Initial Drawing

This is one of my drawings inspired by Asian flowers. I really love my drawing style, especially for this theme. I feel my detailed drawings will do this project justice.

Photo Book

I wanted this project to be quite personal so I could get the best result from it in terms of passion and outcome. I have created a 3D photo book that has been annotated with my stories, comments and quotes from Buddha that represent my trip to Thailand, India and Singapore.

I have also filled it with potential materials to use later on and sketches using mixed media which will hopefully trigger ideas and designs for my project further on. This photo book is a handy reference to refer back to and to always gain inspiration when stuck for drawing and developing designs. It was also a helpful source for choosing my colour ways too.

Here are some pages from my personal journey.

Finished Card and Coaster Designs

These are my final eight card designs including finished coasters. I really love them and feel that they fit my theme and client well. They are printed and packaged professionally and has given me experience for my final major next year. I have enjoyed this stage as I can see everything coming together and fitting in nicely.

Laser Cut Designs

As my brief states, I need a new product development to add value to the card. I’ve decided with ply wood coasters with a laser engraved deign drawn on to it. This design will replicate my drawings from my sketch book and will involve the theme of Native Western. This combines both native american and cow boy western themed drawings.

This is the process of designing in illustrator, something quite challenging to me as I am not used to drawing on the computer or the program itself. This is helping me for my future project next term for my degree show.

This shows one of my designs being etched in.

Here are some finished cut out designs behind one of my card backgrounds. I am really pleased with how they came out. Maybe next time I could laser cut out the design shapes for more of a variety for my potential customer. There will be eight cards in total for the end collection. I’m relieved I have got to this stage as I have found this project hard to keep up with time management, so it was a true test on myself.

Some Card Designs

These designs have a Aztec feel about them relating to the designs of the Native Americans and geometric patterns during the western period. Really love the colour scheme, they all contrast it each other effectively bringing out each colour distinctively.

Client, Colour and Theme Board

I wanted to create a bold masculine theme with cowboys and native american aspects running throughout the cards as a mish mash. The colour are bright and relative to both theme and customer. I wanted to use a combination of materials such as cork or ply to create another use and product development for my cards.

First Hand Sketches

From my feed back on my previous Highland cow work, I was recommended to draw them from
my home town where I was able to sit and draw them for a couple of hours and this is what I came up with.

I really enjoyed this exercise again similar to the previous first hand drawing exercises, this is definitely a valuable skill to keep up with.

Museum Visit

Wales Visitation: Poetry, Romanticism and Myth in Art

“In July 1967 the American Beat writer Allen Ginsberg visited Wales.

It is said that after taking LSD the poet walked through the Welsh countryside and began to compose “Wales Visitation.” This ambitious poem invoked an imagined Celtic past and both referenced and extended the rich tradition of Romanticism’s engagement with the landscape and folklore of Wales.

This re-display of the contemporary galleries takes Ginsberg’s poem as a starting point for an exploration of modern and contemporary forms of romanticism. Artists featured in the displays will include David Jones, Richard Long, Graham Sutherland, and Clare Woods.”

Below is Ginsberg’s work-

Wales Visitation

White fog lifting & falling on mountain-brow
Trees moving in rivers of wind
The clouds arise
as on a wave, gigantic eddy lifting mist
above teeming ferns exquisitely swayed
along a green crag
glimpsed thru mullioned glass in valley raine—

Bardic, O Self, Visitacione, tell naught
but what seen by one man in a vale in Albion,
of the folk, whose physical sciences end in Ecology,
the wisdom of earthly relations,
of mouths & eyes interknit ten centuries visible
orchards of mind language manifest human,
of the satanic thistle that raises its horned symmetry
flowering above sister grass-daisies’ pink tiny
bloomlets angelic as lightbulbs—

Remember 160 miles from London’s symmetrical thorned tower
& network of TV pictures flashing bearded your Self
the lambs on the tree-nooked hillside this day bleating
heard in Blake’s old ear, & the silent thought of Wordsworth in eld Stillness
clouds passing through skeleton arches of Tintern Abbey—
Bard Nameless as the Vast, babble to Vastness!

