Textiles 1: A Textiles Vocabulary
Feedback at the end of Part One
Consolidating your folio of drawing
This is not an assignment, but your tutor will want to see evidence of your progress in Part One.
Collate your work from Part One into a drawing folio. There is no need to mount or crop any pieces; simply place them in a simple lightweight card folio for protection.
Don’t send your drawing folio to your tutor at this point as you’ll need it to inform the textile and material developments you’ll work on in Part Two. However, you may wish to email up to 10 of your drawings (send scans or clear photos) to your tutor for some brief comments.
Alternatively, if you have your learning log online as a blog, you may wish to place your 10 drawings there for your tutor to view. Email a link to your blog to allow your tutor to give you some brief comments on your progress.
Written reflection
During your work on Part One, you should have made some notes that form a written record
of your decision-making and reflections as you progressed from project to project. Draw your thoughts together by further reflecting on what you’ve learned over the course of the projects.
Write about 250–300 words. Think about what new knowledge you’ve gained and consider what you’ve learned from observing and drawing textiles and other visual sources in this way.
Include this written reflection, clearly labelled, in your blog.
This folio of work will serve as a point of departure for your future textile development.
There must be some point of departure; a beginning is to develop an awareness of the visual background, so that looking with purpose and intent becomes second nature. This kind of observation takes some time to perfect and entails concentrated and conscious effort but with this increased awareness, familiar surroundings take on a new meaning and interest.
(Howard, 1996, p.14)
I feel sadly really disappointed with the work I have produced and it has been difficult to narrow it down to 10 drawings, I have managed 18 mediocre ones…
I think the main problem is that I have progressed massively with understanding the task, my knowledge of mark making for a purpose has grown enormously by researching into contemporary practice, and museum visits – particularly the Traces of life exhibition in Dalarnas.
My favourite drawings are probably the oak, yew, and birch drawings. This is good because I did these last!
I will approach the textiles drawings very differently next time. I really loved the research stage and got very engrossed in world textiles, at the time I think I experimented with different mediums and techniques – I know that I should not expect perfection when I am getting used to the drawing process, but I haven’t yet developed the gentleness to myself that I need to develop a more graceful acceptance of the learning journey. The journey is a gift I can embrace, rather than be so concious of some future, unknown , end result. I’m quite worried about which elements of my drawings will be useful for the next stage of this assignment though, and expect that my view of mark making will change considerably again after this exercise.
The second issue is with subject matter for the plant drawings. When I started the task, choosing to focus on my garden plants for convenience was a cop out. Perhaps I need to choose subject matter that I resonate with. In response to seeing so much amazing textile work over the summer, I have started to apply some thought to what my textile story might be – I feel doubtful that it will be connected with conveniently located plant life!