ATV3 Formative feedback

Overall Comments

Jennie you have evidently really enjoyed this assignment and have created a successful colour book. You have made effective decisions to evaluate and select your work, and demonstrate a very well presented colour book. It is well executed and demonstrates a good level of communication of ideas and understanding. The pages are well thought out with careful consideration to the design and layout of images and text. The book is constructed well and the cover is reflective of the assignment’s aims. Well done.

Feedback on assignment

Colour studies- A practical exploration of colour analysing, translating and applying.

Exercises 3.1–3.3

Your colour matching skills are very good. All work is presented on clean crisp pages with a good selection of paper stock, and spacing on each page to enhance the exercises very well. You begin to evidence in your sketchbook some investigations into selection of colour matches, in paint and yarn.

Perhaps have a look again at colour proportion in exercises 3.2 translation through yarn, as the original painting has strong deep tones that dominate at least 3⁄4 of the composition. If you squint your eyes, a bit like an out of focus photo, you can see the proportions very clearly as you aren’t distracted by the objects. Your yarn wraps feel lighter in overall tonal proportions and qualities. But they are very interesting in choice of yarn and presentation is good. I don’t expect you to redo them, just something to be aware of when you are analysing tonal proportions.

I have to admit I didn’t try to match the depth of colour, I was too distracted by the actual tones

I feel your love of strong colours can influence everything you do, so you need to be aware of this when you work through exercises. You reflect that you have enjoyed the exercises they have extended your colour identification and translating skills differently from your usual approach to colour, especially the neutral colours, therefore expanding your visual communication skills.

Absolutely, I am enjoying working outside of my usual bright colour range!

Course/Unit Tex 1: A Textile Vocab Assignment number 3

Type of tutorial: Audio

Collage studies

Your simple colour collage is interesting and manages to capture the essence of your photograph well but I feel the monochrome becomes a bit confused, consider composition and tonal values, as these are especially important. You gain more confidence in the following collage and the idea of varying sizes of colour circles works well and feels playful, bold and more intuitive in response.

It took me a little time to get into to the collages, and to move away from the same shapes and patterns and be more confident and free.

Have a look at Picasso, Schwitters and Braque for examples of their collage work to inspire this technique, and study their use of colour proportion and intensity of tone.

Kurt Schwitters Cherry Picture 1921

Overall I can see you have really enjoyed this assignment and it really shows in your outcomes, you have worked much more intuitively and freely giving your work a confidence and fluidity, which should be continued. As you reflect in your blog you gave yourself time to work through the exercises and this shows very much in the body of work. So ensure you do this with following assignments as it dramatically enhances the outcomes.

One more point make sure the circles you have used on your cover are stuck down very well as they are peeling away and this is such a shame and doesn’t reflect the quality and presentation of the contents of the book.

Sketchbooks

Well done for starting your sketchbook, try to use it as a go to place to record ideas as you think of them, it is aspirational rather than reflective. It may help to have a small sketchbook that you keep on you at all times in your personal bag. That way you can add to it when you see something or want to remember an idea. It could be on loose sheets of paper that you put together at some point later. When you go to an exhibition/event/place you may see something that sparks an idea, you could record this visually in your sketchbook, then later this could spark a reflection in your blog that may connect to your practice. Your sketchbook and blog may over lap at some points and that’s ok too. I know this way of working is unfamiliar to you but keep going it is an important element of the course and a window into your creative mind and working process.

I am still struggling to find time and headspace to use my sketchbook in that way although I carry one with me every where I go pretty much! It’s a new habit I need to get in to and I am sure I will. I have some great books on using sketchbooks, very inspirational and do-able.

Learning Log

Continue to record your thoughts, techniques and working process in your blog with some written reflections and more visual examples. You have commented time is limited so its difficult to write in your blog, so perhaps you could try to have a routine of after a period of work or an exercise you could record some thoughts and insert your photos afterwards. This way you will comment immediately after your work and feel able to record your thoughts and feelings more easily. Inserting a photo later may bring other ideas up too and help you make links. You don’t need to do this after every single piece of work but try to comment regularly and it will become part of your working practice and start to be helpful to you.

Thanks for the suggestion, again it is something I find hard to make sufficient time for as I tend to do work in snippets and rarely have time to instantly then also blog about what I have done. I am actually constantly thinking and designing and processing but only a very small percentage of this ever goes down in writing.

Suggested reading/viewing

These artists may be interesting to look at for your next assignment, in terms of presentation.

Marina Vendell Renault http://www.artbusiness.com

Love her work, in fact it was something similar to this I saw at the Royal Academy last year that inspired me to start this degree! made some similar yarn creations for our local art this year, will add some pictures of them here:

Nike Schroeder www.nikeschroeder.com/2014/

Really interesting work, thanks for introducing me. I go the Knitting and Stitching show at Alexandra Palace a lot and the artists’ work there is often in this vein, also interesting to see a sketchbook that is more textile based than fll of paintings or drawings.

Pointers for the next assignment

• To reflect on this feedback in your learning log.
• To read through the assignment thoroughly before creating the yarn presentations, to allow for planning your time and clarifying everything.
• To keep an open mind, be prepared to take risks, experiment and explore new ways of working.
• Try unexpected materials to make the translations more experimental and interesting; wire, elastic, plastic, strips of fabric, plied yarns, threads and ribbons.
• To ensure you label all of your sample work. Well done Jennie!