Finished toile

Because the two sides are identical, I have only produced half a toile. Where the “strap” sections cross at the front and back, they will be fastened with large feature buttons.

Toile so far

Work in progress

I’m currently in the middle of making a finished toile (actually, half a toile, but with a professional finish rather than the experiments I have done so far) and completing my design developments, so it will probably be a day or two before I have anything new to upload.

However, before starting my final boards, I built up a little collection of other artists’ work to take inspiration from when compiling my boards. None of the following is my work. (Sorry for the lack of source information, too – I saved the images without their links! If you see your work on here and would like me to remove it or add your name/website, please send me a message or comment and I’ll do so).

I like the layouts of these boards and the style of drawing – possible design development layout:

I think the loose, splashed and dripped paint effect on these illustrations works really well:

I love the textile-y nature of this one – possible idea for an illustration board:

Splash of colour to make an impact on a neutral illustration:

Reworked storyboard

I have been experimenting on Photoshop to make my storyboard more modern looking, even though the subject matter is medieval, because the Yorkshire Museum curators stressed that they wanted a particularly contemporary design.

The result so far:

 

Lots of bagging out…

I re-cut my circular panels and wadding to test out the idea from the previous post properly, using boning for the rigid areas and bagging out the entire thing for a clean finish.

I tried three different methods of attaching the boning: creating a channel into which the boning was inserted, a stitchline down either side, and a single stitchline down the centre. The most successful was the double stitchline, however I will attach the boning to the wadding before attaching the wadding to the cloth, so that the stitchlines are not visible on the right side of the fabric. (Inside or out).

Dropping the top panel to create an extra dimension to the piece and allow for an armhole:

Creating a cone-shape with the dropped panel:

Attaching a shoulder strap and re-filling the gap in the circle:

Development of initial ideas on the stand

I began with the two circular panels I had experimented with before and wrapped them around the body, securing them with straps also wrapped around the body in a seemingly random position.

I then attempted to create two different results, by cutting into some areas of fabric that were not secured by the straps and pulling them back into their former positions so that a suggestion of the circular shape could be seen. The first one created one circular shape when seen from the front and I left the back area wrapped as before:

With the second one, I tried to keep suggestions of the original two panels from a side-on view:

I had trouble keeping the cut out sections to stand up rigidly on their own, so I need to look into fabric stiffening techniques or use boning on the inside of the panels where necessary.

London exhibitions

I’ve been in London this week and managed to see some great exhibitions, including Power of Making at the V&A, Designers in Residence at the Design Museum and the Taryn Simon photographs at the Tate Modern.

Link to a more detailed account of what I found inspirational and/or interesting: http://louiseabelfinalcollection.wordpress.com/2011/10/29/london-and-exhibitions/

Learning Adobe Illustrator

This week I tried using Adobe Illustrator for the first time and have been practising so that I get the hang of it before producing my design developments and final boards. (The first couple are completely unrelated to my theme!)

The last two are illustrations of the silhouettes I created towards the beginning of this brief.

 

(All work in this post is my own).

Storyboard of work so far

Made using Adobe Photoshop.

 

More refined Photoshop silhouettes

 

Edit on 01/02/2012: PLEASE CLICK “OLDER” TO SEE PREVIOUS POSTS.