Le Tour De France Report

For the summer project I was told to research le tour de France, I started my research by visiting ‘the bike show’ at the ‘civic’, while I was there I took many photos which were then used in my sketchbook, I also went to York and Manchester over the summer and took pictures of everything that was connected with the tour, this included bunting, yellow bikes, posters and more. Over the summer I made a tour de France board on Pinterest where I pinned some art and various pictures from the tour and pictures that were connected with the tour. On the first day back after the holidays a still life was set up of various bike parts where I could do some drawing from observation which I did in different Medias.

I didn’t really get much inspiration from the ‘bike show’ at the civic as it all seemed quiet similar and nothing truly stood out for me, however I tried to look at each piece and try to look at it not as a whole piece and tried breaking things up slightly, but it didn't really work for me.

There was a lot I didn’t like at the exhibition but this was because everything was the same, nothing was individual, I would go from one piece to another and it felt as if I was looking at the same one as before. Also there wasn't really anything that interested me, I enjoy things that are quiet craft based and not just bike frame after bike frame or print after print which had no flare to it.

The three main artists I looked at in the summer that their worked was based around bikes were Eleanor Grosch, Fifi Flowers and Andy Arthur. I don’t particularly think any o their work inspired my work and I didn’t really take much forward in my project. The only one that went on into my sheet work was Groschs’ work as I did use her piece with the bikes going past the field of sunflowers, this inspired various parts of my work and I did a simplified version of the sunflowers on my print. They other two artists didn’t really go further into my work as I didn’t really like their work that much.

Throughout this project I have done many different techniques and processes, some which I have done before and some which are completely new to me. One of the first things I did was knitting, I had only done this a few times before and I hadn't really got the hang of it but I managed to get a few samples done as well as use it while looking at my knitting artist. I also did wet felting and needle felting, I had done the wet felting a couple of times before so I found it fairly easy to get on with and didn’t run into many problems. I used some of my wet felting to do my needle felting which was a new process to me, I found it quite hard to start with and couldn’t really get much detail into it but in the end I think I did a decent piece. I looked at weaving for a short time as I had done it before, I didn’t really think this would fit in with this project so I decided to just do a small sample. This year I got to make my own tracing for a screen print which I think went really well, I revisited paper making this year so that I could print onto it.

I did a few experiments with my work this time including printing onto some of my wet felting, this went rather well I think and looks rather affective, I enjoyed this as it wasn’t really something I would have normally printed on. Another thing was I printed over an old piece of muslin that had puff binder on it, this didn’t work that well as the print looks quite broken up in places and you can’t really see the image properly. I tried printing on hand made paper which turned out better than I expected it to. When I looked at a knitting artist I tried to do Swiss darning, this was quiet difficult and I messed up quite a lot.

I looked at a few other artists in this project, Donna Wilson, Moy Mackay, Debra Esterhuizen and Janet Browne, their work linked in a lot to my work and some even inspired my final pieces. Mackay and Browne both inspired my needle felting final piece, I looked at Browne’s’ work and took the colours and the sheep from the scenery, and I looked at MacKay’s work to get a feel to how I should place each part and how some parts were fairly simple. Esterhuizen partly inspired my wet felting with the print on it as I really wanted to include a wet felting piece but I wanted it to be more than just a felted piece so I printed on top of it.

I decided on my final pieces by having a design meeting with my tutor about which were my strongest points in each sample and which would work in the time I had to complete it.

I don’t think I managed my time that well in this project and should have spent more time on certain parts rather than leaving a large chunk of it to be finished in such a small amount of time. I also should have spent more time getting better research as I struggled a little with getting ideas for certain parts of the project.

I think the majority of my work went fairly well and I really started to enjoy the project once I got to start making things. Some of the problems I did have were when I was doing my samples I tried printing on my felt, it work okay but I don’t think this piece was fully felted as some of the fibres came up slightly and also I didn’t apply enough pressure so the print didn’t come out fully. Another problem was when I went to do one of my final pieces I started printing onto my had made paper and because it wasn’t flat enough the print didn’t work properly so I was lucky that I had made spares in case anything went wrong, I decided that the only way to get around this problem would be to flatten the paper, as I had used an old piece for my sample it was flat from being between the pages of a sketch book for so long, I didn’t have time to flatten it between anything so I used the heat press, I put it under for 18 seconds on 180°C, this flattened it enough to print on. For my other final piece I had to do some wet felting so I could needle felt onto it, the first attempt didn’t go so well as it was too small and also I didn’t use enough wool and you could see through the felt when you help it up to the light as well as there being a small hole in the felt, I then made another making it thicker and I did it much bigger so when I’d done I could just cut it down to size. I think that in the end my three final pieces went really well and they link in to my sheet work. I don’t think I would really change anything other than I wish I would have had time to do a few more pieces.

I didn’t really enjoy the start of the project as I couldn’t really see anything interesting with bikes and I got bored really quick, I really struggled with inspiration and it was only when I went back to college that I realised it wasn’t just about the bikes so I tried to look at the scenery and shapes as well as simplifying bikes by just taking small parts and then I really got into it, Although this may have been a little late and I don’t feel I reached my full potential.

Each time I did something new in class I tried to update my blog, however I did lose track and failed to get everything on there when it should have gone on, but I used it the best I could, this included going back to old posts and reading about the health and safety for the workshops so that I knew what I had to do when doing each process.

I didn’t uses my sketchbook effectively at all, I pretty much forgot about it once I got back to college and started my sheet work, I should have been going back to it constantly rather than leaving it. I just didn’t feel like it would help me with my work so I relied on my sheet work instead.