Finally, I finished my garment, and today was a fun day! I asked one of my friends modelling for me(pic on the left side). We picked up a park that is very close to my home. And we did a small photoshoot(more pictures on Research area). At first, I don't know how to direct the model to pose, and also was getting the right mood of shooting my garment . Then later on, both of us are getting into a groove,I am quite satisfy of the final photos I took. The next step is just to edited the photo a bit, and put them onto the sketchbook.

Got up pretty early to finishing up my garment, yesterday night I reworked a bit of my pattern, added on another sleeve part. And I am quite happy with the new shapes I made. My job today was just cut the fabric and started to sew! Sewing didn't take that long.. I'm surprised too. The main work that took me a long time was to manipulate the shape into something I like, and also this is preparing for Saturday's photoshoot. Show as the pictures I took, That 24 versions of my garment was changed by 4 different ways of wearing it. I took them from different angles, so the shapes showed differently, I thought a lot of them are quite interesting too. Gonna do more development through sketchbook pages! 

Got really sick yesterday night, so I didn't come this morning. 

In the afternoon, we continued developing our paper patterns from yesterday (three shapes). Either reshape them, or keep building on top of them. I decided to pick a design from the three illustrations I did yesterday night, and base on that, make my patterns. I would say it wasn't easy for me at first, because I have to transform a 2D design into a 3D design, and also with volume. However, I found that this is a very interesting progress that I should be enjoyed with. It is not about once I have a final design, and I have to stick with it, it is about how you develop your shape through 2D and 3D designs. For instance, when I work on my pattern for so long, I don't know what to do with it, because I was still not satisfy with it, I would go back to my original design, and redraw and rethink it, then keep developing my 3D pattern. With this back and forth working method. I do find myself is very engaging about what I am doing. 

Later on, we had a group discussion on the fabric choosing. Since yesterday, I got some small samples, it is easy for me to talk about my thought with both the pattern besides me and fabric. The fabrics I got were mostly very thick that could possibly shape volumes once I sew them together. Therefore, in the end, I decided to use a high weight muslin fabric, and a thick grey nylon fabric as my final decision. Hopefully, they will work with my design... Finger cross!  

-How did the shape you selected impact on the kind of 3D form you were able to create?

-How did you find the transition from a closed 3D shape, to working on the body- with consideration needed for arms, head etc?

-How do you think that the processes you have used today, might be used to develop ideas when creating a collection?

Today is our first of doing the "Public art project", in the morning, we had a short group discuss on the public art we've been visit during weekends, and everyone showed their drawings and collages about what we see. This helped me to understand the different ways that we can represent the forms we saw, and also the different perspective of looking at same things. 

Later on, we did a lot observational drawings on that three shapes we chose from our researches. I really like this way of starting my progress, because by picking up those shapes, I would have more focus, and also it is easy to make further development, as well as making the design more reasonable.  By cutting them life size, and close the seam to make them 3D, even though I am very new to this technique, I still think it is a great way to explore the volume and how would those shapes work on the body. Also, when I close the curve and straight lines together, sometimes the 3D volume turned up very nicely (bulge and concave) that I wouldn't expect. I definitely think today's processes is a great way to start of a project, step by step, very logically developed our ideas onto the shapes that related to our body. 

In the morning, we finished up our 10 samples, and sketchbook pages. I had a talk with our tutor again, and she gave me some advise according to the samples I made. --each sample has a potential in it, yet they can all be further developed. For example, From some of the observational drawings I did on Tuesday, I could take some interesting part of them(colours, lines) and develop them onto the sample I mad, another way of saying is that making 2D work into 3D by using different medium (yarns, etc). 

In the afternoon. we went back to the Barbican Centre, and picked 4 of our strongest samples to photograph them with the Brutalist Architectures. I was really excited about this part, because the combination of sample and the building is very interesting. Almost all of my samples are made with many bright colours, and the buildings are nature ash colour, so when I photograph them from different angle and perspective, it could achieve totally different feelings  compare with the boldness atmosphere of buildings themselves.   

During the weekend, I visited Brunswick Centre and one of the Ucl campus, just to get a basic idea of what is brutalist architecture. And I did some observational drawings on that two buildings. 

Our Monday class start at the Barbican Centre, the building here are all Brutalist Architecture. Therefore, this is a great opportunity for us to do our primary research, this include finding inspirations, do some close-up drawings; also, being in that environment helped us to feel how those architectures were constructed. I found that the brutalist buildings are all made of concrete, so that these architectures always give me a sense of strong and boldness. Therefore, when I did my drawings, I chose the medium that could show this feature. (bold markers, acrylic,etc.) 

