Stand Work ft Textures

(Sketchbook Illustrations and Stand work produced by Myself)

       To develop my designs further, it is agreeable to say that stand work is a massive benefactor when it comes to inspiration, whether that coming from scale, detail or structure. Considering that I have never used knitwear as a final piece fabrication, I want to exhaust this process as much as possible to get the best results. Using the stand, I got to use all the textile samples that I had made previously, which made it even more interesting as I got to see which area best suited their placement or perhaps taking weight into consideration if they draped or hung lightly depending on  the material; this was generating so many ideas from this process with regards to how I should be shaping and placing all my sample pieces. I really liked how the knit pieces in particular managed to hold a rather manageable structure without it being pinned or held, which could really help with my design ideas. I felt that this process made my silhouette much more interesting as it didn't represent a typical feminine form, nor male and I really wanted to exaggerate the texture on the knit with the holes and frayed segments of wool to correlate well with my theme. As you can see, my illustration was specially designed post my stand work to see how it would look on a female silhouette, although I feel that I should have collaged with these stand works also to get a realistic impression of a potential final product. 

    I am finally coming to the realisation that I am drawing even closer to my final garment(s) which feels extremely weird considering that this project has been going on for a few weeks now, despite this I feel really confident with my progress and development at this time in the project but I need to make sure that I stick to my brief and work at a fast, but steady pace till the end. Not only this, but to push myself further I decided to experiment with both my samples and some of the materials I am going to use for my final piece and in this case, I used the mesh material because I knew that it was easily adaptable to different shapes and structures without being pinned, similarly to the knit samples I produced earlier. I thought that this would make my stand work much more filled and complete as if they were attached, but it proved difficult and slightly tacky as there was not proper base beneath both materials, although from the photographs they do not look so bad. Hence, when it comes to the initial pattern cutting, I think it would be suitable to have perhaps a thin or opaque layer for the under layer of the garment(s), unless my designs have the under layer as a very visible fabrication as a concept.

(Sketchbook Illustrations and Stand drawings produced by Myself)

      After completing my stand work and illustrations reflecting that process, I wanted to do some 3-D stand drawings whilst they were still on the mannequin. In addition to this, considering that I layered the materials on top of each other on the stand, I wanted to reflect this back into my drawings to see what I could have as a process. I think this worked really well as it also reflects upon my illustrations, making all of these processes correlate nicely together. The next stage after this experimentation will be to photocopy my drawings and play around with scale and colour, similarly to what I did right at the beginning of my Final Major Project (FMP) with early stand work development. In addition to this, more illustrations and design processes are a MUST to keep myself on track and pursue as many concepts as possible till I am happy with the final results to then start developing my final designs. This process was by far beneficial towards helping me with design ideas and concepts which came from structuring dynamic shapes and silhouettes on the stand. This will now help me create more define and detailed illustrations, right up until I get to my final designs.