Self Portrait Project Week 1
Self Portrait Project Week 1
13/06/19 Thursday
Today was the critique for my first project, I was quite nervous about how to explain my final photo to my peers, the inspiration of my self portrait was come from David Lachapelle. The meaning I tried to express is the I am unconfined to my face and tried to used details cover whole look. During this critique, I have seen many other's work, some of them makes me wonder the stories behind it, some of them terrified me! However, after this critique, I learned how to use different visual to define a project.
BA Course Research
My discipline is bespoke tailoring, in this course, I will learn more professional technical skills and presentation skills. I think bespoke tailoring is very important not just in tailoring world, even in high fashion. The reason I want to do bespoke tailoring is because I want to change people's definition of women wearing tailoring jacket or blazer There were some people thought tailoring suit could be too boring for women, in my opinion, tailoring suit is one of the most important element in fashion world, I love focus on those details, like buttons, lapel, the lining. Christian Dior, Giorgio Armani, Yves Saint Laurent, those are my favourite designers. They all discovered the new silhouette of jacket, they changed impressions of tailoring jackets in people's mind.
Villain & Hero
26/06/19
Villain
Thomas Alva Edison
As an inventor and scientist, I have to admit he did some great job for human, like gramophone and alternator, but it still cannot cover his stain. There were some people thought he invented light bulb, actually he didn't invent it, he just improved it. He used his influence to let people believe he made this. This is one of the reason I strongly dislike him. However, the biggest mistake he made was suppress Nikola Tesla, Tesla did many useful and experimental inventions, but just because he was Edison’s competitor, so Edison tried almost every single way to denial Tesla’s inventions and theory. He denied the public the chance to benefit from better inventions. From this point, he was never a generous person.
He used to say, Fake it till you make it. In my personal opinion, this is extremely misleading I ever heard. The only reason he can say that, is because he finally succeeded, but for those people who getting wrong meaning of this sentence, the thing they made was totally different from what they had planned. The best example is Elizabeth Holmes, she was inspired by this sentence, but she only get the first part (Fake it), not the last part (make it). I think people should take risks, in positive way, mindless lie won't be help at all. although he got a lot of patents in his life, his most satisfied product was himself, a person who successfully integrated technology and business.
Hero
Karl Lagerfeld
The reason I take him as my hero is not what he did recently, is because what he did in last century. He took over Chanel when no one is optimistic about this brand and he recreated the whole look of Chanel let it back to the top again. For some people, measuring the level of designer may not be how success of the brand is, but consider the situation and position of Chanel a the time, measuring designer’s ability is depends on if he can make this brand back to the the beginning, he know adopt to the environment according to the change of time in different period. He knows the most important thing is impression of Chanel in people's mind must be at the top, for achieve that he add a lot of element from our daily life and turn that into his collection. (like airport, restaurant, beach, casino etc) His interest were not only in fashion design, he also take part in commercial shooting or film direction, photography. For me, diversification is the most appropriate word to describe him.
PechaKucha Draft
Co-Creative Project 2 & PechaKucha Presentation Week 6
15/07/19 Monday
Since we decided the material. I did some experiments during the weekend. I made some fabric sample by using banana peel. For turn banana peel into fabric there were few steps I had been discovered. I had to remove all the mesocarp from the peel, after that I need to wait for oxidation, once it turn into darker colour, I cut them into small piece and boil the peel around the 2 minutes. Once it finished, the texture of banana peel will become soft, so I can easily mash them into pasty and pressed it flat, I put them under sunshine to let it dry.
When the sample is not totally dry, it was quite fixable. So we were thinking to make something which can really fit the silhouette from the part of body. In the afternoon, we came out the final idea, we are going to make a sculpture which can perfectly fit the shape of the hand.
17/07/19 Wednesday
Today was the critic of this project. I made a sculpture which can fit the shape of wrist. However, if I only use banana peel the whole structure will be too delicate. So I combined with 100% compostable bag, inspired by the disposable gloves. Consider the texture of banana peel sample, I cannot use sewing machine to sew them together so I choose to use hand sew, which is also an important element from bespoke tailoring. This sculpture was totally biodegradable. If I got more time for this project, I will try more experiments of turn banana peel into actual fabric.
