Even if the tutorial with Alice helped a lot, getting advice, as well as tips and tricks from someone who's a student as well helped a lot. Because I have such a great connection with Johannes, he managed to help me stop stressing about my work, and made me aware of two things: that I should appreciate my work and that I should improve a few points. 

Points to improve:

• use more technical drawing: show how the shapes and textures from research translate into actual garments 
• use drapings to develop actual ideas of future garments
• always use faces on models
• have super strong illustrations 
• finish Denim Sketchbook and bring it in as well
• make the first few collages from Re-Use stronger (show the story of the concept in them by bringing elements together)
• stop stressing about getting a place!

Felt so blessed and thankful today, because I realised how lucky I am to be surrounded by such amazing, loving people. Even though everyone was stressed because UP was a few days away, I'm super thankful that they Tok their time to model and shoot for me. I really loved how Daiana and Lisa connected almost instantly, which made the shoot so much easier. Furthermore, the way Saran engaged with her whole heart into snapping the most amazing shots was absolutely incredible, because I was able to see my vision through her perspective. As an end to the project, Re-Use was one of the most dear ones I've ever worked on. And, in the end, I proved not only to myself but to others as well that loneliness doesn't exist, that being together is an absolute joy, and that collaboration is the basis of fashion. 

Because my garments and sketchbooks weren't finished, we decided that it's better for me to talk through my work and ask Alice what I should improve, and also about what confused me. Being able to ask her all the questions I had that made it so unclear on what I should or should not put in my portfolio helped me plan further:

• Friday to Monday: finish Re-Use Garments
• Monday: work with Johannes on samples
• Tuesday: work on Re-Use sketchbook 
• Wednesday: Shoot final looks; Finish Denim Sketchbook
• Thursday: Finish Re-Use Sketchbook and make 5 portfolio sheets
• Friday: Meet Johannes for tutorial and make 5 portfolio sheets
• Saturday: 5 portfolio sheets
• Sunday: 5 portfolio sheets; make cover for Re-Use Sketchbook; finish illustrations; put everything together.

Today's crit felt a bit vague, in a sense that the only thing that BA Tutors outlined is the lack of drawing in our practice, which I don't know if it applies to me as well, as I try to use it as much as possible. Overall, I'm satisfied with how the garment part and samples turned out: I felt like they really emphasised the connection I wanted to establish. Choosing to use my personal experience as the main theme allowed me to explore my well being and to understand how important it is to take care of myself, so I made a list with goals I'm aiming to achieve in these next months:

• have a better sleeping schedule; not some constant 8 hours, but at least more than 30mins!
• talk more to my parents about our experiences
• take care of myself and my mental health more
• explore more crochet techniques, but also look more into draping on the body.

The calico boat prototype really made me consider a more geometrical approach for my drapings, in order to really emphasise the industrial, rigid feel. It helped me to further develop some technical drawings of concepts for my final line-up. I Iwill also try to consider using circular shapes, because I was firstly inspiredby the round sailor berets, which I think it will create a nice contrast of fluid-rigid.

While developing designs from the round beret shapes, I realised that two joined circles would represent best me and my father; as we complete each other. In a way, I felt like this project was very related to the last two ones, as they talked about belonging and being together as a whole, and because they always tend to link to each other, I found myself using the double circle structure from the Damien Poulain project. I really loved how I was able to reuse it and to make something new out of a thing I already had,  but I also found it quite fortunate, as both of the projects talk about togetherness. :)

Plan for tomorrow:

• work on more geometrical drapings;
• drape on the circles;
• develop some technical designs from drapings.

After watching a number of tutorials (for something so easy), I finally got the hang of how to make origami boats. While working on illustrations, I used some boats as hats, which gave me the idea of making a boat hat out of calico, as a draping exercise. It made me think of the shape of sailor hats. I found these interesting round berets, which was a bit ironical, because for me, circles have a strong meaning behind: the idea of being together and safe, which is how I feel about my bond with my father.

For tomorrow, I will:

• start developing some designs from the shapes;
• tone down the very bright red on the pages; 
• draping.

Felt really pleased today of how my moodboard ended up. Taking a step back and visualising what I've been constantly researching was a good way to see it more clearly, as a whole, not just in detail. Moreover, I realised that even though I have a strong personal research, as well as textural and colour research, my denim one lacked a bit. I will look a bit further into sailor wear and Russian constructivism, as Alice suggested.

