Visual Communication: The big hand-in!

Hi everyone! really sorry I've been a bit quiet for ages again, hand-ins have been hectic! The big ones are done now though, so I thought I would just write a quick post to tell you about it. Okay, so the first hand-in I had was for visual communication; the module that the work in the previous post was for. This one was made up of two parts, hand-rendering and IT, which eventually came together in three final boards depicting a chosen collection, garment flats of it made on Adobe Illustrator, and your final illustrations of the collection which were made by hand-rendering first and were then scanned in and coloured digitally. If any of you missed my previous posts on this module, they can be found here and here! There was such a huge rush towards the end of my time up until the deadline and I was like a woman possessed trying to get it all done! I managed it in the end though with a whole three minutes to spare!!! (Time management isn't my strong point at all as you can tell!) Here's my final three boards for the project!

I'm really pleased with them, especially the last one with my final illustrations on!
Alongside this we also needed to hand in a sketchbook showing evidence of hand-rendering work and experimentation with different media. This bit was the worst and I didn't get much sleep getting it done! There was loads of work in it by the end though so I can't post every bit of it on here, but here are the best bits, and a few edits of them I did on photoshop as experiments!

Josephine Bowes' Dress, Bowes museum, from life, Oil Pastels.

Kate Moss, from reference, watercolours and fineliner.

Vanessa Paradis, from reference, ProMarkers and Adobe Photoshop.

Photoshop experiment from a reference of an Estee Lauder magazine advert.

Final Illustration 1, Photoshop.

Final Illustration 2, Photoshop.

Final Illustration 3, Photoshop.

Final Illustration 4, Photoshop.

Experiment in drippy inks, from magazine reference.

Hand studies, from life and magazine references.

Feet studies, from magazine references.

An eye, Biro Pen, from reference.

An eye, graphite pencil, from reference.

Negative drawing of a bird's nest done on a workshop at the Dorman Museum, Middlesbrough. Graphite crayon and eraser, from life.

Montana Forbes study, ProMarkers.

Freya Flavell study, Watercolour.

Freya Flavell study, ProMarkers.

Ilse Valfre study, Oil Paints.

Hajin Bae study, coloured pencils.

Sabine Pieper study, Oil Paints.

Sky Ferreira, Biro pen, from reference.

Edits, Adobe Photoshop.

Hope you enjoyed seeing my work! I'm really pleased with how it all turned out. I'll be updating my art blog with it soon. I also had deadlines for my technical folder and my design project too, but I'm still yet to get decent phots of it, but I will make a post on it when I've got some!

Lauren xoxo

Christmas catch-up

Hello everyone! Really sorry I haven't posted in absolutely ages, I've been so so busy with it being Christmas and everything I just haven't had time. I hope everyone's had an amazing Christmas and New Year! I have, but the downside to that is that I now have a LOT of work to do for uni before Monday... one of these days I will learn not to leave it until last minute! Nonetheless, I've had a really productive night so far. I'm trying to catch up with my work for Visual Communication because the deadline for the module is really soon after we go back after Christmas. Something I've been meaning to do for ages is do my artist research, so I've been focusing on that for the past few days. I have to do 5 studies of the same piece in different media, for 5 different artists/illustrators. I've chosen Ilse Valfre (one of my favourite illustrators!), Sabine Pieper, Freya Flavell aka. Doodloodloo, Montana Forbes, and Hajin Bae. So far I've got through all five for Montana Forbes and Sabine Pieper. Here's a look at what I've done so far. I'm only posting one of the Montana Forbes ones though because it's the only one of those five that I really liked; I just don't think that the other media I used really lent itself very well to the image. I guess that's why you experiment though, to find these things out! Anyway, here they are:

Another thing I've been really excited to tell you guys is about my Christmas presents. I know what you're thinking: how is that relevant at all? Stay with me though! There's two that I'm particularly excited about. The first one is this baby...

ISN'T IT GORGEOUS?! (Like I needed to ask!) This is the Nikon D3100. I've been lusting after an SLR for quite some time, I've been sick of distorted and pixelated and blurry images and I thought that since I run a blog now and my course is one that will involve photography at some point, it makes sense to have an upgrade. Courtesy of Santa, of course... (ahem, thank you Mother!!!)
I also got a long distance focus lens and a tripod for it off my Dad. So expect better quality images hereafter! Yay for great cameras!
Onto the second thing. Here she is...

(Excuse the hairy carpet, I have two Jack Russells and no motivation to hoover.)

