26.10.2020

Lost Letters Day 1 Studio Reflection

I remember eyeing the letter I received in the pile before the class even started. It was the = sign. Before class started I was imagining the two 0 shapes and how they could be a zero waste pant pattern possibly. Later on, once I received that during the workshop and started sketching out ideas, I was picturing the shapes as possible armholes. As I started sketching, I was going to use Posca Pens for my thumbnails, but I didn't have my black one with me. Instead, I used a black brush pen I had. As I was drawing the 2 "0" shapes, I began to really connect with the painterly feeling of using the brush pen. I responded well to the fluidity and control I had of its line quality, while my red Posca pen worked better for blocking in pre-meditated shapes of colour. With the fluidity of the brush pen, and the idea of armholes, I imagine the motion of someone pulling on a jacket. Then, as I looked at the isolated = sign on the paper, I realised it looked like an arial view of a pair of pants, the "0" shapes creating leg holes. I combined the idea of pants with the motion I was able to create with the brush pen into the idea of someone pulling on pants. I used the brush pen to extend strokes from the corners towards the centre in order to break the space up into two pant legs. The tapered stroke makes it appear like you are looking down the pants and you are holding the waistband mid pulling them up. When it was time to figure out what to do with the red part of the print, I considered adding a block of red in the front to place a button and placket, and a block in the back to add belt loops. This was unsuccessful, as I found that once I broke the symmetry and added these more fiddly details, the composition became static and lost its sense of action/motion. I think this is because having all of these details took attention away from the centre of the composition. That told me that I need to draw the viewers attention towards the centre, which is why the use of tapered brush strokes was a successful idea. The sides of the composition were still empty, so I realised I could add pocket shapes. As a story was developing in my head, I was imagining a man hastily pulling on his pants on a cold morning to get out of the door. This made the decision to make the pockets red one that made sense, because he would likely be bent over shivering outside, bent over, with his hands shoved in his pockets to keep warm (the red connoting warmth). Any places that were red would draw the viewers attention away from the centre which I learned before when I sketched the idea with a button placket at belt loops. I was okay with the viewer starting to look from the sides at the pockets, and have their gaze trail towards the centre leg holes, because my vision would still come across.

At this point, I was toying with the idea of adding rows of stitching up and down the centre front and back of the pants towards the leg holes to add more depth. It was kind of working, but it still felt flat, and didn't add any much more motion or life to the composition. Around now in the process, I began to think about the practical elements of cutting my stencils out, and realised that thin dashes wouldn't really work and I would have to actually cut out rectangles. This actually opened a door for new ideas, because I could play with the width and length of them as well as how I spaced them out. As I began experimenting with this idea, I realised two things. If I made the rectangles wider than they were long and trapezoidal, getting smaller towards the centre, they resembled zipper teeth. I made that connection because when I used to make technical flats in fashion design, I would make the zipper teeth look similar to that in Adobe Illustrator. I added the zipper teeth idea in the front, and did longer/thinner rectangles that progressively got more square as you went towards the centre in the back. Doing this in the back created the look of a row of stitching, and making them get smaller towards the centre made the line look like it curved down, giving the rise seam depth as it goes down in space to the crotch of the pant. Using these techniques that gave depth to the pant, making the centre of the composition look more distant, all contribute to the feeling of pulling the pants up. Reflecting now, I believe that this is because you never actually look down at your pants directly from above, unless you are in the middle of leaning over to pull them up around your legs.

Finally, I chose to add a red zipper at the top of the composition. This helped to make the zipper rails read as such, and it makes the viewer feel like they are rushing to pull the pants up. This is because the zipper is already pulled up, but the view of the pants is as if it is still around the wearer/viewer's knees. This lack of continuity blurs the viewers perception of time which makes the whole thing feel more rushed because they are confused as to whether their pants are done up or still being put on.

This feeling of haste and confusion while getting dressed reminded me of last Friday, when I had to get up early to prepare for contextual practice, while still recovering from my decision to go out and party the previous night. I had to run out and get groceries that day for breakfast before the lesson started, so I was stumbling out the door while getting dressed. That prior evening served as an escape for me, but I also made a lot of great memories. I feel conflicted sometimes as to whether or not I deserve that escape and whether or not it is healthy for me. That idea of going out and partying as a means of coping, as well as pop music as a means of escapism are both themes I am considering exploring in the future.

It is interesting that I went into this workshop expecting it to be very stagnant and stiff, when in actuality I was able to create an image that had a lot of motion. I think the biggest factor that allowed me to give it this motion and liveliness was the moment I began using the brush pen. The action of sketching with the brush pen gave the strokes movement, and then I just had to capture those strokes with more precision so that I could cut them out properly in the stencil.

I wonder if I could use this print as the starting place to inform a garment that further tells the narrative I began creating. The garment could even be contextualised in a performance piece.

How did you manage the restrictions of the task?

I enjoyed the restrictions, because going into this brief I didn't have a lot of super solid ideas of what I may want to do. Keeping things restricted in colour, as well as to a certain extent shape (we were not particularly able to create line), kept my thought process within those boundaries so I was not trying to go too out of the box conceptually. The restriction of colour is what made me get my brush pen out because it was the only black drawing medium I had, and that step in the process is what set off the rest of my ideas. This was the first time in a while where I truly practiced thinking through drawing, by visualising different approaches to the idea I had. It made the process easier to see my thoughts and how they would look in the composition. I want to expand on those skills to help me visualise more complex and conceptual ideas.

Was your final image effective?

I think that my final image was effective. It captured the story that developed as I designed the composition which I find to be the most important part. If I did something differently, I may reconsider the proportions of the blocks of black around the border to further pull the viewers eyes towards the centre. I also would have exaggerated the perspective created by increasing the size of the stitches in the centre back rise seam of the pant. This would have added even more motion to the piece, because that is achieved by creating depth with perspective and drawing the eye to the centre which I realised whilst visualising in my sketchbook.

Were you successful in transforming the lost letter into an image in an innovative way? Consider your classmates approach.

I think that I did the best I could with the letter I was given. My letter was not recognisable, as I think it was a stylised equals sign, so I was reluctant to add any black to the border of it. Additionally, there was little negative space to work with in the letter form itself. I considered turning the "00" into eyes, but that approach felt easy, and I didn't really have any connection to the idea conceptually. I also really only had two angles to approach the letterform from, while others with asymmetrical letters had 3 or 4 different angles to approach it from. Given this, I embraced the symmetry and the way it was centred in the page to create a graphic that made sense to be symmetrical and centred. The POV of someone looking down pulling up their pants is symmetrical itself so it made perfect sense to me to use that idea with my letterform. A brief idea I had but didn't bother visualising was Turing it into a hamburger, but I did not want to disturb or disrupt the letterform and force the "00' into that idea. I suppose if I did visualise that more, I could have stylised it in a way that looked good compositionally, but in the brief amount of time I had, I was already beginning to go down the route I took and I saw more potential there anyways.

Reflection

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