Knitting...

In my previous post I said I was going to create some knitted pieces, I found it interesting to do as rather than look at my images for inspiration I just looked at my linear drawings and created pieces that only had small elements of 'the city'. I had a breakthrough in my project during my time knitting, because of the confusion I have been experiencing in terms of what I was 'supposed' to be doing (relating my work to 175 or the city) I decided that I was going to use my initial research/work from the beach and my development of looking at the city as a contrasting concept. To show this I made my knitted pieces with natural looking yarns and I then physically created patterns and included more structured shapes within my samples.

Knit sample 1.

Knit sample 2.

Knit sample 3.

Knit sample 4.

I have selected these four samples to show the variation in what I did with the knit machine, as well as machine knit I did some samples by hand which I felt went really well as I was more confident in trying to manipulate the pieces.

This is one of my first hand knit samples, I feel that the shells have a really lovely effect and I think that to contrast this with samples showing more linear elements from the city could be really interesting.

Choosing techniques

At this point of the project I am figuring out what I want to produce, I am starting to think about what techniques I want to use. As I have previously experimented with knit and relating them to buildings I have decided to get back on the knitting machines and let the linear elements of my images and drawings influence my samples. I hope that they turn out well enough for me to have a more clear idea of my progression within this unit.

Drawings

To give me inspiration for my final piece I have decided to look at the images I took around the city, as well as recreating all of the images in different medias I am going to focus on the linear elements of the images. With this in mind I started a collection of drawings using ink, pencil and fine-liner. 

Ink with stick drawing, Manchester Starflyer and City Tower.

Layered Ink and water with brushes and sticks, Close up of Manchester Starflyer structure.

Pencil, Fine-liner and ink, Linear elements taken from multiple images of the city.

As my drawings are all very similar I have only used a select few in this post, at this present time I don't think I have many other good quality drawings/ photos of my drawings so when I have a clear idea of what I want to produce I will post images of my designs/ideas.

Unsuccessful Unit

Unfortunately due to a lot of mis-communication our collaborative group has not been very successful, so far we have had so many mixed messages that we have been either confused or unaware of certain things about unit X as a whole. We have tried our best to make the most of being put together as a group and we have helped each other as much as we could with certain parts of our individual projects.  Putting this aside I think that if we have tried hard enough as a group then we will have a successful exhibition in our final week of the unit.

I personally feel that my project may not be as good as it should be as I have not enjoyed this unit at all!

Sheila Pepe

'Mine Ayn, 2006'  Is a collection of work by Sheila Pepe, I feel that using my images of the city I could create some great drawings inspired by the style of these. They are very clean in terms of line quality but at the same time there is a childlike essence to certain parts of each drawing. In particular I like the drawing in Fig.1 as I can relate some of my images of the city to the shapes that are used. (Drawings to Follow)

Fig.1

Fig.2

Fig.3

I have also looked at 'Detail. Josephine', I feel that this piece has a web like effect and could have some great inspiration towards my work.

Fig.4

Fig.5

The looseness of this piece is what makes me interested in it, I think this is because it almost comes alive with movement. I created some small neutral coloured samples using some of my collected items, in one of my samples I knitted with string and cable ties, the way I photographed it reminded me of this piece see Fig.6.

Fig.6

Although this is just a sample I believe that it could be a strong starting point for working towards my final outcome.

Relating my work to the city continued...

I found these images interesting as they are both on the corner of a street, bearing this in mind they have a sort of contrast that makes them both appeal to me in different ways. They also remind me of a piece in the 'Creation Destruction' exhibition in the Holden Gallery, Manchester.

'Mark Lewis, Isosceles (film still, detail), 2007.'

(please excuse poor photo quality as I did not have my camera when I saw the exhibition. Photo taken of picture in booklet.)

The reason I liked these two buildings is that the windows are like patterns, and they have a certain order to them both. I'd like to think that my final pieces have an order maybe in a similar way to this.

After relating my work to the city I feel much more confident and positive about this project and I hope that this continues throughout. 

Relating my work to the city...

After having a tutorial and being informed that our projects had to relate back to the city, I decided to go into town and photograph the buildings that I found most interesting. In this blog post I have included my favourite seven images, the rest will be posted with drawings as i progress.

Manchester Starflyer- I feel that this image shows a brilliant perspective of the new addition to Manchester City Centre, the way in which I have captured some of the essential 'parts' of this structure has inspired my ideas involving connections and structure. I will definitely keep the idea of a structure based outcome in mind and will refer back to this.

I feel that these two images have quite similar elements in a sense of their structure and layout. To me these stand out as I really like the way that you can see the different 'layers', I find this quite interesting and I think I will use these elements to inspire my drawings and samples.