Saturday 11 February 2012

'Time management' is a language I don't speak.

Since I am obviously not gonna finish my Excel task I might as well sit and write about the exciting screen printing/Julian Roberts Wednesday I had.
It was the longest day in the world and I am still recovering from it (or at least it's still part of my 'y u so lazy?' excuse) 
At uni we are currently having inductions for the new screen and digital printing and laser cutting studios. We only just had the screen printing one but I haven't been so excited about something in a long time. Obviously if you're living in the UK screen printing is something you've been doing since school but for me it's new and absolutely amazing! Actually, with the technology we have, it's exciting for everybody. It's a very long proces involving quite a few chemichals, aprons, gloves and gogals at times but the things you can acheive make me wanna move in there and sleep on the tables. 
So, I decided I am going to share my work proces and outcomes here. I am not going to explain in detail what and how it's done to get to the point I am because it's just too long and I am sure there are places online with better explanations than mine. 
However, the main part is played by a sceen frame which looks something like this:

Of course ours are bigger (A1 size) and with a metal frame, but I couldn't find one that matches it.
What you need is and image which is bitmap-ed on Photoshop and made very 'noisy' - you intensify and make larger and more defined the pixels it's made of. It ends up looking like this:

The photo I made youing my old Chaika film camera

After a few chemichle-drying sessions I got my board to look like this:


Those are the four pictures I chose, three of which are photos made by me and a bird I found but I think it'll look very nice.
I am going to the studio on Monday morning for the most fun and interesting part and I can't wait to see how it all turns out bucause there are SO many things you could do with it and experiment! I hope I get a couple of good things to put in my portfolio. I want to try different colors, layering, maybe transfer it to something different than paper. If you're interested I suggest going through the galleries in deviantart, there are tons of artworks that make you wanna throw away what you're doing and make something with your own hands  http://browse.deviantart.com/traditional/?q=screen%20printing&order=9&offset=96

In the evening I went to the best lecture we've had at uni till now.
I'd say most of us hadn't heard of Julian Roberts till Wednesday but in two hours he proved himself to be the most inspiroring person we've seen. He's a designer/pattern cutter and is one of those people who are unique and genious in the true sense of the words. Even if you're not into fashion, let alone pattern cutting (I myself am not, althoug I consider myself a designer) but this is a person we could all learn something from.
First of all, his clothes are amazing and don't resemble anything you've seen. But that is not the point, really. The poin is how he gets there. What he is doing is using a very intuitive way of making clothes, the most (and I can't empathize this enough) simple way of making clothes there probably is. He is a dyslecsic and found it very hard to work with patterns, measurments, proportions, to imagine a garment the way we all do. So he went around it. He uses his body for measuring, he works by laying a person on the ground and cutting the fabric around him, for example. He literally proved his tutors and the rest of the world wrong, transforming this strict dry proces into something intuitive that barely meets numbers. He doesn't know what he'll end up with when he starts making a garment, he doesn't work with catwalks, he presents his collections by organising an exhibition and literally making the whole collection infront of the people present, he makes a 100 garments in a week, he bent a science and made it work around his understandings and visions of the world.
He's had 5 brands so far and when he gets bored of the current one he just sells it on e-bay for a pound. The patterns, the designs, everything. Because he doesn't want old things holding him back and old designs repeating. He doesn't see a limit to his imagination and unlike most people would do, he is not putting a pattent on this proces, he is going around the world telling people about it and encouraging them to use and develop it. This is a great man and there are quite a few of his level.
This is his website:  http://www.julianand.com/
And this is a pdf of his work you should see: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/9119943/Julian%20Roberts%20Presents.pdf
I also made a vieo during his cutting demonstration which I'd also like to share. I have a couple more, but they are not good enough. I apologize for the leg/foot in the right bottom corner.



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