though some of the sharpness was lost when it came to the linear detail; this could be resolved by either printing the design at a larger scale or using thicker lines in the original photoshop designs. 

Dip Dye

To add some colour to my designs straight away, I tried out the dip dye technique we were shown in the print room. I picked the mid range pink and orange colours from my cake image to try, both in solid colour and with white sections. I was happy with the results, as they are bright and a close match for colour.

I started to layer up images on the dip dye background, which worked well, as the light yellow dye can easily be seen when overlapped with the white streaks. Because of the pink colour of the dip dye, the pigment colours have been altered, becoming darker, but they still fit in with my colour scheme. I might try using mixed white pigment to add brighter images on top to make a bolder statement.