scale

I had a group discussion in this morning, and it was fruitful, really. Members of the group were nice, because they had a different view points and each member had tried different kinds of experiment. I liked friends' ideas, and works which based on the idea, and hopefully they liked mine too!

My tutor advised me to pay attention to scale of patterns, and to use more variety of paper. They are my weak points and I haven't been able to overcome for long time. It's mentioned in the comment in my assessment sheet as well! 

During the stage of making, I don't know why, but I can't see things that I have to improve, although they are obvious. That's why group discussions and tutorials are valuable for me, but I think I need to find points that should be revised by my self, finally.

Now my work desk is filled with paper lace.

clipity-clip

Now I'm getting into cutting paper.
When I fold evenly and cut paper, the ordinary brick pattern appears. However, if I fold unevenly, there   will be a random pattern after cutting. That's more interesting than usual one, and there can be much more variety of patterns as long as I try other ways of folding and cutting.
I liked one of my location drawings which I drew at Glasgow Botanic Gardens, and my current idea of cutting paper come from this drawing. Actually I wondered if my location drawings would inspire me when I start my actual work of project, but it did.
In my view, it was unbelievable that the architecture become a basic idea for textiles, but it does, so I knew that the project is organised reasonably, and my tutors are wonderful! once more.

mountains and valleys

For the current project, I'm using paper as the main material. At the work shop on Monday, we've learnt techniques which expand potential of paper! To be honest, I believed that I was familiar with paper, because I often used to play origami when I was little.

However, I'm still ignorant of how to treat paper! The techniques that I've leant was different to ones that I imagined. I used to make flowers, birds or something like them with complicated process, but what we've learnt was simple and interesting. 

Now I'm excited with folding, cutting, squashing and tearing paper.  

   

turn on the green light

The word 'stay-at-home' is the best word that describes me! That's a bad habit.

I worked at home whole day yesterday, so I stopped myself being lazy in this morning, and went out. Today was a beautiful day compared to yesterday, so I enjoyed street views in both daylight and twilight.

When I'm outside, I always find something new, because things surrounding me is changing all the time. In contrast, if I stay indoors, my feeling will be getting old even if my knowledge can be updated with the Internet. That's a scary thing for artists. I have to turn my red light to green, and get some fresh things regularly. Go, go, go!

Finally I was walking around till late, so I couldn't finish stitching a cloth...but it doesn't matter. It will be finished appropriately.

When you think about the word 'home' in bigger scale, you'll find one more thing. 

Actually I didn't know how my home is lovely place, and is full of lovely people, until I went out.

fill a memory with fun

There were fun people, art and alcohol. Can you imagine how nice time I had tonight?

I like to view art works as well as make them. For more than a couple of years, I used to think that I had to learn something from any works I saw, and tried to criticise them although I don't have enough knowledge to do so.

When I look around museums for study, I can't enjoy this, and forget what it was like afterwards. However, I can remember things I really enjoyed, and often they become inspiration of my own works. I believe many people are the same. No one tries to learn from uninteresting things, but everyone tries to learn from interesting things.

In the word 'impression', you can find another word 'press', and it implies that something is pressed upon your heart likes rubber stamps, so that you won't forget. I want to collect the stamps of interesting things, and hope to make something interesting which become a part of someone's memory. I know this is challenging, but fun. 

green goatee and golden hair

Today, my thumb got a hole!
In this week, I can manage time more freely than usual, so I'm going to spend most of time on stitching a cloth. This will be shown at a small exhibition that I'm going to hold with friends, and I'm really excited about it. I'm trying to make a mantle which looks like one that Superman is wearing. Now I've done almost 3/4 of all, and hopefully I'll finish stitching by the next week. For the remaining 1/4, I'm going to stitch human figures that can be seen in moments of circus. It'll be more fun than just stitching lines. Actually, to repeat the same work needed massive patience, so I was bored and nearly gave up, but now, a lot of green/ gold lines made quite nice texture and I'm really happy with it.
After stitching hundreds of lines, my fingers feel nothing, but I still want to stitch, because I love it!

impulse

In this afternoon, I felt far harder than usual to go up the hill on my way home, because I had walked a lot. For a new project, site drawing, we don't need to be (should not be) in the studio, and classmates have spread over the city of Glasgow. Although I quite like to work on my desk in the studio, I feel something fresh with this project, and liked except weather conditions!

I went to Kelvingrove Museum & Gallery today, and spent almost half a day in there. Firstly, I drew roofs in various shapes. It took much more time than I thought, because of complicated details, but I enjoyed drawing them. After I entered into the museum, I found the structure of the ceiling interesting, so decided to draw it and moved to the 1st floor. The ruler drawing of the ceiling also took much time, and I was bothered with my 'slow work' throughout the day. 