18/07/19 Thursday
Today was PechaKucha presentation. In my PechaKucha, I talked about the journey since I was a child and how does my family atmosphere effects me until I decided to do bespoke tailoring for my BA. In the beginning of presentation, I was a little bit nervous, I worried I cannot finish each slide in 20 seconds. So I have to improve the speed of speaking. In my presentation, I mention my education history and my future ambitions, I thought it was really important to show people the story behind this. For the Feedback from Emma, she said I had a meticulous logic and planning, I explained well the reason why I want to do bespoke tailoring in BA, but in the meantime, she hoped that I can put more current work in.
Reflective Review
Reflective Review
I am really pleased about the achievement I had during foundation plus so far. In the beginning, it was a big challenge for me, I was afraid to present some of my work in front of other people, I never Cooperate with other people for a week project. This course gave a lot of new experiments. It also helps me to understand how to develop a project further. My favourite project is Co-Creative project, in this project, I discovered new way to making fabric, and I also learned from my partner how to do 3D model, this is not just making something I never worked on before, for me, this is like a journey to learn from other discipline, and how to do teamwork. In foundation plus, I found action plan and critical practice is really useful, it can helps me to recon my process developments. When I doing my critical practice, I can always came out with more idea. In this course, I have been asked to do a lot of research about my discipline in BA for many times, in critical practice, in PechaKucha, even in every project, I do believe that now I have a better connection and understanding to my course in BA. During this one and half month, I admit I do feel pressure sometimes, but I always try to push myself harder, to challenge myself. Emma told me I should put my sense of humour into my work, I like that idea and I think my personality is the most important element in my work.
At the start, I always got stuck when I doing critical practice, because I just recorded my process like diary, but after the study support, I found a better and easier way to do critical practice, always question myself, always ask myself why am I doing this? What's the inspiration behind this? After I completed 6 project from different discipline, like graphic design, product design, photography, I am really excited about my final project. I never touched wood, clay or metal workshop before last month, after I found out those workshop can helps me todo more experiments, I always want to try using different material and become braver.
Another important thing I learned is time management, in this course, I have to manage my time reasonable so I can develop more idea. Before this, most of time I like to leave things until the last minute, but from the experience of this period, I started to plan my time reasonable, I think this is also a preparation for my BA study.
I have great expectations for my final project, I will do my best to complete foundation plus.
Handmade Project Week 2
17/06/19 Monday
For this project, I found very interesting, the theme was about handmade, my progression of undergraduate is bespoke tailoring, there is a connection between them. I do like handmade stuff, not just because they are expensive or exquisite (they are) but the main reason is because this represents an attitude and spirit. The inspiration could be really simple but I like the way people present this by using their own hand, not cold machines! I went out and did some research last week and I took a lot of pictures of flowers, those flowers make me feel the energy of life. Around the King’s Cross station, there were many modern buildings, I think there is a really strong contrast between them, vibrant flowers and very industrialised buildings. I want to do a lot of drawing to express the texture and shape of flowers. I have been ask to make 10 samples about this project
19/06/19 Wednesday
From the experience of today and yesterday, I found out a really useful way to keep moving in the right direction. Always question myself why? Why am I doing this? Why this techniques makes my concept stronger? The word I selected for this project is smear. I think this is a really flexible word, it can have either a positive or a negative connotation. For example, in my opinion smear is the normal way to do acrylic or oil painting, I like the texture when people smear the colour on the material, I can feel the energy and movement, and the thing makes me really excited about is sometimes you can see people’s finger print in that colour. However, in some way smear does give people headaches, sometimes children will using mud to smear on the wall or floor, but I quite like that way, I think hands could be the best material for smear something, it also respond the project “Handmade”. There was an artist which I found fascinating about her work during my research, Marilyn Minter. She was an American photographer, in some of her work, the photographs she took makes people feel she smeared something on top to make it looks blurry. When I look at this picture I felt mysterious, I think probably only smear can do this kind of effect. Bases on the research I did( primary research & secondary research) and my own definition to smear, I did a few experiments, I used my hand and arm to smear on the white paper, when I do this experiment, I tried to control the force on my fingers, so that the line or the area I draw can make people feel energy, the most important thing is different force will make different texture. I choose green, red and black as main colour, because those were from my primary research and I thought it could be very interesting if I make it looks like someone smear very hard on flower and making explore. I want to add this element into 10 samples I am going make.
Digital Forest Project Week 3
24/06/19 Monday
Today I went to do some primary research in Queens Wood, the theme of this weekly project is digital forest. In my understanding, this theme has very strong contrast, forest should be totally natural but digital means 100% manmade. The combination of this two could break the boundary between manmade and natural.
