Fashion

As a start to the Fashion rotation week, a life drawing class was held. There was one model present and we were to do several styles of drawings over different lengths of time. In one instance we were told to create a sustained drawing; the model held one pose for 20 minutes while we were to focus on tone and shading. While I personally enjoy creating sustained drawings, I find it difficult to work under a time restraint and do not consider mine to be finished. The picture featured below is the sustained drawing.

We were then to draw in different styles for the remaining poses held by the model. I chose to use charcoal for my next drawing, pictured below left. I am not comfortable with using charcoal as a drawing medium, but wanted to try something I was unfamiliar with in order to experiment and improve my skills. I am unhappy with the result of this because of its rough and inaccurate quality given by the charcoal's smudging. While I do not consider shading to be a particularly weak point of mine, the charcoal made it difficult and I decided that I need more practise and time to adjust to the medium before I tried creating life drawings with it.

As for the image featured below right, this is another example of a process that I am uncomfortable with. We were given five minutes to complete a pen drawing; I don't find the medium of pen comfortable for drawing detail, or life drawing in a more general sense. The time restraint caused me to create a disproportionate image with incorrect form and anatomy.

This session of life-drawing developed my figure drawing skills and my ability to create sketches under a time restraint.

Moving on to our next practical assignment, we created maquettes of wearable items that we had to base off a certain artwork. I do not have the image of the artwork to hand. 

The left image is a cape, and the latter is a dress. While I like the composition of the dress maquette, they were both created in a short space of time, resulting once again in an inability for me to fully concentrate or produce something particularly detailed. The images both match the artwork I used through their use of colour and shape. I have decided that I need to strengthen my ability to work under time pressure in order to form the best results possible over the length of the course. 

We were then asked to develop one of the maquettes we previously created. I chose to try to develop the cape design as I liked its shape but did not feel that the design was the most appropriate for the form. I experimented with adding different components and shapes to the structure in order to create a more defined design; I am fond of the addition of shoulder adornments to a cape but do not feel that the other embellishments were particularly beneficial. 

The following series of images depicts the task we were then given of creating life-sized designs on mannequins. We worked in groups of three in this project, and rotated around the different mannequins that were situated in the classroom. We were either played a song or given a theme with which to work, and the prop we were creating had to match the general feel of what was shown to us. I found this experience very entertaining as it was highly creative, and I had also never had the experience of working on anything fashion-related before, particularly not using a mannequin as a base.

We then had to combine several of the props we created in the previous task into a design for a dress. Still working in groups of three, this is what myself and my peers created for this task. I was pleased with the result as we had the success of using some rather abstract shapes and forming them into something that had 

wearable function.

After working in groups of three, myself and another member of my class proceeded to work in a pair to create the next dress we were assigned to make. Pictured left is the original product of this project. We worked on the mannequin as we were assigned to, but as we dismantled the piece it came apart. We tried fitting it onto my partner, who was to be the model, which caused it to come apart further. Unfortunately, this exercise was not a success. The cardboard hood that we created was a focal point of design, but as that no longer functioned the item looked much like a mess without any compositional focus. 

We were then told to stand in front of the floor level indicators by the stairs on each floor of the school in order to take images of the dress functioning on the model. Here are the pictures that I consider to have come out the most successfully out of the ten that were taken.

To conclude the week's work, there was a class "catwalk" in which the models displayed the dresses to the rest of our peers. There are videos of this below.