Monday 6 August 2012

"Let's open the box!"

I was inspired to do some sewing after discovering my mum's box of beautiful, old Liberty prints. Opening the box was sentimental as my mum seemed to have made a skirt, dress or blouse in nearly every print!


Patchwork cushions



Bunting





Tuesday 15 May 2012

Visual Essay

Gordon's Wine Bar

I chose to look at Gordon's Win Bar situated on Villiers Street, London, as I was drawn to its atmosphere, cavernous interior and history.
Gordon's wine bar is thought to be the oldest wine bar in London and has been established in its present form since 1890. Its original décor has been maintained, the walls are covered in memorabilia and historical newspaper cuttings faded with age.


Memorabilia 
 

  1914 August on deceleration of war. 






I first started to look at different wine and champagne bottles and drew them using different media.

Biro pen



Fine-liner pen

Coloured pencils


 Collage

 Quick sketch in Gordon's, however I do not feel that the pen reflects the atmosphere of the bar effectively.

Lino cut


Lino prints





Gordon's wine bar observational drawings

Chalk and charcoal which I feel is more effective at portraying the atmosphere of the bar.











I then put some of the wine and champagne bottles back into these scenes but did not think that this worked well.







David Hockney's Photo-montage







After looking at Hockney''s photo-montages, I decided that I would use my chalk/ charcoal images to create the shape of an arc to represent the cavernous ceiling of the wine bar.


I used the coloured bottles to go round the arc to show how some of the wine bottles were lined up and displayed in the bar; however I felt that the colours detracted attention from the chalk/ charcoal images.

I then used the lino bottle images which I felt worked better.


I created a wall made of lino bricks and converted it to grey scale to fit with the image.

I then tried the wine list as a background instead. Although I liked the bricks I felt that this worked better, however the background and the bottles merge together slightly.

I thought that the wine list worked better in the lighter colour as it contrasts with the bottles. However the bottles now look as if they are floating.




Final Outcome





After looking at the memorabilia Gordon's wine bar has on the walls, I photo-shopped my final image into some of the photo frames to see what it would look like as part of these images. As the images are old and have a sepia tone to them I have altered the tones of my final outcome to fit with the other images and memorabilia.






ITCH

Within a group we had to create a magazine; we were told to come up with a concept for it and then each create two double page spreads. Our concept was 'bad habits' so we decided upon the word 'Itch' for the name of the magazine.

I decided to focus my double page spreads on 'chewing with your mouth open' as I find that this bad habit is gross and particularly annoying. When the pages are in the magazine the two mouths would be back-to-back with a hole cut through, so that you can look through the mouth to see the text 'Shut your mouth', and when the page is turned you see an open mouth full of food.