The 6 collages I made today helped me visualise the concept for the project better. The techniques showed in the presentation gave me a clear perception on how I can make my collages more understandable and clean, without using massive amounts of information. 

While being home in Romania for the holidays, I felt like I had a digital detox from everything that was stressing me since the beginning of the course. Being able to see my family and friends was a break well received, as this pause allowed me to clear my mind and restart working on portfolio with a fresh vision. While I was there, I planned on doing 3 main things:

• go fabric shopping (from second hand stores)
• reflect on my previous work in order to see how it evolved 
• work on the crochet samples for Johannes and learning new crochet techniques from mom.

Fabric shopping was super exciting, as I was able to find loads of textures, shapes, yarns withing the textiles I've found, and it made me already think of how I want to reuse and contextualise them in further projects. It also made me so much more aware of all the reusable resources we have out there, and how creative we can become when we limit ourself to work with something that already had a past; perhaps, giving a future to something old is more personal, exciting and precious than just giving life to something new. 

Looking at my previous work made me have mixed feelings towards it. While the pre-CSM work looked more finished and put together, I feel lime it wasn't speaking for myself and it lacked a personal feeling. I wasn't so interested in sustainable approaches, expressing personal emotions, or collaborating with others; if anything, I was trying my best to do it all by myself. Since I started the course, I've found myself being more engaged into ethical practices, being constantly aware of the environment and how my designs can have as much of a small negative impact on it. Moreover, the range of materials I started to use became so much wider, from plastic thread to food packaging to lace. I now feel like I've started to find my voice to visually tell my stories and my belief, something that I think I was doing, but not in my best way. Even though I thought the course was making me more confused than confident, finally being able to take a break from it truly showed me how much I evolved and how much it helped me become who I wanted to be.

Working with Johannes on the first samples found me in a very stressful position, as I was trying to male everything perfect and to outline as best as I could his concept. Crocheting with wire gave me a good understanding on materiality manipulation and how I can explore a range of traditional techniques while using non conventional mediums. In the end, the way he communicated with me and how well he explained is ideas made the collaboration super easy and very fluid, as I will continue to help his with samples and other things.

Alice really helped me understand what I'm lacking in my research, as I was always a bit confused while looking at it. She advised me to be less decorative and to follow a story, a timeline, which was missing in the sketchbooks. Also, she gave me the confidence I needed to put Knit as my first option, because I didn't trust my skills enough to do it. She also advised me that LCF might not be the best option for me, which is the exact confirmation I needed, as I feel like it wouldn't have been one of my best options. Overall, it was super helpful to get me going and finish my projects.

POINTS TO IMPROVE:

• Use more imagery
• Use more drawing (mark making?)
• Be less decorative with research

Today's final crit found me a bit too tired after a full night trying to finish everything. I felt like my final illustration lacked a bit more than I initially thought and moreover, they felt very disconnected to the whole project. As for my final lineup, I wish I used more technical detail, as everything was very textural and busy and you couldn't really distinguish the elements. Overall, I felt like this was the first I actually really enjoyed, and I think it's mostly because I allowed myself to follow my own way of working more, going back and revisiting my drawing skills and learning to enjoy them again.

How was today's design development process informed your project?

I think the development have summed up and really emphasised my concept. It was very interesting to manipulate shapes from my collages and see how they would fit on the body, but it also gave me a vivid knowledge of where I'm heading further.

Why did we ask you to draw garment details?

Garment details are important to have a better understanding of how you will shape the garment further. By adding different sew lines, collars, buttons or zippers, we begin to understand how the garment drapes on the body, and in terms of textures, they help us visualise what kind of fabrics we would like to use.

What was the relevance of scale in today's class?

Working on a small scale for the first part of development was very helpful, because of not having to worry about details and being able to concentrate on shape. Also, it allowed me to move quick and generate loads of possible future developments in a short time. Moving on a bigger scale, it was helpful to bring in functional details and textures, as I had the space to do so.

I found collaging our primary and secondary research today super fascinating as a technique to develop further our ideas. Seeing different textures, colours and shapes together as a whole really took them out of their primary context and I feel that they began to translate into our own; it became more personal and clear. 