All the Valley quivered, one extended motion, wind
undulating on mossy hills
a giant wash that sank white fog delicately down red runnels
on the mountainside
whose leaf-branch tendrils moved asway
in granitic undertow down—
and lifted the floating Nebulous upward, and lifted the arms of the trees
and lifted the grasses an instant in balance
and lifted the lambs to hold still
and lifted the green of the hill, in one solemn wave

A solid mass of Heaven, mist-infused, ebbs thru the vale,
a wavelet of Immensity, lapping gigantic through Llanthony Valley,
the length of all England, valley upon valley under Heaven’s ocean
tonned with cloud-hang,
—Heaven balanced on a grassblade.
Roar of the mountain wind slow, sigh of the body,
One Being on the mountainside stirring gently
Exquisite scales trembling everywhere in balance,
one motion thru the cloudy sky-floor shifting on the million feet of daisies,
one Majesty the motion that stirred wet grass quivering
to the farthest tendril of white fog poured down
through shivering flowers on the mountain’s head—

No imperfection in the budded mountain,
Valleys breathe, heaven and earth move together,
daisies push inches of yellow air, vegetables tremble,
grass shimmers green
sheep speckle the mountainside, revolving their jaws with empty eyes,
horses dance in the warm rain,
tree-lined canals network live farmland,
blueberries fringe stone walls on hawthorn’d hills,
pheasants croak on meadows haired with fern—

Out, out on the hillside, into the ocean sound, into delicate gusts of wet air,
Fall on the ground, O great Wetness, O Mother, No harm on your body!
Stare close, no imperfection in the grass,
each flower Buddha-eye, repeating the story,
myriad-formed—
Kneel before the foxglove raising green buds, mauve bells dropped
doubled down the stem trembling antennae,
& look in the eyes of the branded lambs that stare
breathing stockstill under dripping hawthorn—
I lay down mixing my beard with the wet hair of the mountainside,
smelling the brown vagina-moist ground, harmless,
tasting the violet thistle-hair, sweetness—
One being so balanced, so vast, that its softest breath
moves every floweret in the stillness on the valley floor,
trembles lamb-hair hung gossamer rain-beaded in the grass,
lifts trees on their roots, birds in the great draught
hiding their strength in the rain, bearing same weight,

Groan thru breast and neck, a great Oh! to earth heart
Calling our Presence together
The great secret is no secret
Senses fit the winds,
Visible is visible,
rain-mist curtains wave through the bearded vale,
gray atoms wet the wind’s kabbala
Crosslegged on a rock in dusk rain,
rubber booted in soft grass, mind moveless,
breath trembles in white daisies by the roadside,
Heaven breath and my own symmetric
Airs wavering thru antlered green fern
drawn in my navel, same breath as breathes thru Capel-Y-Ffn,
Sounds of Aleph and Aum
through forests of gristle,
my skull and Lord Hereford’s Knob equal,
All Albion one.

What did I notice? Particulars! The
vision of the great One is myriad—
smoke curls upward from ashtray,
house fire burned low,
The night, still wet & moody black heaven
starless
upward in motion with wet wind.

– Allen Ginsberg.

Visiting the museums exhibition gave me a good insight on how the landscape can be experimented with in however way we could or would want to see it.  Some of the artwork was expression-able and actually captured the beauty of the landscape rather than a mirror image. I have learnt to explore this more from both drawing philosophy and drawing behind the sun modules to feel and express my self more in my own work. Especially when we visited southern down beach and we drew the landscape in different ways, finding out that the most picturesque was not always the most effective to work with.

I really like David Jones  work it represented Geinsberg’s work and the landscape beautifully. I loved the use of mainly pastoral colours  that were caught in his pieces. Even though they are quite childlike it gives a sense of exploration like you would as a child, to go running through the outdoors having fun and having an incredible imagination. This joins on with what I was saying about the experimenting with unconventional media and also unconventional scenery.

Capel-y-ffin, 1926-27.
Courtesy of the David Jones Estate.

Getting Hairy Up In Here

Going back to my 100 drawings I did earlier on, I decided to pick at one and develop it further into some more potential designs. I came across a hairy cow doodle which fit the bill.

I’ve really enjoyed doing these, I love hairy cows anyway but these drawings and sketches would create some really quirky and cool prints. I love finding new imagery to use for my work.

Brecon Beacons

Unfortunately I missed the trip to the Brecon Beacons due to illness, although I have visited before and found the scenery over whelming and beautiful, I do have past photos from going with my family. I can use these images to draw from inspiration later on in future designs I’d like to create. Now the trips have finished and I can work on from my drawings I can now see where this type of first hand imagery and research will take me in my subject throughout the rest of textiles. I really enjoyed this field module compared to the first one. I did find drawing philosophy interesting and challenging but the subject media of things behind the sun was much more to my taste and allowed me to actually create textile pieces back in my studio unlike the first module.