My final major project theme is japan. I decided to do japan for my final
major project because I am very interested in their traditions and art. I
started researching into japan but not concentration on my subject of japan,
but when I came across a images of a Japanese tea house I realized that I
wanted to look mostly into tea houses and their geishas, but also native Japanese
plants, as they are used greatly in Japanese interior design. And I chose to
create a kimono as my final piece, but a very simple but effective.
To start collection secondary research about japan I used the web page https://gb.pinterest.com/ to gather images
and ''pin'' them onto my account. I used these images throughout my project to
create my sheet work and my sketchbook. To collect my primary research I went
to the Leeds royal armory where they had a section on traditional Japanese armor,
which worked well for my as I was looking mainly into traditional Japanese art.
I pieced together my research onto A2 mood boards, which I then used to
create 2 visual sheets where I developed the images on my mood boards into my
own images and patterns. From these visual sheets I created three development
sheets. On each of my development sheets I used a different plant as my focus.
I decided to use my cherry blossom development sheet to create my final
design as I thought my other two ideas had too much block color, and my cherry
blossom idea was more delicate and interesting.
originally I wanted to make my kimono from heavy silk, but when I added up
the cost of how many meters of heavy silk I’d need, I realized that I didn’t
have enough money to make it from heavy silk. So I had to decide to make my
kimono out of silk, even though this is not traditionally the correct material
to use.
In the project I experimented by doing a piece of fabric making, which is
where you create fabric out of strips of different fabrics by sewing them together.
Throughout this project I have en-counted a few problems the main one being
money, but to solve this I simply used the cheapest fabric, which Is cotton,
rather than using silks or satins, even though this held me back on the amount
of experimentation I could do when doing my samples, also it meant that I couldn’t
make my kimono out of heavy silk like I wanted to. Also while trying to do my
blog, I was unable to upload photographs of my work, which has affected my blog
greatly.
If I had no time constraints I would have made a traditional kimono out of
heavy silk and created a design that would have covered the whole of the kimono
rather than just the bottom half and the sleeves.
Throughout this project I have been looking at the Japanese painter and
wood cut artist, Hokusai. I found his work useful in my project because I was
looking at traditional Japanese art, and Hokusai’s work is a large part of
traditional Japanese art and is largely recognized all over the world.
I think what went well in this project was my sheet work and the final
design I developed from them. What didn’t go so well was the my lack of money
which resulted in me not being able to use the correct material, and also I would
have like to do a lot more work into my sketchbook. So overall I could have
used my time a little bit better and concentrated a little more on my
sketchbook.
Originally in my project proposal I wrote I wanted to study mainly into
plant and tea room interior, to create a set of floor pillows for a tea room,
but I was then told I should push myself and create a kimono which was a good coincidence
as I had just started looking into geishas. I found this project a little more
challenging as past projects because of the amount and size of work, also I didn’t
structure my time properly so I had a lot of work to do all at once, but as an
overall I really enjoyed this project and its outcomes.
