Goal for today:

-finish sketchbook

-final illustration.

-Continue with Workflow (Reflection and research)

I got up pretty early today to finalise my sketchbook, First thing first, I started my line up illustrations. This time, I tried to use different way of drawing them, and surprisingly I speed up a lot in this way. After drawing line up, I turned to look at my photoshoot picture to do my final illustration. Since my final garment is a knitted piece, I gotta show many small details with my drawing. This took three hours to do, but I'm very satisfy with the final look it showed. 

In 15th's afternoon, I began to do my A2 sheets. To be honest, I quite enjoy the process of doing sheets through out the course, because I felt when I'm doing A2 sheet, I can see how I connect the entire project together from the beginning till the end. I didn't know how many pages I will do, so I scanned all my sketchbook pages, and started to think of how would I edit them together. The process went quite well, I easily picked the items I will use for the final pages. For tomorrow. I will finish the rest of the pages. 

Finally, it's the shooting day, My time for shooting is in the afternoon, so in the morning I a bit have time to finalise my garment. Fully prepared and off to go!

Surprisingly, there's not much people at the shooting room, everything seemed pretty casual. I was a bit nervous at the beginning, but now I'm very enjoying with this atmosphere. I didn't wait for long, and I'm very lucky to have Mariam as the model I want to use for my garment. She's really charming and easy to get along with. The dressing went very smooth, and she's a great model to shoot with. Also, she did very well with the poses making, they emphasis the volume of my garment. 

Even though the photoshoot with Gail was only happened for five minutes. it is still a great opportunity for me to experience. 

Later today, Jo posted my shoot on her instagram, I am very honorer and happy to see this.    

My goal for today is to finish last piece of my final garment, and keep working on my sketchbook pages. 

At night, I finally finished this over-sized knitted wear, I was so happy, because I've been working on it for almost a month, 20 plus big balls of yarns, it is really a lot of work. After I've done knitting it, I also have to manipulate on the body, so I took some time to see how should the model wear it, because as I mentioned before, I created this garment with many holes so that model could have different ways of wearing it. And during that shoot on the break, I am not quite satisfied with those looks, therefore, I tried to use strings to do some dripping on top of the yarn. In the end, the look turned out really nice, I really do like it. 

Today is our first day of school. Did not sleep very much, yet I've pretty much done my big oversized knitwear, so I'm very satisfied with this. 

In the morning, both Chris and Alice told us about the requirement for the assessment. Later on we held the group exhibition for both fashion and textile class, everyone is showing their achievements during the break time, and they are very impressive. The pair up for a pre-assessment with classmates really helped me to understand what more I need to include or improve with my so far work. Because we still get another week to go, and it is quite a long time  so that better work should be producing. 

In the afternoon, Chris asked to see my work, and he gave me many suggestions that I would be using with my project. He said that right now my knitted piece is more like a textile work (pure blanket), it's quite flat, what I should do is work it more onto the body, and manipulate with the value and shapes of it. The reason why he was asking to do that, I think it is because it is just an oversized knit piece hang on to the wall. However, I think it will look good once I finished everything. As for sketchbook, I should have more design development which I will try to do more in the next few days.  

Today is the last day of our spring break, tomorrow is going to have a big exhibition with our work, which means I got to do as much sketchbook development as possible, since I've almost spend the whole break to do my knitted garment. Today is going to be a long day.

At first, I made a plan for myself, I shell organise my samples and my inspirational pictures first in order to have a easier time later on with my design development. And then, I leaf through my sketchbook, I found that there is not much mark making on those pages, so I did few observational drawing along with my samples.    

Sketchbook making always take longer than I expect; so, after I done several pages I decided to go back to my knit piece, and tried to finish that biggest piece by tomorrow so that at least I could have something complete to show on the exhibition for class on Monday.  

Really excited and tired today, In the past two days, I barely sleep; just trying to finish my knit piece as fast as I can. Last night after I finished knitting I felt so exhausted this morning, but I still have to get up because I've managed a photoshoot with a friends of mine from LCF, and we booked a studio for shooting with a model from agency. Even though I still have some piece needed to connected, but the the general look is already there. 

Also, I've asked my best friend Satherine to help me model one of a look for me-- both me and her wear the knitted piece together and do some performance movements, as I mentioned before, I wanted to use this visual movements to symbolise the friendships between me and her . 

The shoot went very well, big thanks to my photographer friend and Satherine too. This is a great opportunity for me to experience again how to do a successful shoot. Still have some preparation need to be done better. For example, plan ahead of time to finish my garment earlier, also make sure the model's shoe size is correct. 