Visualising them on the body was pretty useful in terms of generating ideas for future development.

The most important thing I've learned today is to trust the process: don't hurry into thinking about the final outcome, take your time to develop and let the development shape the garments, not the garments shape the development. 

Because I already knew I wanted to include various knitting techniques in my project, as it's based on the ideas of crafts in communities, today's macrame and crochet workshops were incredibly helpful. I enjoyed the crochet workshop a bit more than the macrame one, because it felt very personal, as I remembered that I used to crochet with my mom when I was a kid. While I was crocheting, I felt like I connected with my project better and that it's starting to take shape. Besides regular crocheting, I experimented a bit with plastic strips, which turned out pretty interesting and it gave me some ideas for developing my samples further.

I wasn't at the CSM Museum because I was a student ambassador for the FAD Open Day. Sorry! :( (Chris knows!)

Even though I didn't have an exact concept for my project until today, I managed to merge together my ideas. Discussing our projects in pairs helped a lot, not only in a way that it benefited my project, but in a way of seeing the different approaches of each other and being able to visualise them and perhaps make research suggestions. Because I was talking to Tom about wanting to emphasise the idea of transyilvanian crafts, he also told me about a weaving they do in his country (Korbac) which I found very interesting, because it broadened my perspective into looking beyond my traditions. It was quite hard to find a lot of references based on the 3 words I selected, but one of them helped me a lot: craftsmanship. Even though I was only able to find 1 book on lib search with this keyword, I found loads next to it on the shelves. I began to look at crafts around the world, and I was amazed to see that most of the products they produced were developed as a team. While researching artists, I found one picture that summarised my idea of belonging. Marina Abramovic's performance alongside Ulay really brought together my ideas of how to develop the "sense of belonging" I had in my head. 

Crits with Alice were very useful, as she suggested that (because I'm doing a project based on the idea of community), I can develop my garment as an interactive piece by asking people to contribute with small weavings and knits. Even though I had this idea in my head, I think I feel more confident with developing it now that she told me about it.

WEEKEND PLAN:

• explore objects in detail: deconstruct, multiply, enlarge, draw, collage them | create ways of "draping" them on the body 
• put the imagery found in sketchbook
• experiment with cable knitting and weaving
• buy/find more cables
• prepare cables for Monday for people to knit/weave with them 

PROJECT DESCRIPTION | BELONGING

The 2 objects I was mostly interested in are the used cables and headphones and the shoes. The starting point is deconstructing their purpose and giving them a new meaning, completely out of their normal use. Looking at the materiality of the cables, I thought they were very similar to yarns and I thought about trying to re contextualise them by experimenting with different knitting and weaving techniques. Inspired by Ana Lupas' work with the Transylvanian community, I want to research into the techniques they used to make the straw structures and apply them to the garment. For the shoes, I will deconstruct their actual purpose and try different ways to lay them out on the body, in relation to the cables, merging them together.

-intertwine

-craftsmanship | korbac| weaving 

-straw

-electronics

-symbiotic relationship

- Ana Lupas 

-Lynda Benglis 

-Marina Abramovic

-Santi Wangchuan

-Jen Simms

-Tunga 

By looking at Ana Lupas' work, I wanted to develop the idea of how communities and collective crafts give you a sense of belonging. I researched into crafts around the world, in different cultures too see how it brings them as a whole. Also, I thought about Marina Abramovic's work and how she is engaging with the community for her performances. It gave me the idea that they would not be possible to have them. She's creating a connection; and I found it similar in weaving and knitting. In this case, people are represented by the cables (as I collected them from different places and people), and them merging together by either knitting, knotting or weaving is the idea of belonging and creating a community. If one cable is missing, the whole material would fall apart.

Today's visit at Tate was for me, personally, essential in shaping the concept for my project. Looking around I was able to identify some artists that sparked my interest and I felt they could relate to the objects I had. Because I was very interested in the idea of knitting and weaving with cables, I tried to find artists that worked with this. I knew I also wanted to work with different structural shapes for the project, and that's how I found Ana Lupas' exhibition. At first, I was interested in the metal structures and their form, as a possibility to use them for the garment, but after I had a read of the project's description, my vision changed automatically. She used to work with the Transylvanian community to create straw structures through different traditional weaving methods and by that, she was in a constant connection to tradition and traditional society. I really liked the idea that such crafts bring us together, and I believe that the idea of community is quite the same with the idea of knitting or weaving: materials are bonded and knotted together to create a structure, a whole, that is better and stronger. 