How gorgeous?! I'd be over the moon if I got this just as a pretty ornament, but I'm particularly excited because it's fully serviced and working, so I can actually use it!!!
Which brings me onto my exciting news! I shall be using my new machine very soon, because over the holidays my inner entrepreneur has been niggling away at me, and I am very excited to say that I am opening my own online shop! I'll be selling handmade things, however I'm not going to spill the beans on what that is until it's fully up and running, but a post is to follow announcing the launch very soon I promise! Eeeek! :D
I'm wondering if I've missed anything to tell you all... I've always had the memory of a goldfish, no doubt I will have missed something. Oh well, if I have it will come to me. I'd better go now though because I have to be up in eight hours for work! No rest for the wicked...

Ciao for now,

Lauren xoxo

Today's technical: skirt pattern drafting

Wow, today has been SO busy. We had technical today and we used our skirt blocks that we made earlier to draft a pattern for a skirt that we're going to make next week. We had to make some alterations after drawing round the block though; we had to shorten it, add pockets and pocket bags, add a zip fly, and add a waistband. We had to cut out all of the separate pieces that we'd need when we'd made them from the draft, and label them properly with fabrics and instructions and grain lines etc. There was a lot to do in the time we had and I had to rush a lot towards the end to get finished but I just about managed it! I was really stressed out when I got home though because I hate rushing and I was also reeeally tired, so I had a nice hot bath to relax. :) And now I'm just about to do some work on the sketchbook I'm working on for my design project inspired by my surroundings. I'm basing mine on my room, because it's literally full of things to be inspired by (my optimistic way of saying it's cluttered to death). I'm excited for Monday though because we're going to Bowes museum again because there is a Laura Ashley exhibition on and also another exhibition which is fashion-related - tailoring I think?! Still, it will be good. So until then, I'll be cracking on with my sketchbook. No rest for the wicked!!!
Here's a few pictures of the skirt drafting from today:

Lauren xoxo

Visual communication IT - my work so far!

Hi guys!
I'm sitting in my vis com IT lesson as we speak and now I've FINALLY got my flats drawn that I was talking about before, I need them checked before I can scan them in to render on illustrator, but Lynne is doing tutorials with everyone at the mo, so I thought I'd tell you about my work so far while I wait!
OK. So, the first thing we did was learn basics on illustrator, which I made a post about, remember? (If not, here it is: http://laurensheperia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/intro-to-adobe-illustrator.html) We made a few different flats up after this first lesson, just to get used to different things, and I made a button template for my archive, and here they are:

Next, we had to choose a spring/summer '14 collection to work on for our project on range plans. I had a look around, and found one I liked on the London Fashion Week website by L'wren Scott. I liked her collection because a lot of the garments seemed to be inspired by traditional Japanese culture and garments like kimonos and yukatas, and I personally am very interested in Japanese culture. Oh, which reminds me, I just bought a vintage kimono and obi from Japan and I'm waiting for it to arrive, so expect a post about it in the future! But anyway, I chose 4 outfits from the collection to work on that fitted together well, but were each very different in terms of shape. Here they are:

You can find more info on L'wren Scott and the rest of the collection here.
So then, after I'd chosen, I had to draw some garment flats (hand-rendering) from the photos of the collection, which are the things I'm waiting to get checked as we speak! I found it more challenging when I did it than I was expecting. I hope they're ok, I don't really want to do them again haha! But anyway, here they are:

Sorry the photos are a bit dark!
So finally, we started making up our art boards on illustrator. The first board we worked on was just a board showing the photos of the collection, the logo of the designer, and the main colours used. It was fun though, because we had to use pantone colour references on the boards and we had a pantone solid coated colour book to look through and match up our collection colours to the references in the book. It was such a fun lesson! The colour books are so pretty, and I have to admit I've become slightly obsessed with pantone colour referencing ever since, and I ordered a pantone phone case from pantone universe which I'm currently waiting to arrive! (I'm kind of addicted to internet shopping, can you tell?!)
Here's a few pictures I took of the solid coated colour referencing book:

SO PRETTY. Anyway, finally after we matched up our colours, we put together our first boards! Sorry for the bad photo again (I am getting a decent camera for christmas thank goodness!) but here is a picture of what mine looks like:

So that's everything up to speed! The next board I'll be working on is the board with my garment flats drawings on it, and then afterwards we'll put together our IT skills we've learned with Lynne and our hand-rendering skills we've learned in vis com with Vicky to create posed fashion illustrations which will be rendered on illustrator to make them look professional. I can't wait!
Hope everyone's having a good day despite the awful weather on this chilly wednesday morning :)

Lauren xoxo