Today I’m mainly focusing on doing sketchbook development, and organise my samples into sketchbook for tomorrow’s another tutorial with Chris. I’ve noticed that because I put too much effort on the final garment marking, so that I somehow avoid doing a lot of sketches for this project. Therefore, in the afternoon, I printed out the document picture of last few days, and did some design collages with them. As well as samples, I am aiming to do more mark makings, such as observational drawing and prints making. At night, kept working with my knitting piece, I’m glad that I’m almost there of finishing it! Gonna work harder these days.

Coming back from Brighton with a fresh start. Continue with my knitting pieces, I've set up a goal for the rest few days since I only got a week till the school start. I didn't really do my design development, so for the next couple of days, I will focus more on sketchbook designing. 

I went to Brighton for a short break time.

Before the Eastern break, I gotta get more yarns from the store, I didn't really rest for almost three days, but still have long way to go. 

In the afternoon, I pieced the knitted blocks together onto the mannequin, I tried to manipulate them, but i found that they are still too less for me to see what shapes can them create, so I just took some pictures and put them into sketchbook for further design development materials.  

I went to the 'Impressionists in London' exhibition in Tate Britain. I would say it is a great exhibition, but I feel that the title is misleading. It is not an exhibition devoted to Impressionism, but rather to the French painters and sculptors that sought refuge in London during the French-Prussian war. The whole show is "highlighting their engagement with British culture, traditions and social life, their art is a fascinating insight into how London was perceived by the visiting French artists." However, there is also something I really don't like about this show is that the commercial cynicism of the enterprise is so obvious. 

Yesterday I wasn't feeling so well, so I was resting for the whole day and did not do anything. Today I felt so much better, and I got up to decide the color pallette. From some sample color matching, I'm going to use these three color-- yellow, pink and blue, and they can also represent the feelings of friendship which are happiness, love and melancholy.  Once I make sure this, it is time begin to knit. 

I've already been develop my personal project for the entire last week, and I would say from the research sketches till now, I've had an idea for so long, but it is quite crazy, I'm still thinking if I should do it or not. I'm thinking to knit a very big oversized knitwear that can wear by two people. And for this design I don't necessarily need to have a sketch first, because what I am planing is that knit many big square pieces, and croche them together in the end; Therefore, this is just like creating a "fabric", I could manipulate after I've done it. 

I decided just go for this idea, even though I do not have a lot of time till the deadline, but I still want to try if it's possible to achieve or not. So I accept this challenge from myself. Later, after I finished class, I went to soho' John Lewis for some sample yarn, I picked many colors of yarn, and I think tonight I'm going to do some test samples to see how colours work together.   

Last few days of school before the break. Everyone is very excited of going for a holiday. Daniel and Helen had a talk about making a plan for the rest of days before the assessment. I found this is very helpful for me, because I am terrible of doing time management, and this helped me to have a better idea of what I should do each day, so that I won't be panic when the deadline comes. 

In the afternoon, I continued with my sketchbook design development, and did some collages of body movements. I'm still a bit stuck at this stage. I think what I will do next is to do some sample making based on my research I did earlier. Hopefully I will come up with something interesting later.  

Another busy day. We did so many small samples in a very short period of time. The practice we did today was mainly focusing on the colour using, and how do we combine them with distinct medium. I found myself was quite weak on the part, and I wasn't very satisfy about the work I did today. I felt I am restricted or limited by those techniques I normally used, so when I kept doing them I just felt very boring and lose the interest of making work. This is not a good sign, so I got to refresh myself, and try different ways of working with my materials. 

Today is the exhibition day and  also the initial selection day for the Harrods project. Unfortunately, I didn't chosen as the group of people continue doing Harrods project. However, I also very happy that I could finally go back to my personal project, because I think personally, I will achieve better with my personal project, and it is more relating to myself. 

This afternoon, I had the progress tutorial with Chris about my unit 7 work. To be honest, it didn't go quite well, because since I've been having gastritis for a long time. I didn't produce enough work as I suppose to, Chris was not very happy with this. For the Unit 7 work, He said I had a good proposal subject but currently the research is very basic and too obvious, so now I need to delve below the obvious subject. Find interesting subjects that connect to my project so that I can move beyond the obvious knitting samples. In addition, I gotta to do more on the Harrods project, so that I could show my work on Thursday. It is quite encourage for me today, and I felt it is really not the time for relaxing anymore. Fighting! I can do it. 

I'm very glad that I got the offer from Westminster BA fashion course, so I got another option to think about. 

In the afternoon, I continued doing my sketchbook work, and did some knitting samples on the body, I combined both thin thread and thick yarn together, the big contrast of them made the thin threads look invisible; therefore, it created a feeling of the disconnection, yet they are still connected. Just like how friendship works, sometimes friends could be apart from each other, yet the true friends always "stay" together. 