I also found Tunga's work very captivating, especially the photograph of the two girls who were connected to each other by their hair: it made me visualise all the knots and tangles in their hair and how intricate they might look, but also how hard it would be to take them apart, as it would be painful both physically and mentally. I thought of this in relation to how we bond with others and how they offer us a sense of belonging.

For the evening, I plan on finishing the observational drawings of what inspired me from the exhibition.

I believe that exploring our objects in a different context today was a good practice in re contextualising their purpose. Personally, I preferred to do all the drawings and photographs outside, because all of my objects were related to actions that mostly happen inside (for instance, charging a phone). I really liked how the contrast between the fabricated-looking objects appeared alongside different plants, or how malleable cables looked wrapped around a concrete bench. It completely deconstructed their meaning and allowed space to get creative and visualise them from a different perspective.

While placing the cables on the bench, I realised that for the project, I want to include weaving and knitting.

After looking at other's drawings, I felt like mine were a bit flat. I will try to work on improving my techniques palette so I observe better different textures and compositions.

For the project, I went to look for objects at the Princess May Road Car Boot. I didn't have any preconceived idea of what I want to find, but I told myself I would try to only find objects that I've never worked with before (or never considered) to challenge myself. The 4 objects were:

• A surface: plastic bags, IKEA bags, vegetables packaging (all found at home)
• An object with linking qualities: cables that don't work anymore (car boot & different people)
• An object with a practical function: headphones (Turnpike Lane charity shop)
• An object with shape that intrigues me: shoe lasts (Princess May Road car boot)

Because I also wanted to restrict my budget, I tried my best to source most of the materials wither from home or from friends, because what I wanted to use for this project are essentially things that people never use again, but keep. Documenting the surroundings of the objects gave me a better understanding of them: shapes, colour, texture or. the story behind them. Moreover, I think is good to explore my findings as this establishes some sort of a more personal connection with them, giving myself the opportunity to see them outside their usual context.

The morning was filled with confusion and anger, as some of the banners people have produced were interpreted wrong. Because I was in the metal workshop alongside Ellie at the time the tutors told the group what was going on, I don't think I fully understood what happened, but in my opinion, there was a huge misunderstanding. I believe that everyone should have the freedom to express their beliefs and perhaps, as we discussed in contextual practice the other day, to consider some before speaking up, such as individuating or taking perspective so that there's not such a negative backlash on the students. At the same time, I can understand the people who felt offended by the banners, but in a way that they didn't take their time to actually understand what happened.

An amazing approach on the situation was the idea of creating a banner in response to the ones that were called out. I believe that this was a solution to the problem, but also a way of creating a stronger connection as a group by empathising and supporting each other in situations like this.

Seeing all the banners together was very rewarding for me, personally, as it brought us closer as a collective. Even though we were limited to primary colours, I could not consider it as a boundary: every artwork was completely different, from colour dosage to the way it was draped on the body or the concept behind it. It showed me that limiting yourself is not just about restricting your capacities of doing something good, but making you more creative. 

So far, it was the group project I enjoyed the most in all ways: team, communication (by overcoming language barrier), ideas flow and outcome.

Yesterday we decided that the main goal for this morning is to merge our letter and circles deconstruction samples together, but because all of us stuck them in the sketchbooks, we just looked through them to get inspired and really see how diverse this thing can go. It was amazing to see how we can create so many new shapes and layouts only using one form. Even if it was perhaps more challenging, as Damien said, "when you limit yourself you push yourself to become more creative". I really loved Deuyong samples, because she also worked on a bigger scale rather than just scaling it to fit in the sketchbook, and also the fact that she limited herself to use more coloured paper than acetate, because that made her concentrate more on the shapes rather than creating new tones. None of us did a lot of letter deconstructions at home, so to make the project feel more collaborative, we decided to do that together. 

For the first "BEING" sample, we did the first and the last letter individually, and the rest of 3 were completed by the other peers by swapping sketchbooks.

For the second, we've put on paper one element of each letter and swapped sketchbooks to let each other complete them the way they feel to.