During the research, I realised there were a lot of movement in the forest, but sometimes people won't pay attention to those details. I record a few short videos, like when I play the swing, when my friend run down from the hill. During I recording those, my camera was shaking with my movement. I took 9 screenshots from this video and for my further development I will edit them in Photoshop. I also picked up some objects from the forest, a piece of leaf and some branches with leaves on it.
25/06/19 Tuesday
Today, I was planning to do a few experiments to respond to movement. I putted the branch on scanner and when it's start, I move the branch really fast. So it created kind of radioactive silhouette. In this project, I want to develop my digital technique further. In my primary research, I took a picture of cobwebs, I thought this could be interesting elements to add in my final outcomes.
27/06/19 Thursday
Today I decided to develop further about my movement, I used some senses from the videos I took from the forest. For the background, I wanted to use cobwebs. I tried to make a contrast between them. Cobwebs makes me felt getting trapped, so I tried to express myself want to escape from the nature. As addition, I used photo to make the tone of image brighter, I found out if I make the texture of trunk brighter, it may looks like circuit board. I thought it would a nice way to respond the theme: Digital Forest.
Tutorial & Skills Week 4
01/07/19 Monday
From today's tutorial, Emma and I were look about my workflow and my sketchbook. She pointed out I do have few problem in my sketchbook, I need to show more picture during my development process. For me, I do realise I had this problem for long time, I always focusing on the final outcome, so sometimes I will skip the process and some details, in my future work I do have to focus more on the development stage. For my workflow, I don't have enough research so Emma suggests me if I think find a new artist is too difficult I cannot always try to find some artists who contact to my future discipline, and about my critical practice page, I have a few more to catch up. So far I think that progress I'm doing is very useful for my future study in BA, in previous project I always find something to challenge myself, for example I'm not good at using digital technique to improve my work, like photoshop and illustrator, but when I attend digital workshop I learned a lot. For my next step, I want to develop more of my time management skills.
04/07/19 Thursday
Today was the first skills day, I was in the fashion illustration group, I was really excited about this because I do like to draw illustrations since GCSE. In past two years during my A-level, I tried to develop more skills about illustration, like proportion, tones. However in the morning session the tutor talked about continuing drawing and blind drawing, I never try those before. For me is totally way to draw illustration.The tutor also talked about how to define the silhouette of garment. I really like one of the artists my tutor showed me,
Co-Creative Project Week 5
08/07/19 Monday
Today was the first day of Co-creative project, I have asked to bring 10 different projects(including favourite food to share). For me, the most challenging thing is working with people I don't know, I was quite panic about how to cooperate with my partner. My first impression for my partner was not bad, I was really looking forward about this chance to have a group work in foundation plus, it can improve my ability to working with other people, after we finished food sharing part, my partner and I had a long conversation about introducing 10 objects to each other.
About food sharing part, Georgia proposed in pairs to cover one of us eyes and the other one chose some food from the food table, and feed the people whose eyes got covered, I thought it won't be any different, but the moment my eyes got covered I do felt nervous about what am I going to eat, it might explain why human always afraid of unknown stuff. My partner took a jelly candy for me, it tasted nothing different with normal jelly candy, but I had totally different feeling compared without eye covered.
09/07/19 Tuesday
Today's session was about visiting CSM museum and materials research in library. The object my partner and I had been given is a piece of textile fabric or carpet, it says “CLEAN ME” on top of the textile, those letter was using crochet to mixed two different fabric. In the beginning I have no idea what's the fabric of this textile, when I touched by disposable gloves it feels like normal cotton thread, the colour of this was mixed with beige and grey, it makes me feel dirty, I quite understood why it said “CLEAN ME”. On the back of this textile piece, the fabric was really smooth and with a shining texture, it makes me feel really luxurious and comfortable, so I guessed the fabric could be silk. I thought smell could be a good way discover more about this piece of textile, but it smells just like other new carpet, I can't tell the difference from the smell. At the end of museum session, the tutor told me the colour was coming from car pollution air, I was glad to know about a new way to tired waste into something of value, but in the meantime, I do regret I smell this textile quite a long time, I hope the bacteria from the pollution air won’t effect my health.
During the material research session in CSM library, I was fascinating about those material or fabric made by new technologies. For example, there was a leather which made by mushrooms, the colour and the texture were very close to real leather. There were also has some fabric sample which made by pig blood and pig hair, all of these part are usually going to waste during production, when people turn that into something we can actually used in really life. This session have me many inspirations for my co-creative project, my BA course is bespoke tailoring and my partner's BA course is jewellery design. So we were thinking if we can making something from the waste and turn into a product people can wear.