In the afternoon, we went back to Archway campus to do further development on our drawings that we did in the morning. We started with picking up the shapes or colors we like from those drawing, and then recreate them on to A5 paper, we could either collage them, or draw them with different mediums. I've always enjoyed this part of designing, because it made my work look they all have a connection from one another. What I found the most interesting part about afternoon's exercise was that print making. Tutor gave us a thick collage board for us to cut the shapes we want, and then lay them out onto a white cardboard, put it into a machine, and press the machine. When we get the white cardboard, it showed the concave texture that was made of from the shapes we cut. This experiment inspired my a lot, because I can not only print the texture onto a paper, but also, print them onto a fabric. It gave a many ideas of what I might do in the future. 

Today is our progress tutorial day. Obviously, stayed up pretty late yesterday. I was quite nervous this morning because  this was going to be my first individual time to meet the tutor, and also I'm a bit curious about what would Gail (my tutor)  think about my work. Luckily, things went pretty well this morning, I felt much easier to talk with our tutor than I expected. And of course, Gail pointed out many things that I could improve with.

For my workflow, it is important to make everything well explained; for example, when I say I really like or dislike about something, it would be better to make more explanations about what or why do I like them, which means I should think deeper with them. The same as my research page, she suggested me to do wider research on each project, because right now, my researches are very restricted on the topic words, but it is going to be better if I explore from one project to something else.

Thursday again, so it's time for me to sum up this week's progress. I really think that I'm getting on tract of my own speed for this project. For "what's the point" project, as I mentioned before, I wanted to continue my jacket project. And I tried to do more collages rather than making a lot textile samples, because I've realized that for past few projects, the majority of my final out comes are textile piece, I thought it is very important for me to make a balance of both fashions shapes and textile structure through these few projects.

In addition, I started my new sketchbook for this project, and I tried hard to make my pages have a strong connection and logic with one and another. Also, at this time, I spend more time to play with the lay out and collages on the pages, because when I looked back to my first sketchbook, I found that a lot of them are very rough, but not delicate. Even though I did many pages on that book, yet they still did not look very compact together. Therefore, sometimes when people see them, they would be very confused about my progress development. That's why I decided to spend more time on it, and make them pretty and clean.  

Today it was our first day of experimenting the print project. Emma and Aaura came to give us this introduction of "Chopova Lowena", they talked about many work progresses that they had through their MA course studying, such as research took a big part of any project they've worked together, and it is also important for the further development. They usually spend weeks to do only one research, so that the final inspiration was really the one that they dig deeply into the starting point. When I heard all those work they did, I started to realize what is  weak about myself, and also what were the things I needed to improve towards to each stage of my project. 

Later on in the afternoon, we did repeating patterns drawing of my researches I did over the weekend (Miao traditional clothing). From those inspirational pictures, I took the symbol colors and shapes, and then collage them onto papers. In this way, it is much easier for me to see the developments from my research, as well as it is also a great method to check if colors or shapes works for design or not. After few drawings, we'd been asked to cut them out or manipulate them into a 3D piece. To be honest, I really like using my hands to create shapes rather than drawing them out. I also found it is very fun to play with, because I can straightly see were those color palates and patterns work together or not. And from the this 3D piece, I could then took more inspirations to other designs. 

Today was the final exhibition day, everyone got to school really early to do the last finishing job of our jacket and samples.

In the afternoon, we started to hang up our garments or do whatever ways that we felt comfortable to present, then opened up our sketchbooks as well as our samples on the desk. We got 30 minutes to commend and look at other people’s work.  I would never forget the feeling I had at that moment, I saw so many brilliant works that had done by the people who just surrounded me. I was very excited and impressed by those hard works, and I wouldn’t feel any more gratitude to be in this environment that everyone seemed work pretty hard. There’s so much to learn from each other. The ways they drew, did sketchbook, and making different textile samples. The piece I remembered the most was a Korean girl’s work. She used a piece of chiffon, and put it under her mannequin, on top of it were all the samples and researches that she did for this project. Not only the way that she presented, but also how she used fabrics and yarns to deconstruct and manipulate her jacket impressed me a lot too. I love the knitting piece that she did in the back of her garment, it kind of inspired me with my work I think. All in all, I enjoyed this final exhibition a lot, even though there were some difficulties I need to face, I still learned so much from my progress and my classmates’ work.