This collaborative exercise was by far one of the best moments we had as a team, as it brought together 4 different styles unified as one, which pretty much summed up our concept: being individuals but also being able to merge as one. After, we looked through all the sample we've produced and chose 5 different letters to spell the word, but also a few other to play with them in the background.

For the banner, we wanted to make it a circle as well, but after trying out different layouts, we thought It worked best to do make 2 circles overlaying each other, which fitted both the composition and the concept better. 

After putting on the letters, we thought is best to leave it as it is rather than quilt in other designs we did, because having it minimalist would bring more attention to the word.

List for tomorrow:

• take photos of the banner in different locations
• stick the wadding to back of the banner to make it more solid
• go in the metal workshop to do the wire structure for the banner

After we we're put in groups, we discussed our manifestos. The first one was on the contrast between food waste and starvation, the second one on feminism and feminist rights, and the the third one was related to censorship in the art world.

We found it interesting how they we're so different but the base of them was the same: people demanding their rights and their existence to be respected and valued. Instead of recreating the manifesto, we decided to take one sentence from each that expressed best our idea and put them together. 

From the expression "to create a whole" we thought that the best way to suggest that is limiting ourselves to only using the circle as our tool to work with. After working for an hour individually (still developing our research) Chris came to discuss with us the concept. He gave us the idea of concentrating on the word "being", as he thought it was interesting how we wrote it on the page (on a sepapate line and with a different colour). We gave it a go, and decided that it will work perfectly, as it was the element the completed the whole concept. After rethinking it, we finalised our concept: in response to the actual situation around the world now, with all the tension around protests, we wanted to emphasise the idea of people being able to have a voice and protest for themselves, to be individuals, but also let them know that they can merge with other individuals to protest for themselves as a community, as a whole. We were also very interested in how the letter "B" it's shaped as 2 half circles, and after looking at the whole word, we came to the realisation that all of the letters actually had circle elements in them. 

By the end of the afternoon, we made a plan for the evening: deconstruct circles and the letters to create new shapes using coloured paper and acetate (to also create new tones), so we can merge them somehow tomorrow.

Today I started to work on the research. I also looked up the artists from the brief and found 3 of them who really related to my work, as they were using human beings and their body language to communicate ideas. I started to respond with colours and different shapes to emphasise body movement. I tried some new layouts that turned out pretty interesting, and they made me rethink my way of creating new work. As I was progressing, I took some time apart from the sketchbook to work on my manifesto. This day was especially significant to me, as I went to vote for the Romanian president elections alongside my brother and my flatmate. As the day went by, I started to think about the reason we all left the country and one work was always coming to my mind: Corruption. I started to research into events that sparked protests in Romania, such as the devastating disaster of the Colectiv nightclub fire from 2015, which most of us think was the "wake up call" of our generation. Then I looked into what's going on around the world at the moment in countries such as Egypt, Hong Kong or Russia. While analysing, I concluded that all of them had a crossing point: people are protesting against the system, as the system is not respecting their rights and demands, so I worked around that. 

For tomorrow I plan to go in earlier and do some more research into corruption and protests.

I decided that for the Damien Poulain Project, I will start my research at Tate and see where the museum takes me. I didn't set the goal to find a specific exhibition and get my inspiration from it, I tried to look at many to see what elements I could find that would be useful for my visual practice. While walking around and studying the artworks, one symbol became very obvious in my head; one that connected all of the ideas: loads of artists were working in response to the current situations (or past situations) that happen around the world. They concentrate the attention towards how people respond to events such as wars or protests, but also on bringing communities together through certain symbols. The most vivid symbol I identified was the body, and most specifically body language. It seemed that this natural, raw way of communicating is the leitmotif of the narratives. 

While visiting, I decided to take a break and take a look at people chilling on the ground floor of the museum. I did some observational drawings, basing them on experimentation with primary colours. For every drawing, I changed the meaning of the colour. One more thing that I did was going around and asking people how they feel in relation to each of the colours. My goal for this project is to involve the community both directly and passive, so this was the perfect opportunity. It was very intriguing to see how each individual responded differently to each of the colours. While for blue and yellow the words were kind of related one to another, for red was very surprising to see how different they were: burn, ambitious, sensual, busy or in love were some of the perhaps contradicting words people wrote. Moreover, having the opportunity to communicate with people and see their reactions in relation to both me and the small exercise" was a pleasing experience. I will try to find ways of introducing this sense of bringing different communities together in the project.