When I was drawing the next one, two little boys came up to beside me. They were 3-year-old twins called Alexander and Nicolas, and exited with my drawing materials, and started drawing on my sketchbook. Firstly I thought 'oh my gosh',  but now I think it's okay, because it'll never happen if I stay in the studio. No one knows whether pink and black thunders on my drawing made it brilliant or worse, but at least I won't forget them having been excited with my colour pens, and I want to keep feeling an impulse to use a new material, like them. 

roofs

ceiling

'our' drawing

highlights of 5 blogs

There are 5 blogs that I have chosen for assessment below.

・ 9.12.2011  unexpected composition 

・ 5.1.2012    great works in the past

・12.1.2012   walk along a zigzag way

・13.1.2012   black+white=G ray 

・31.1.2012   Text as Pattern -project end-

about blog

Design Process project gave 2 things to me. When I first heard about this project, I was excited, because I like to think about anything that I found interesting but need a plenty of time to find words to tell it, so this project seemed good for my character. I don't know how my English can tell what I want to say, but I can remember each event, when I see the previous blogs. It is important for me, because this record is never only for assessment, but for my own development. After started writing blog, I began to take photo more habitually than before. This is one of 2 that I've got during this project. Another is, reflective thought. To be honest, I don't know whether my blog could be exactly different from a personal diary or not, but I can reflect my design process by reading older posts, at least. Although I don't feel happy to see my failed ideas, it gives me opportunity to analyse why it was happened, and how I can improve it from the next time. Reading classmate's blog was also valuable for me. Some are enjoying, and some are struggling, and it changes day by day. No one took the same way towards the end of project, and everyone was interesting. All in all, my blogs are my footprints after having walked my own way, and will help me to take the next step.

London trip -the 3rd day-

On the 3rd day of London trip, we went to Fashion and Textile Museum.
There are many pictures of models wearing beautiful dresses. I enjoyed reading texts of how fashion shows are organised, what is happening at the backstage of the fashion show, and how the catwalk show has been developed and will it be, as well as looking around photos and dresses. Firstly I felt dresses were fewer than I  thought, and wondered why there were many photos instead. It is because I used to think fashion designers (and other designers related to fashion show) are designing 'things'. However, I found the words 'capture the moment' in the description, and realised that the designers are making effort to show the most beautiful moment. From this point of view, Fashion and Textile Museum is full of records of the beautiful moments.
This museum is the smallest in museums where I visited during London trip, but I found many things I liked. There was a silver dress with floral embroidery on the upstairs, and I liked photos of it as well as real dress.   Those photos were taken by Philip Meech, and I really liked.

http://www.philipmeech.com/

Pictures of makeup were also interesting and beautiful. I saw many interesting patterns and beautiful colours in both photos and real dress, in this museum. Recently I haven't used many colours, especially bright colours, but I remembered pink and yellow are really really nice colour!

London trip -the 2nd day-

We went to V&A museum on the 2nd day, and we walked around in this huge museum for almost half a day, so my steps became as slow as grandmother's ones by the end of the day. I was like 90, not 19. In this museum, there are so many collections, so I felt like it isn't one museum.

At the entrance, a big artistic glass was hanged from the ceiling. I liked this colour and also the shape in shadow on the wall (in a dotted box in the picture below)

When I was looking around a room of the south Asian collection, I found a beautiful green jar. I like both patterns and colours. Especially the patterns look like clouds were impressing, so I drew it afterwords, and added rain drops for half of it. 

I also found a Barbie doll. I think it's amazing fact that 'a doll' lives in the V&A museum instead of a doll house. She is no longer just a playmate of little girls, but an art work. I found myself familiar with her dress. It was that my most favorite artist is making! The artist is, my cousin. I like her works, and it is not because she is my relation. I've seen her Barbies wearing the same dress, but it was the first time to see the original Barbie wearing that dress. 

http://maiohara.com/mai_ohara/Welcome.html

I really liked the museum having many aspects—modern, ancient, european, asian and so on—, and the thing common to all collections is, recognition as an excellent work, and is not just fame. 

London trip -the 1st day-

My London trip started with terrible feeling! This is because, I left my camera's battery in my room. Oh...The thing I had was just a toy that looks like a camera.... However, ecept this, the London trip was GREAT. I saw many interesting things with my eyes instead of seeing through a camera lens. At the briefing of the London trip, Jo said 'inspiration is in everywhere, so do forget about fashion/textiles during trip' and I strongly agreed with it. I tried to sketch anything that I like.

Usually, I don't like to carry a sketchbook around in museums, but the sketchbook we are given was 'Pink Pig'. I love this sketchbook, because of quality of paper, rings and cute pigs.(some people might think me fool, but it's important for me!) I was happy to carry the sketchbook.

Tate Modern Museum where we went first, had huge space. I like museums having plenty of space between works, rather than museums putting so many works in everywhere. Pictures below are 2 my favorite works and my drawings of them. Both of them attracted me by colours. Blue one was small (less than 30 x 30cm) and red one was big (more than 2x2m). I thought that we see colours differently depending on scale.