Introductory Weeks: Design and Sketchbook Development Workshops

Design Development:

For the final couple of days of our introductory weeks in the fashion and textiles pathway we were given workshops on the basics of design and sketchbook development. For design, we were told to draw several random shapes and then pick one as a starting point for a clothing range. Then, using this shape, we drew a series of rough designs, with five minutes to focus on each item of clothing or detail. The shape I chose was a curved zig-zag, rather like a heart monitor line. With this as a basis, I drew several rough designs for shirts, coats, dresses, skirts, and sleeve, collar and pocket details:

Although I found this method of design challenging at first, as I am usually a perfectionist with my work, after a bit I loosened up and now feel it was a useful exercise to help my design methods. Once we had finished these rough design sheets we picked out one design from each category. This was then developed into five more-detailed design ideas, with front and back views. I drew these working in pen on loose design sheets:

Coats

Dresses

Skirts

Shirts

All the way through you can see the the simple influence of the original shape, bringing the designs together so that they could clearly be a collection. From these more detailed design boards we were then able to pick out garments and put them together into outfits. These we worked into our sketchbooks, adding colour:

This was a short introduction to the most basic form of design and so the day of work was quite episodic and practical. I recognise the applicable skills learnt in this workshop are useful; however, I do not particularly like my final five outfits as I normally prefer to work from more diverse and in-depth inspiration.

My Necklace

Sketchbook Development:

Similarly, in our sketchbook development workshop we used a simple starting point to illustrate the basic ideas. Using a personal object (in my case my necklace) we photographed, photocopied and drew it in various ways, to show the importance of mixed media and different perspectives in our work. Below is the sketchbook page in which I drew my necklace using pastels, pen, pencils, graphite and collage:

Once we had done his we were told to produce several development designs in our books, thinking about turning our interpretations of the object into products, and placing them on the body: 

I used collage for this part of the development, generally keeping my pages quite simple so there wasn't too much to focus on. I enjoyed this day of our introductory lessons especially since I am often quite nervous in the presentation of my work and so being taught and told the requirements for layout and development of ideas in our sketchbooks was helpful.