Lace in Fashion

I picked up this book because it had a lot of interesting pictures. Much with colour, types of clothing, materials, and designs have many different connotations applied to them. Looking at lace is interesting - its place as delicate, dainty, a mark of femininity or frailty or wealth. It's a great example of the way clothing can dictate your perception.

It's interesting to read (or gather from pictures) ideas of what lace represented at certain times, and the reasons behind certain cuts and styles' popularity across history. Some of the examples of lace below act as representations of love and prettiness, of social status, and very interesting is the caption under the picture of the archers, wearing plainer clothes of the neo-classical style in 1799 to counteract the previously-popular lace, which had seemingly crossed from being a signifier of high social status to being something seen as gaudy.

Japanese Emblems And Designs

I found this lovely book full of public domain examples of Japanese mon (紋). These are symbols, much like European coats of arms, which are used to identify and decorate a person or family.

They are very relevant to the concept of personality and identity expressed through fashion (as are other forms of heraldry), as obviously they are very direct markers of identity which are incorporated into clothing as personal or familial decoration. I am particularly fond of the last page below, which shows various mon with such lovely, sweet depictions of birds.

I'd like to, as a counter to the very symmetrical and neat mon shown here, make some of my own mon designs which are a bit messy, a bit uneven. maybe as a representation of emotional instability, perhaps commenting on the cultural practice of ignoring people's emotional responses because they are uncomfortable to face (and in particular the Britishness of that practice, the frustration that causes, or London as a place in which this is taken to an extreme). I'd like to try making some sort of clothing too, but I'm not sure how realistic an idea that is considering a lack of experience there.

I could also try to make mon which appear cute or childish. I think there are a lot of possibilities concerning how I could incorporate mon into my work.

I totally wanna make some kind of Digimon joke here.

Many small cats

I can draw so many of these at once. I drew most of these yesterday (30th September). I deserve 100 cookies.

These are all quite controlled. I want to make some messier, more in tune with my inner child, drawings. However I'm enjoying the ease and speed of these drawings, and I'm satisfied with their cuteness level.

I might also try some pictures which focus on morbid, sad, or otherwise serious text juxtaposed against these hyper cute characters (as you'll recognise in one of the pictures below).

Nonsense diary

Going back to the introspective, diary-based branch of my stuff, I made this book of photos with handwritten commentary, only the commentary is mad, floaty, and made-up. I suppose I wanted to make stories or something for entertainment value (I definitely wanted to be funny here). I suppose it's interesting to compare this to people's genuine presentations of themselves online or in personal things that they know are going to be made private - made to represent them and usually containing some level of genuine self, but inevitably a somewhat warped representation of that person. This is obviously different in that it takes my personal photos and adds text to place them in a nonsensical, make believe context, precisely for the purposes of public display and entertainment. But the pictures still retain a level of real-life representation.

Colour experimentation (pastels)

I did some super hurried colour mixing/palette experiments on books pages with chalk pastels. The last and third pages are my favourites. The last incorporates a wealth of colours and they are all distributed well and make something very bright and potentially uplifting. It's like Jason's technicolour dreamcoat. A great mixture of warm and colder colours.

The third reminds me of Henri Matisse's colour choices - extremely rich and evocative perhaps of some exoticism (bright fruits and bright clothes and naked dancing people who are not soft browns or peaches but a deep, fruity orange). I'm actually not a fan of Mattise as I find many of his depictions of people dull and, well, suffering from exoticism. The colours I can admire, but the depictions themselves seem empty, objectifying, exploitative.

I liked that I could do these experiments really vigorously and quickly. Speedy, almost hedonistic art is quite pleasing. That physical enjoyment lends itself to a real cheering factor which I'd like to follow in a quest of emotion and chemical response. What's the best way to find that good feel?

Also, colour wise, I'd like to compare Matisse-esque colouring to the more subdued colour style of Paul Cezanne.

Cross pathway private view, 1st Oct

These are my two favourite pieces from today's private view:

Mavis Qu

 What I like about these 2 pictures is their careful composition, the blue and white colour palette, the focus on one character, and the intriguing storytelling aspect.

Joe Brown

What I like about this is it's simplicity, the childlike expression and way it seems fast and messy whilst remaining a confidently exercised piece of work, the use of words and the emotion portrayed through them.

Mavis' work is inspiring to the work I plan to make in exploring personality through appearance and style, and Joe's is more my general style and can inform my exploration into childlike art and the expression of and influence on emotion in art. It's also worth examining his colour palette. He seems to have used quite moody colours, which perhaps enhance the effect of the text.

Wearing Bart Simpsons

I know that many people like to wear Bart Simpsons now (thanks to Jeremy Scott's Bart knits, of which cheap copies exist in abundance), so I made my own Bart Simpson paper skirt. It's more fun than the other Bart Simpson skirts because all the Bart Simpsons look a little different and you can colour them in.

This links my identity through style interest to my childlike art interest. I'd kinda like to make a lot of totally unwearable clothes out of paper and stuff, with cartoon characters on them. that's definitely something a kid would do.

Sailor Moon, Biker Mice From Mars, Digimon?