Transformation Project - Fashion and Textiles

During this workshop, we were told to create a piece of clothing or jewellery using only paper and only using geometric shapes. The idea was to transform paper and shapes into clothing. This workshop took place over two days and bellow is my final outcome.

Day One

One the first day, I had to create a range of samples using different kinds of paper, from tissue paper to black paper, news paper, what ever paper we could find. I was pretty boring and only used the same type of paper for each sample.

Day Two

On the second day, I chose one sample that I had created the day before and used it for my piece of clothing. The sample I chose was the bottom middle sample. To create that I cut out many circles and folded the edge of the circle inwards to form a triangle and the triangles interlocked with each other, so I was able to cover the entire garment easily with no gaps. I had originally planned to create a dress, but as I did not have a lot of time, I was only able to create the bust of the dress. I used about 3 different sized circles going around the bust. I was extremely happy with the outcome and the shadows the triangles made made the garment look more attractive on the eye.

Let me know what you think

Leah x

Pen Scarf Drawing

This isn't anything too creative, I couldn't think of anything to draw, so I literally drew the first thing that I saw in front of me, which was my scarf. It was actually a difficult drawing to complete, mainly because I hadn't anticipated how long it would take to complete, and I struggle to remain interested in my work, so this was definitely a challenge for me. It took around about two days to complete, so around about 17 hours. I was stuck in my room, drinking tea and drawing. It is a pen drawing by the way. As I said, it isn't anything particularly interesting but it was just more of a challenge to see if I could complete it and...I did! I did want it to be a still life piece but in the end I just took different elements of the scarf and made it my own. I am pleased with how it turn out but of course there are areas in which I could improve. I think I'm going to start setting myself a challenge and create one detailed pen drawing a week or every two weeks and see how many times I actually complete the drawing. It could make me more determined and disciplined in my work or I could just remain lazy and give. We'll just have to wait and see.

Let me know what you think.

Leah x

City & Guilds Qualification

Alongside my foundation course, I am also completing a separate qualification called City & Guilds Life Drawing Study Level 3 (or something like that). The qualification is split up into two parts. Tonal drawing and line drawing and I must devise a project for each of them. I must pick a title for each project  e.g, Study of the Seated Figure; Study of the Male Figure; The Study of Everyday People and so on. Also I must decide through what medium or technique will I carry out my project. At the moment I haven't really decided what I want to do for my project but over the Christmas break, I have done a few more pieces to contribute to the projects.

Line Drawings


I am currently finding the line drawing side of this qualification the most difficult to create work for. I'm unsure of how to go about it (any ideas?)
To try and get myself into it, I've started by just doing simple continuous line pen drawings. I find them quite simple to do. If you need to fill up a sketch book, I would highly recommend do continuous line drawings and even time yourself doing them. I have looked at artists such as Chloe Piene and Jenny Saville and I hope to do another blog post reviewing their work and how their work could be useful to this project

Tonal

I feel much more comfortable with this side of the qualification. I feel that I can be much more expressive with my work and I can paint, which is my favourite medium to use at the moment. I use myself as my subject at the moment as I am still undecided about what them to chose. I never use to enjoy painting, I was terrible at it but recently I began to feel more comfortable using paint. it comes more naturally to me now. For the three paintings below, I used acrylic paints and I was looking at myself through the mirror. I would like to try using oil paints, but the last time I used oil paints, I was 11 years old and a blue tube of oil paint burst on my new cream bedroom carpet. Yeah, my mother wasn't to pleased (that's a polite way to put it). But I am determined to learn how to use them properly. Most of these work are not finished. That is another big flaw I have that I very rarely finish pieces and I get so angry at myself. With life drawing, it is a bit different as you draw what you see in front of you at that time, and once it is gone, you can't really complete the piece unless you imagine it or refer to an image, but then it isn't really drawing from life, I guess you could get away with it. When I was at school, I could never draw from life, I would only draw from photos, and people would say it was good, but deep down I knew I wasn't improving and if some asked me to draw something in front of me I wouldn't be able to do it. But now I can, I need improving, no one is perfect, but in just a few months I can draw from life comfortable and I wouldn't chose to go back to drawing from images unless I had to.