I'm really struggle with the "Harrods" project, so I moved on to my personal project, I decided to do some knitting samples, because I saw this artist called Ernesto Neto, his large scale knitted work inspired me that I could do a really big knitting piece that can be worn by two or more people together, and the action of people wearing it is a performance art that represent the relationships between people or friends. 

Also, for the material use, I want to try yarn and thread, because it can well symbolise a friendships, because in any relationship, friction is unavoidable. Even if we pull away from one another, the stretchy yarn will always bring us back together.  

I went to Westminster for BA interview.

I went to the workshop, and we used the circular pattern to do draping on human figure. I didn't find this is very helpful for me with this project, however, I still gained a skill of doing drapping. With this technique, it can easily create volume in shapes.  Also, when I work with my partner, it helped me to understand human figure  better, it will also benefit me on the further drapping practice. 

Today I went to visit Imperial War Museum. Taken as a whole, with its huge variety of objects and breadth of coverage, IWM London is an excellent and sensitively organized museum, with an important message for all generations. The World War I section was great and gave a good description of the history related to the First World War. The holocaust section as also ver well done and gives everyone insight into what cannot be repeated again in history. The rest of the museum was lacking. World War II was very much under represented. It was great to see history of war from a British perspective. 

Today, we've been introduce the "Harrods" project. The "green" man is our starting point for this project. To be honest, first thing coming to my mind is military and uniform wear. 

In the afternoon, I went to CSM library to do some research about Harrods and the "green man" history. 

Receiving the offer from Chelsea art and design. Got referred from CSM, cried so hard, but I don't feel regret about anything I did in foundation,  I tried my best, I am sad, but happy about the results, because I also really like doing textile designs. God has decided everything for me, the only thing I could do is just moving on, and be happy!

I was really waiting for the results for a whole day, so I just did some plans for the next few days. 

I did my personal proposal tutorial today with the study support teacher. She really helped me with the format and what information I should include in this proposal.  

At first, we had a long conversation about the concept I want to do for this project, and she showed me some examples of past students sample proposals, We discussed that many of my descriptions are not personal enough, and too vague, it should be more specific about myself. After I told her about my big theme is about friendship, she guide me that I should've write something about my research direction, and also she asked me to have some key words in mind, so while I'm doing the project, I could always have a clear "thread" in mind. 

In the afternoon, I printed out the pictures of my researches, and started to do some collages.

Today I researched more games that I used to play when I was young where people have physical connections. Both where people have something to connect them (eg. String in Cat’s cradle), and also connection through touch. In addition, I will also research visual language in dance and movement. I am interested in the shapes of movements people communicate with one another. For the textile research, I want to look more into distinct artist, such as Louise Bourgeois who did many textile works that relates to her childhood, so I intend to find some inspirations from her ways of transfer her personal stories into art works.

I think the whole ideas of this project for me is a message that says how relationships involves with one and another. And all the body movements really inspired me or gave me a sense of visual language in connecting people together. 

Got sick again, after these two days of researching, I sort of have an idea for this concept, and that is Kinship, I wanted to focus on the relationships between me and my best friend. My closest friend is just like my family: we grew up together and are important to each other. In any relationship, friction is unavoidable. In these moments, tolerance can lead us back to one another. I intended to demonstrate how this relationship has affected me over the years. In addition, I found a childhood game called "Cat's Cradle" gave me a lot inspirations for what I could do next. 

When I was young, I often played the game Cat’s Cradle, where two people use one piece of string to create different figures with their hands. I always found the different shapes and movements interesting: all the various figures reminded me of how friends can play different roles in our lives.  

My goal for today was just to do some random researches at the library, relating my childhood memories and finding some artists that could inspire me with my personal experience. I searched for a textile artist called Louise Bourgeois really interested me. Most of her work was inspired by her childhood memories  with her family, and the ways she transfer an abstract feeling into art pieces are very interesting. For example, the "spider" is an art motive for in her work, it represents the love of her mother. I'm thinking to do a textile garment for this project; therefore, Bourgeois's work is good starting point for me to look at. 

Starting my final project, very stuck. This is a project where I could really do what I want, so I got to be very thoughtful about the starting point. Through back to the past projects I did, I found that there was no project was relating to myself or my personal stories. Therefore, for this project, I strongly want to do something that can express my personal emotions. I decided to look deep into three parts of me as my inspirations, and they are: family/friends/childhood.

After yesterday's lecture, I started to think about what I could for my Unit 7's final project. Through back to the past projects I did, I found that there was no project that relate to myself or my personal stories. Therefore for this project, I strongly want to do something that can express my personal emotions. I decided to look deep into three parts of me as my inspirations, and they are: family/friends/childhood. Because I felt those are the things that I'm interested in, and when I actually do the project, it would be much easier for me to do the research and further development.