I’ve had drawing hiatus for an extremely long time. Since I graduated, I lost my enthusiasm for drawing. My fashion degree had caused me hate everything (mostly to do with fashion design). I just didn’t find it in me to be creative anymore, which was quite sad. I burned out excessively.

I grew up with drawing and now feared that if I don’t become creative anymore, I’d lose it altogether. So at the start of 2015, I said to myself that I’m going to start drawing again. I even brought a moleskine. Heard of Cass Art London? Its the best art shop and I just love going in there for buying art materials. 

These are my personal ways of overcoming drawing hiatus:

Step 1: Pinterest is a great inspiration. I could procrastinate on that website for ages and ages because there just so much inspirational pictures to get inspired.

Step 2: You can never go wrong with drawing things you like, whether its buildings, portraits, objects or flowers. Record it in a sketchbook and make it your drawing diary. Currently in my moleskine, I began drawing typography, fine liner hair studies and most recently designing my own book covers, which are quite mediocre because let’s be honest, I don’t know much about layout design. 

I am actually not that great at drawing faces and I don’t look forward to drawing them but I try my best to draw them. When a see a really beautiful editorial, I have this need to draw it. Sometimes I think its not about how realistically you draw them, (unless you are really brilliant at drawing realistic things), but its also about how you interpreted it in your own way.

Step 3: Consider getting a Wreck This Journal by Keri Smith. They’re great for getting back into creativity and to basically get out of your comfort zone. If you’re a perfectionist, then this is the book for you. There are a lot of fun pages to do. I brought one last year and have not finished it yet (too busy) but I plan to finish it this year, hopefully. It is literally taking me forever. 

Step 4: If you’re like me and hate your current portfolio because its bad memories and you know that you can do so much better than what you did at college or university, consider creating a new portfolio of new projects.

I want my portfolio to look more illustrative and print/pattern designs, rather than Fashion Design based. At the moment, I am attempting to do a new project. The theme is Where The Wild Things Are, so I started looking into drawing things such as deers, antlers, wildflowers and pine trees etc. but its quite hard to get back into that mood because projects take longer than anticipated. I'm eager to get it done.

I upload on my Instagram. My artwork thus far: 

Zoella sketch. This was my first portrait in a long time. 

Laser Cutting!

This is the first time I did laser cutting at my Uni for my last project. I've never used it before and really wanted to try using it because I know I want to experiment with perspex plastics for my third year. After carefully drawing my bird design on illustrator, this was operated on the computer's laser cutting machine to cut out the perspex. I had trouble with that complicated machine because it would engrave, but it wouldn't cut out the shape :/ so I had to literally recut it three times. The third time, it did slightly cut through but not enough, so I had to literally pull my shape out with much force. The holes managed to cut through but not the entire shape which was strange. I was annoyed because it should have been straightforward. I was told the machine works better with black perspex because it absorbs light, apparently. 
I managed to pull some designs out and these were brooches and jewellery. Hopefully better luck next time. 

Knit samples...

I just wanted to add another photograph of another forest...I just love this one. I swear if I lived near a forest, I'd be snapping pictures away...

That's me trying to cast off, but my hair is kinda in the way of my face, haha. 

I was happy that I accomplish the large holes sample and used it as my eye-patch. I don't really like posting pics of myself, but...this one just looked really funny xD. 

I made Charlotte a blue coloured knit bracelet. That's my wrist, the one with the black and white sample, attached with Soofiya bracelet lol! Apparently my wrists are dainty (erugh). 

Casting on.

Anyway, the pictures below are the knit samples I made with this horrid knit machine - devil it is. All pictures above were taken by Soofiya, (thanks Soof!). 

Here are the close-ups. 

Knit Project, forest inspiration

I had this Knit Project before Christmas, never had the chance to post it til now. I'm very slow.
...with this project, I was inspired by forest and aspen trees. I was kind of researching into this shoe sculpture by Joana Vasconcelos which I saw in Selfridges, but I was feeling very uninspired.
Then...this sort of led to my idea of forest and aspen trees because of the lines and the stripes which related to the project. I don' know what it is I just love forests, I think its the feel, mood and atmosphere. It seems just likes a nice place to be in, the peace and the wilderness...in a way. I don't live in a place where there are tons of aspen trees because I'm always surrounded with busy cities. But I think it would be nice if there were, I know its mainly in the US, places like Colorado. I think its a place where I know I could get in lost in its beauty :).

I found this amazing picture of forest in snow (above), taken by Ansel Adams, which I found inspiring. It's a fantastic shot! 

Here are some of my sketchbook work, I created a lot of paintings using line and texture from the image I was inspired by. So lots of black, white and dark grey colours. It was fun to just...paint, I missed art. 

                                       Bloody Autumn (wide view) by ~Frider on deviantART


I really love this photography of "Bloody Autumn" by Deviantart artist, ~Frider. I love the daring red blood colours scattered on the road and also on the trees. It's an amazing photograph, looks just like a bloody autumn, and it kind of...inspired the painting the done below. I preferred creating a black and white interpretation, but obviously the photograph is miles better than what I've just painted lol.

For the next post should be my knitted samples from this forest inspiration. :)

Re-modernise Paisley?

I've actually finished my first project in Print last month, so I'm just uploading some old work :). 

We had to choose a particular theme in a classic print and try to re-modernise our chosen theme in contemporary fashion textiles. Going to those three museums visits were meant to help me but I think the only one which really related to my project was the Horrockses Fashions Exhibition. I was torn between choosing floral and paisley as my main theme. But after talking with my tutor, I chose paisley in the end because its something different :)

With re-modernising paisley, I found...quite...a challenge! It's quite hard to re-modernise a classic print. I just sat there in my room, drawing different shapes and lines in my sketchbook.

So these are the designs I came up with in the end, first done by hand and then edited in Photoshop: 

Screen printing is a very messy job: 

Printed on silk chiffon:

What happened when I added an extra colour: 

This is when I printed too much and my design got transferred over to my tutor's cloth ^o^  He said I couldn't have the cloth but it can stay their forever :)

Some close-ups when I finished printing :) It was a long day.

 

What do you think? Good/Bad?

xx