So yeah, these are some of the works I have done over the last two weeks. Let me know what you think. 

Leah x

Shoe Drawings

Still Life Drawing

At the beginning of my foundation course, we all took part in various workshops, each workshop lasted for two days. During this class we were told to bring in shoes to draw.

Day 1

On the first day, we were only able to create tonal drawings. To get us warmed up, we spent about two hours, creating quick drawings of shoes. First, we picked one shoe and spent 2 minutes sketching the shoe, only using a continuous line, then we would rotate the shoe and repeat the same process.

We repeated that process eight times. At the beginning, I was...well terrible. I was to concerned about getting the proportions right that I wasn't able to drawing all the shoe. I began to relax and I can see as time went on, my drawings improved. I would highly recommend doing this exercise. Not only does it help you loosen up and create quick detail sketches, it teaches you to look more and from my experience, the more you look the better your work will look.

Then we created a few more drawings, but using our opposite hand, then we did two more drawings but with our eyes closed. I don't actually have any photos of my work from them exercises but take from me, they looked nothing like shoes. However, that exercise helped me to loosen up. So if you are like me and everything must be perfect, it would be brilliant for you. If you try to make everything perfect, you'll never stop trying.

Next, we picked another shoe and we repeated the same exercise from the beginning. Once we had done the first eight sketches, we then had to do the same process but in 1 minute 30 seconds for four sketches and then the same but in 1 minute for four sketches.

For the rest of the day, we picked one shoe and we had to create a still life drawing of that shoe. We had about 4 hours to create this drawing, I spent about the first 2 hours drawing the outline of the shoes and getting the proportions correct. It was tiring. I used a range of pencils, from grade 4H to 6B. Sadly time was not on my side and I could not finish the drawing but I was quite pleased with how it turned out.

Day 2

On the second day, we were able to use coloured media and again, we were creating a still life study of the shoes. However, I felt that this life study was much more difficult compared to the first day. We could use whatever medium we wanted to. I chose to use acrylic paints as it was easier to create the colours closest to the shoes. I spent about 2 hours measuring out the the drawing and getting the proportions right and then spent the rest of the day trying to complete as much of the painting as possible.

Introduction

I wanted to do a little introduction to some of work the I have done, just to give you an idea of how I work and what I like to do. These are some of my most recent work. I hope you like, feel free to comment and give me feedback and constructive criticism.

Thanks
Leah x

Acrylic Painting of a Self Portrait

 Graphite Pencil Drawing

Acrylic Painting

 Fine Art Studio

Let Me Introduce Myself

Hi Everyone

Let me tell you a little about myself to begin with. My name is Leah Meredith and I am a Welsh student that is currently doing a Foundation Diploma in Art & Design at the University of South Wales (University of Glamorgan).I wanted to start this blog as a way to show the world my work, my thoughts and whatever I may encounter in my life. I just needed somewhere to let it all out!

Now let's get to know each other even better. I am an 18 year old Welsh student, who was born and raised in the beautiful Rhondda Valley in South Wales. As I previously said, I am currently doing Foundation Art & Design and I now about to start the second term of the course. I always felt nervous about the idea of creating a blog. For people who know me personally, know that I am an extremely shy person, I swear I can be a mute on times, but I need to build up my confidence when it comes to people. I am a very anxious and easily worried and one thing that I panic about it having people read what I write. I don't know why it bothers me so much but it is something that has stopped from interacting with others and I feel that I'm too guarded and I hope by creating blog posts I can relieve my true self and not worry so much.

Okay, so that's most of my down sides and flaws out of the way. So let's talk a little bit more about what this blog will be about. Ultimately, this blog will be used to show case all of my work that I have done from September 2013 onwards and hopefully I will get feedback from you guys and constructive criticism. I just want to know what people think. How many time I upload a photo of my work onto Facebook and no one acknowledges it. I'd rather hear that someone doesn't like my work than hear nothing at all. I also want to share with you what other artists interest me and anything else that interests me, books, films, TV, fashion, YouTube (I could go on for awhile). So basically things that interest me in the world. I may share my views on topics in the media and news. You'll just have to wait and see. I could lose interest or just give up after writing this (I'm a very lazy person).

So that's me and that's what I going to try and do, wish me luck.

Leah x