Before starting on this I reviewed my work for the Introductory project and what I perceive as its strengths and weaknesses, in order to be able improve my outcomes here.
I think that where I have looked in detail at a particular area or aspect of the source material I have been able to produce varied and interesting studies of them, whereas, when I have tried to capture the object as a whole or capture it in broad brushstrokes, the results have been less interesting and have come across as impatient or rushed.
I think that where I have stuck with the same medium to produce a series of studies, I have tended to do too many, as a way of practising a drawing technique, and the results have been a little repetitive and have not taken me any further forward. Where I have been more successful is when I have played around with a few different techniques and let one thing lead to another and think of new ways of representing what I see in more abstract ways.
During Part Two I found that I was affected by a fear of doing it 'wrong' as well as being overwhelmed by the many possible directions I could take the work in. This can be paralysing and mean that you don't do anything, so I have now learnt to just 'do something' and not worry so much whether it is the 'right' thing
I also found that I had so many ideas that I didn't know what direction to go in, which to take forward and which to park for now, but I now know that ideas are not wasted and can be stored and reactivated later on.
For this project I have chosen: Option 2: Back to the archive.
I have chosen this option as I enjoyed the project, but would like to revisit it as I think that in the Introduction I didn't choose the best objects as my initial starting point. I want to choose a richer textile source that is reasonably accessible to me geographically, so that I can study it in person, more than once if necessary, and is an object that I find interesting from a visual point of view, but whose story also interests me.
The object I chose to focus on was in the Liverpool World Museum's Tibet collection and was an object that I wanted to find out more about, as it seemed to have an interesting history.
Before seeing the robe 'in person' I wasn't sure what my focus would be, but had narrowed it down to a combination of some of the following:
motif
colour
texture
silhouette
details
pattern.
The aspects of this robe that I found interesting were:
the fact that it is a 'hybrid' - made from Chinese silk in a Tibetan style and gifted to a Western official
the overlay of complex symbols and motifs that covered the bottom portion of the robe
the contrasting textures of the silk, embroidery stitches and fur lining.
By looking at the contemporary context for this silk robe, I could see that although it resembled a Chinese style robe, it had been cut or altered to a different style. In particular the front fastening and ties, and the style of sleeve seemed to differ from the silhouette of most of the other robes that I found, which interested me, as it contributed to the story of the item:
One of my responses while in the gallery was to write down all the qualities that the robe made me think of, to help me think about the things I wanted to focus on visually:
After studying the silk robe I decided to focus on texture and motif found in the embroidery at the bottom of the robe and started to explore this via line drawing, mark making, collage and print.
I looked at the texture of the stitches and was attracted to the way they rippled and moved down the seam of the garment and the gradation of colour within them, as well as the texture of the individual stitches. I tried to capture this in a variety of media, both black and white and colour:
I then isolated the motifs relating to the waves at the bottom of the robe, overlapping and layering in quite a chaotic way:
In response to two of the motifs I found - the swirl and the crest of the wave - I developed two stamps using string glued to cardboard and experimented with printing on different surfaces and backgrounds, wet and dry, different sizes and thicknesses of paper:
I also tried to scale these marks up, using a large sheet of paper, combining the wave motif and the shape of the stitches:
I also tried mark making with ink and paintbrush, concentrating more on the fur lining as well as the spiral of the wave motif:
This led me to making resist markings with wax and oil pastel crayons, in order to capture the crest of the wave motif in a more fluid way:
This in turn led to an attempt to create this pattern in knit or crochet, and using this to make new prints, as well as dipping it in wax to see what texture this created and whether it resembled the textures in the above drawings:
