Skulls, skulls, skulls

I noticed that I've not put any of my work or drawings on here for a while, I've been drawing skulls and things related to Mexico as part of my personal passions brief. 
Here are a few pictures; 

Black fine-liner and acrylic 

Black fine-liner 

Mono printing 

Paper cut-outs

Ink and watercolour 

Pencil

Ink and black fine-liner

Ink and black fine-liner

Ink

I've tried a different range of drawings styles and using different materials and techniques to draw with and se what i could achieve. 

Marchesa Fall 2012

When I was looking into laser cut fabrics and designers that use them I came across the work of Marchesa, a British Fashion Designer duo who met at Chelsea College of Art and Design in London. And began the company Marchesa in 2004, creating beautiful and elegant evening wear. These images were from the Winter 2012/2013 collection, the one dress that first caught my eye was the black leather laser cut dress, I thought that it really linked in well with the Giles designs that I have also blogged about. The Marchesa collection was inspired by the painting by William Adolphe Bouguereau, A Soul Brought to Heaven, this inspired the collation with its use of angelic colours such as gold, cream, white and ivory. Other pieces that caught my attention from this collection were the gold embroidered dresses, I thought that they were interesting, beautiful and elegant. 

Rita Fürstenau

Stationary is something that I am really interested in, and I want to start looking into it more as this is what I eventually want to put my designs onto. Although I love stationary I don't know of many stationary artist, so I decided to research and look into it more. I came across the work of Rita Fürstenau, who is a German artist and illustrator. Fürstenau's work has been screen printed onto booklets, I love the beautiful colour palettes for the booklets and the simple line designs printed onto them. 

Giles

I came across the work of Giles Deacon a few years ago, and really liked his unique fashion collections. The fashion line is called Giles, and the collection that caught my eye was the Spring/Summer 2012 line. 
I thought that the mixture and print fabrics and and block fabrics, but the silver laser leather cut out fabrics really interested me. I am looking at paper and fabric cut outs at the moment for my project on Mexico, I have been looking at Mexican paper cut outs and also the work of Rob Ryan and other paper cut artists. 
Here are some pictures: 

Jennifer Collier

I first saw the work of Jennifer Collier at The Great Northern Contemporary Craft Fair, and I did a blog post in October. She creates beautiful sculptures made from recycled and reused papers and creates something new such as a typewriter, camera, dresses, shoes, phones and even vacuum cleaners, each one realistic to both size and shape. She uses a range of different techniques such as wax entrapment, weaving and sewing. 
Last week Jennifer Collier came into college and gave a talk about her work, inspirations and her workshops. 
She studied Textiles at MMU in 1996-1999 and she has always described her work as fine art/textiles, but never fashion. She collects old papers and maps, and all of the paper she works with somehow links to what she is actually making, such as the phone was made from an old phone directory. 
Her work has been exhibited in a lot of different places including the Museum Of Science and Industry, The Hat Works in Stockport, and Manchester Art Gallery. 
I really found her talk inspirational and what she said was really helpful for people doing an art degree, she said that you have to really try and not give up, you have to make connections, call and email people about showing and exhibiting your work. She also said you have to experiment with different techniques and applications and find your own style. I really like the saying "make happy accidents" and don't be worried about making mistakes because you learn from them. 

Mando Manderin

A few weeks ago we hand an artist talk from Mandy Trolley, who is an amazing textile artist, under the name of Mando Manderin. She creates embroidered cushions, baby comforters, bags, handkerchiefs, and personalised baby gifts, all made by hand.
In a lot of her works she uses an embroidery sewing machine to create the wonderful characters and animals in her works, such as; cats, dogs, bears, birds and deers. I really loved the technique because it looked really detailed, intricate and neat, each stitch and thread colour is chosen on a computer program, (similar to photoshop) and then the machine automatically sews the design. Another thing that I really liked about her work is that you can personalise gifts such as the baby comforters, I think that this is a really good idea to sell your products is the ability to be able to personalise different things because people really like personalised gifts and presents.
Here is some of her works;