11/07/19 Thursday
Today, my partner and I develop some idea from yesterday's critical practice session. During that session, we have been asked to combine few commons from both of our disciplines, I am going to do bespoke tailoring in LCF and my parter going to do jewellery in CSM. We had a discussion and we found out we all want to make something which perfectly fit the body, so this going to be one of the most important element in this project, and in this project I also want to use some material which is biodegradable and has a certain degree of sustainability. In the end of that session, Georgia mentioned the museum object we got make her related to the human’s DNA, I thought that was a really interesting inspiration. So last night I made a mind map see if I can connect ideas together. This morning, I found some connection between dirty white van and dirty makeup cotton pad. Once people using cotton pad to remove their makeup, they must leave some body issue on it, like hair, dead skin. In those waste body issue, it will has their DNA. So today we did a lot of experiments by using something will have body issue residue, like disposable gloves, and we also used double sided tape to put on the skin of our arms see if we can get some body hair, it was painful! But it worth it, we do got a few body hair. We also used PVA glue to put on the back of our hands, once it dry, we can get some dead skin and the texture of the skin. In the afternoon, we developed those ideas further, we tried to make some 3D model from the experiments we did in the morning. However when we went to mental workshop and clay workshop tried to make some sculpture, we had an idea about using copper tube as structure with full of finger prints and skin texture PVA glue on it, but we thought that was not deep enough and cannot tell the relate to perfect fit. We decided to do more research tonight and have a discussion tomorrow morning.
12/07/2019 Friday
Last night, during my research, I had a big breakthrough for this project. I found a very interesting information, banana has 60% similar to human’s DNA. I think this information can help me to get through the situation so far. I have to admit that we had a little bit stuck. We were not sure how to develop this project further. After I discussed with my parter on Friday morning, we decided to use banana peel as the main material for this project.
PechaKucha Draft
1.My name is Yubo Zhang. I’m student of Bespoke Tailoring.
2.I grew up in art family atmosphere. My father was an art teacher before I was born and now he is an interior designer, my mother also working design industry, few of close family member are also in the same industry, so may childhood was uplift influenced in art & design, I like to do sketches when I was bored.
3.My mum has enlighten my interest of tailoring. Because she always wear well fitted formal clothes, the childhood memory has deeply traced in my mind.
4.My education history from Singapore to UK From Sherborne to International School of Creative Arts.
5.The people who inspired me. My biology teacher, she was an artist and an actress. She really support me and gave me a lot of advice.
6.Those are my earlier work when I was study in Singapore, I haven’t touch fashion at all at at time. I just had interested in painting. My favourite material are acrylic and watercolour.
7.Until 2015, I saw Giorgio Armani fashion show on Youtube encounter by chance. From start, I was attracted by the music, I was attracted by those women who are wearing suit, it looks powerful. From this point, I was firmly believe I want to be a designer.
8.After that, I followed those fashion house such as Yves Saint Laurent, Christian Dior, Giorgio Armani, they gave me a lot of influence for women fashion. Apart from this, I also pay attention to many tailoring house like Gieves Hawkes, Huntsman…..
9.Christian Dior is one of my favourite brand, what he brought to French was not just clothing and garments, he designed new look, make women more confident and more feminine during the war.
10.This is the print I designed for my A-level, inspired by Jupiter & Space.
11.During my A-level study, I created my own style fashion illustration.
12.Some of my practice works during A-level, those practice helps me to improve my understanding to bespoke tailoring.
13.My first tailored blazer, inspired by Dior bar jacket.
14.This is my very first garment, I tried to express the power of female, so l used large shoulder pads and combine the shape of suit.
15.This is the work I made to apply LCF bespoke tailoring, I wanted to used very simple line to define female silhouette. For me, simple is the best, less is more!
16.Most people has some misunderstood to bespoke tailoring, they thought tailor jacket are too boring and no design.
17.But they were wrong, made to measure is the best way to explain bespoke, made a piece of suit just for someone, it’s unique. All the details, the type and colour of buttons, what kind of pocket? Which fabric? What kind of collar for shirt? This suit will become your signature.
18.Bespoke tailoring is also very important in high fashion world, all of the atelier and designers needs tailoring to complete their design.
19.In my future, I really want to working in atelier house to explore more idea and develop more silhouette for female bespoke tailoring.
20.I really want to have a hairless cat! They are so cute!