We started by finalising our project in the first part of the day. As lunch time approached, there started to be some tension between me and Jannah, mostly on my behalf, as we started to be stressed that we won't have enough time to finish the installation. The communication between us started to get very rushed and it became a little confusing. One factor that contributed to the whole state of being was the energy and nervousness that I felt in the room, which kind of overwhelmed me as we were hanging the fabrics. One point of improvement in this would be to try to  be more focused on my work and get used (again) to the chaos that happens the studio.

Walking around both floors and seeing everyone's work was very delightful. I loved to see how different the outcomes were, ranging from series of illustrations to films, garments and installations. One aspect that caught my eye in this direction is that most people went to the same exhibitions, but their approaches on the subjects and the outcomes were completely different from each other, which shows how different our creative thinking really is and how many ways a starting point or a concept can go. From what we saw, there were 2 projects that caught our attention in particular: Chatchai & Ruby's and Alex & Joo's.

In our opinion, Chatchai and Ruby's project was the most successful in all possible ways. First of all, there was a very clear collaboration between them. From the short films they made, it was clearly seen that they wouldn't have been possible to be made if there was only one of them in. How they moved together and merged their bodies communicating only through an unspoken language emphasised their strong connection. Secondly, you could clearly see how they visually responded to their primary research, through expiration that included writing or photography. Their emotional drawing was a good example of observational drawing, not necessarily from the exhibition but from themselves, which made the collaboration stronger. Moreover, the final outcome was very beautifully put together. I loved how they included the long piece of paper on which they did the movement drawings into the videos, it felt like a continuation of the digital into the real world. 

We felt that Alex and Joo' s project was very innovative, but could have been improved. Firstly, we think that the ways they used to make the collaboration stronger, such as sending envelopes to each other or finalising each other's sketchbooks were very unique. Also, it was beautiful to see how their styles merged together and how they completed what the other missed in the drawings. The illustrations were very captivating: even though they had quite a lot of details, the overall feel of them was pretty minimalist and airy. As for improvement, we believe that they could have annotate a few more details in their sketchbooks. Also, trying a different way to layout the outcome could have been good.

REFLECTIONS ON THE OUTCOME

Our pair didn't show up so we did reflections on our own. Firstly, we swapped sketchbooks and discussed the strengths and what improvements we can make on our visual practice. Jannah suggested I could use some more textures. Secondly, we discussed our outcome. When it comes to the installation, I think we could have worked more on the details. The overall feeling of it was kind of messy and unedited, as we improvised a lot on the spot. Also, we could have overplayed a few more pieces of transparent fabric, so that it merged better with the flower dyed textiles. Moreover, next time maybe we pay more attention and don't forget to play the video we were supposed to play (we had a recording of the flower hammering process). Last but not least, we discussed about our collaboration and how it felt to be a team. What we both realised is that we worked for most of the time quite separately. We didn't consider techniques we could have used to make our project more collaborative, and we relied more on merging our ideas together rather than developing them as one. 

As a conclusion for the day, I felt kind of overwhelmed by the project. I can't say that it was my favourite so far, but I've learned some important tips and lessons on how collaboration works that I can always consider and develop. My priorities, in order to finalise the project are: 

• finish the sketchbook development
• experiment with burning flowers and use the ashes as paint to create prints

After contextual practice, we carried on with our project and started to experiment with hammering flowers into the fabric. On one hand, the process took some time, as we had quite a lot of flowers, and even though it was a pretty small fabric, hammering all the flowers in was quite challenging. On the other hand it was incredible to see how we were able to create such beautiful, truly unexpected patterns on the canvas, as the pigment from the flowers spreader all over the fabric. We expected the dye outcome to take the shape of the flowers but it didn't, which made it even more interesting. I would love to experiment with this technique on my own as well, perhaps with some smaller, more natural flowers, as the one we had were artificial dyed. After that, we carried on with our sketchbook work and sorted out our research on witches. 

We also made a plan for the rest of our remaining time.