In the morning, I did the induction work shop, because I did not know how to use the knitting machine, with this opportunity, I would easily get a new technique of create textures and making prints or textiles. This workshop also helped me with my sample making for Thursday’s exhibition. A material that teacher gave us really brought me interest, it was a transparent paper that we could use machine or anything to embroider on, and when it touches cold water, it will slowly melt, so it would create a very interesting texture.  This made me think of if later on I would do some embroidery on the fabric, it would definitely help me with it.

When I got home, I continued with my deconstructed jacket. It was a tough night for me, because last night I did the right shape I wanted, yet when I unpin the jacket, I could not let it go back to the original appearance. This really disappointed me a lot. Then I tried to completely change the way it supposed to be, surprisingly, it worked in this way, and I felt much better. This taught me that sometimes when I really struggled at something, may be it is better to use another way of think it.  

Today is our first day of "The Jacket Project", and I enjoyed a lot what we did on the class today, because it really helped me to get a sense of the construction of a garment better than before. 

To begin with, we gathered group of six, and started to talk about the tailored jacket that we brought today.  I got a brownish vintage jacket from a charity shop, it used wool and polyester fabric which could gave me a feeling the warmness. It seemed like the person who wore this jacket before could be a good husband or a knowledgable teacher or something. With all those imaginations, we can simply get an emotional feelings to this jacket. Afterwards, we did several technical drawing of our clothing from different sides by using new techniques(use scissor as a drawing tool, combine technical drawing with observational drawing to make the sketchbook page looks balance.) In this way, we can get into the details of how does a tailored jacked welled constructed. For example, we odd to know where should put stitches, or what kind of pocket would look better on a jacket etc.

Moreover, in the afternoon, we got into groups of two, and firstly started to make an installation of two different jackets that both pals  brought to class, and then we did observational drawings from it by using the techniques we learnt earlier. After this, both of teammates modeled for each other with manipulated jackets for one another, then similarly did the drawings. Both of these exercise made me think of the design progress, when we manipulate the fabric or do the designing of a series, sometimes it is better to ignore the human body structure; instead, just focusing on how the fabric could make up what shapes that are interesting for us. 

Through out the entire week, we did three one-day projects about our surroundings(buildings, people, ourselves). All three classes are mainly focus on the observation drawings, mark makings and etc. Therefore, I think today is a great time for me to reflect what I learned from this week. 

Firstly, when we did all those drawings, we were required to use different mediums to achieve different textures and feelings of fabrics. For example, if there a silk or smooth fabric, it is better to use fine lines or light markers. Also, by using distinct techniques of drawing like continues line, blind drawing, and wrong hand drawing, sometimes the finished drawing could inspired me to something others. In addition,when I try to use more mediums, I would prefer to have more colors, so the drawing or the collage would not be monotonous compare to the work I did before. However, I was not very used to the fast drawing method in the class, I knew teachers were expect us to think fast, draw fast and do not care too much about what happened on the paper, sometimes when I look back to my work, I still feel a bit lost, because the lines many times create a messy view for me, and there were normally no focus on the page. Therefore, I think I should absolutely do more practice on this part.

We also did the group discussion about what we achieved in these three days, it was surprisingly to see other classmates' works. Although each of us has different styles of doing work, I still could learn the ways they are thinking, as well as how they use distinct techniques to show their progresses. I definitely think what I've been taught this week will benefit to my future studies.

I really enjoy what we did about the textile drawing today. I think this is the kind of class that I would like to do more about. 

How does observational design/ mark making inform the design process?

Before these classes, I've never done observational drawing before, so this technic is quite new for me. However, I found it is very interesting that sometimes we can get many surprising shapes or inspirations from lines and different mediums that we were using.  

Timed exercises are important to the creative/ design process why?

I think what's good about the timed exercises is that it can really push us to think fast, and not too care about details. In this way, 

Today we did one-day work shop in King Cross. I learnt many skills about looking for inspirations in a very fast speed. For example, in the beginning, everyone need to use different mediums to do the fast drawing from architectures that surround our school, and this could sometimes surprisingly create lots of interesting shapes that we didn't expect before. 

I found the most interesting part of today's work shop was doing that small pattern making mode from those shapes we like. At first, I don't think I would be able to make a 3D piece based on these totally different and unconnected patterns, yet in that short 15 minutes, it really motivated me the ideas that would possible be making it achievable. In the end, I do really like the 3D piece I made. 

However, I found doing quick drawing was quite challenging for me, because I never did this practice before, when we did it today, I am a bit loss. Yet, on the other hand, this inspired me that there is really no rules about how to draw or use what to draw. Even though we still need to follow the outline of the real thing, we still could work more freely in this way of showing.