Brandon Webb

When I started the project, I really wanted to improve upon the other work that I had done throughout the course and show that I am capable of doing better. I mainly considered what new mediums I could use and how I might make improvements in my journal work so that I could get a bit closer to achieving my goals. My main motivation at the beginning of my final project was to have a set of completed work that would stand out from the rest of my other work. Some of my aspirations for the future involve being able to research and write good information for future projects and have the necessary skills needed to progress in the future. This is so that I can become a costume designer ready to apply the skills that I have learnt.

My work in this project was inspired by the natural and man-made world. I chose this topic because I wanted to focus on how the two link together and because of the number of possibilities that came with the idea. I made sure to think about everything that involves the natural world as I could including landscapes, animals, insects, and the beauty of the world. I didn’t really have much of a meaning behind what I was trying to say with the work other than how wonderful our world can really be if you take away all of the mechanical and technological aspects of it. Although I don’t think I explored the man-made world that much, I think that it benefited me in how I progressed my project so that I could focus more on the natural world. It really helped to be able to explore different artists around the industry to give me new ideas on new mediums or how the most grotesque parts of the natural world including flies, can create something beautiful on their own. This is when researching John Knuth and how he attracted flies with a homemade recipe mixed with paint, then got them to vomit on a canvas which created wonderful, coloured and interesting pieces of art. I also learnt some new and interesting skills including felting which would come in handy when creating my final piece. Felting included pulling apart felt fibres and laying them down on chiffon before spraying them with soapy water for the pieces to be fused together. The technique requires you to do a lot of pushing a rolling pin over your piece and lots of whacking it on the table for your work to be successful.

Another technique I learnt included the heat set shibori. This involves using silk sheets and tying small buttons on coins inside before placing them into a saucepan to boil for around 45 minutes. The ending result will end up looking great once you remove the buttons and see that the silk has frozen in a way to stay into its button attached form. I also looked at silk fibre bonding. This is when you attach lots of hair-like pieces and cotton wool to a sheet of baking paper then let them heat up for 20 seconds with the result being a unique piece that would accompany me for my final piece.

When my project was progressing, I ended up experimenting with some half-man, half-animal drawings much like the Egyptian gods before. I liked these ideas and they intrigued me enough into basing my final piece concepts off of the idea. I created some really cool looking armour ideas including a crab man and a fly armour. The fly armour was originally going to be my final piece but I found that it was already an idea that was done too many times. I ended up settling for a more detailed and fascinating design which was the coral suit. I made sure to include lots of bubbly texture and bright colours to really compliment the Beautiful colours of the sea.

The final piece creation ended up looking acceptable in the end and was mostly made from felted armour pieces sewn onto EVA foam. The foam had straps that would attach these pieces around me whilst wearing a green top and some bottoms. I created a nice big torso piece out of silk fibre which also strapped around me to stay in place. I very much feel like I could have done better with it by adding some more shibori and maybe a better way of securing the pieces onto my body. I am still very pleased with how my project turned out in the end though and it only motivates me to try new ideas in the future.