• WEDNSDAY EVENING:  -WITCH RESEARCH
• THURSDAY MORNING: -HAMMER MORE FLOWERS

                                                    -FIGURE OUT LAYOUT

                                                    -HANG THE INSTALLATION

Make a realistic list of what you aim to achieve by Thursday AM in your pairs. 

Tuesday

• AFTERNOON: keep on working in response to the Zandra Rhodes exhibition. Experiment with overlaying prints and how they can look on the body. Use loads of colours!!!
• EVENING: Start researching into Easter European witchcraft. Look at their garments, try to summarise a colour pallet and look at the floral/organic prints you find their clothing. Also, try to see if there's a meaning behind that. 

Wednesday 

• AFTERNOON: Do the research on floral imagery I found. Start developing the samples alongside Jannah, using different techniques. Experiment with flower ashes as prime material for drawing!!! (And try to work a bit faster...)

How are you going to merge your ideas together as a collaborative project? Rather than making individual responses. 

For the first part of the project, we decided to do some work individually in response to the exhibitions we went to so that we can see what directions are we heading towards to. Now, on Wednesday, we will try to work back to back into developing prints. We will probably do it individually as well as the rest of it, but because overlaying was one of our main aims, we will combine them and "edit" them together.

Is your exhibition who you used as a starting point in your sketchbook?

As I allocated quite some time for it, I think it really is. It was interesting to see how the exhibitions had so many common points of interest even though they were not essentially on the same page. In response to them, I look into how prints react to each other when they are overlaying, and also how colours are doing so. Now that I have these starting points, I will move into our actual theme.

How are you going to visually communicate your ideas to an audience on Thursday afternoon?

We are thinking to do a series of samples and to find an interesting way to display them. Also, in our sketchbooks, we will do some experimentation to see how the samples could work on the body.

In today s class, me and Jannah started the project by sorting out the research we did individually and created an action plan for the day. After analysing the exhibitions one by one, it was interesting to come up with the conclusion that even they were very different in concept, they had common elements. The first one that caught our attention is that all the artists that exhibited are women and how they gravitated around the depictions of the human body in relation to their concepts. After brainstorming idea after idea, we ended up choosing to work around witchcraft and how women are the only ones that can practice this craft, which made us think how it can be a way of empowering them. Our plan for the day was to work on the primary research, responding to the artworks we saw and get more comfortable with them.
The crits with Chris and the other 2 pairs really helped, as it gave us the fresh air we needed (because we were a bit overwhelmed with all the information we gathered). Ida’s suggestion on working around witches’ garment prints caught my attention in particular. Also, Chris helped us a lot in giving the idea of researching into different cultures to see how this craft was approached.
On this afternoon, I started experimenting with the textiles I found in Rhodes' exhibition, too see how they would look on the body. Also,in response to that, I started to experiment with overlaying  coloured shapes, in order to see how they react to each other. 

For tomorrow, during the first part of the day, I will keep on continuing with that, while incorporating new materials such as acetate, tracing paper and colours. Also, I will start to gradually add texture and work with mark making from the other exhibitions to see how they will translate on the body. 

Today I planned to go to view some exhibitions. The first one I decided go to is the one at White Cube gallery, but on my way there, I stumbled upon the Fashion And Textiles Museum, that had an exhibition for the 50th Anniversary of Zandra Rhodes. The exhibition itself was quite interesting. I was able to see various works from different eras of her activity and how her craft evolved. What I enjoyed the most is that I visited an exhibition that is not necessarily appealing to my personal taste, but it serves as one of my main points of interesting in the project: overlaying prints and colour contrasts.

As for White Cube, there is the completely opposite of what I saw at the Fashion And Textiles Museum. The gallery itself is very  minimalist, which contrasts a lot with the multitude of prints I saw at Rhodes' exhibition earlier. Even so, I was surprised to see how, even though the artists' concepts and outcomes were very different, they gravitated on some common grounds: all of the artists I saw are females and are drawing inspiration from their surroundings and respond on how they are depicted in the arts' world.

The aspect of the day (not art related) that I enjoyed the most is going by myself to exhibitions. I've always preferred to have a conversation with myself and my mind in relation to the artwork, as I can concentrate better and I can gravitate my energy around understanding it's meaning.

Tomorrow, I will meet Jannah and set up a plan to see where we are heading with the development of the project.