Workshops


 Part of this module has been focused on attending workshops. As well as self-directed study, discovering methods online that I could use to dye fabric naturally, I attended some online Zoom workshops. 

One of these workshops was a fashion factory tour in London - showing the real price of our clothes. I found this very inciteful because it really made me realise how unbelievably cheap some fast fashion is marketed despite production costs meaning these cheap clothes are made by extremely underpaid workers. This is something I am already aware of and against, so to be able to see a factory in the UK where the workers are treated better meaning clothing prices rise makes me happy.

A second workshop attended was about fashion illustration. In this session I was shown a method used by artist Elyse Blackshaw (linked below). Elyse used strokes, dashes, dots and a combination of mark making to create textures that imitated real fabric. I learnt new methods of drawing fur and the classic \"Blackshaw squiggle\" that Elyse uses throughout her work. Some intriguing new skills!

Thirdly Leonie Cameron (@leoniecameron.art on instagram) demonstrated through slideshows and videos her amazing onion dyeing techniques which led me to using onion skins in my samples in my previous blog post. The colour was a beautiful maroon red that was brilliant to achieve without the use of cochineal. 

My final workshop was a floral painting session with Sophia Gray (@sophia.gray_designs). Using watercolours and watered down acrylic paint, I painted onto leaves and petals and used them to create floral designs (as pictured above). It was such a relaxing workshop and made me realise what amazing textures you could achieve using just a leaf - some of which I preferred to using a paintbrush!

Elyse - https://wip2021.netlify.app/students/elyse-blackshaw

Leonie - https://www.instagram.com/leoniecameron.art/

Sophia - https://www.instagram.com/sophia.gray_designs/


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