Collaboration - Beastly Designs

During my collaboration project I was assigned partners with Will Niven whose specialisms include  Graphics and Architecture. We had to coe up with a proposal for our project based on Beastly Designs and our client was The Museum of Design in Plastics. My initial thought was to create a neck-piece make from perspex and the laser cut machine as I wanted to try different materials and techniques I had never tired before. My partner agreed with my idea and began planning. After a week of research we came up with the idea of creating a neck-piece that would glow in the dark to reflect the nocturnal habitat of an armadillo and meet the criteria of 'Beastly Designs'. My role was to design and photograph the necklace and it was Will's job to create an illustrator file of the necklace to be cut in the laser cut machine. Below I have taken self portraits and scratched the photographs to show my initial designs.

Here is my final neck-piece made from acrylic perspex. If we had more time or money to buy glow in the dark perspex and decide on more suitable colours I think the outcome would be more appealing. However we had to compromise with the materials that were available to us. Each armadillo band is attached to the neckline piece by rivets in order to adjust imitating the flexible shell of an armadillo. The two neck-pieces can be worn separately however in the photograph below they are layered to show the possibilities.  

It was hard to capture the nocturnal essence of this project as I had to experiment with various ways of creating light photography - something I had never done before. After several experimental shots I found that by turning the lights off and using only a torch to view the model, the background was darkened leaving a glow on the neck-piece from the torch light. Below are two of my most successful shots. 

For this image I experimented with shaking the torch to create a ghostly effect. 

As this was a live project for the Museum of Design in Plastics our neck-piece was chosen to form part of a group exhibtion. This was such a huge achievement for us and we are very pleased with the outcome. Our work is currently being exhibited as shown below.

Multidisciplinary - Nightmares

For this project the brief was to use incorporate multiple subjects into one final piece. I chose to look at Fashion and Psychology. I began by focusing on nightmares, my own to be precise. There has always been three reoccurring nightmares for me but the one I was mostly drawn to was one in which I am being chased by a masked figure running up a spiral staircase. Nightmares about being chased often mean that either someone or something is making you feel threatened. The chaser is the problem and to solve this you must ask yourself what or who it is? Below is a pattern I created for a dress I made from this idea. I firstly took a photograph of a spiral staircase (like the one in my nightmare) and then repeated and played around with it on Adobe Photoshop CS6. This was the pattern for my dress which I silk-screen printed onto fabric. 

 The Photography shoot took place at an abandoned barn as I wanted to reflect the nightmare background. I wanted to keep the dress simple and wearable as the print was the main feature. I have also styled the dress to show the possible ways it could be worn. Here are my most successful shoots with my model Katy Marie.

Fashion evening course - 'Chandelier Glass'

During October I signed up to a Fashion Design evening course at the Bournemouth Arts University which involved essential stages of research and development and how to transform ideas into designs for a capsule fashion collection. It has helped me work to a given brief, identify my customer and undertake creative research. I started looking at furniture and then decided to focus on chandeliers in particular. Below is a moodboard of my ideas and an Illustration to portray the theme of my designs. 

Unit 48 Portraits - Narrative Image Making

 Screen-printing 

For unit 48 I mainly focused on one portrait from my childhood presenting my sister and I as my narrative portrait was about our relationship. I experimented in using various types of media for example screen-printing to try and recreate the portrait. However as this was my first try at screen-printing I realised it should mainly be used for bold prints rather than detail precise images.

Lino Cutting

This was my first attempt at lino cut printing. The project brief was to create a collection of stamps based on one of six themes given. I decided to base my collection of stamps on the theme of History as I wanted to look at late musicians who have made an impact in the music industry. My six chosen musicians were Elvis Presley, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain and Amy Winehouse. I experimented with different types of media such as lino printing, photography and solar printing. The first image of Elvis is a basic cut out stencil revealing his face with a slightly Art Deco pattern background. The second shows the same lino plate being used but with green on top of the first pink print to create a fuzzy effect. 

 For my college Unit 89 Developing and Realising Design Craft Ideas, the brief was to create a souvenir for a sense of place. My sense of place was my native country Iran as it was were I grew up. I mainly focused on Architectural buildings which I could then incorporate into my wearable jewelry piece. My final Design was a cuff slave bracelet made from brass and decorated with a sandblasted design  which developed from shapes taken from different famous buildings in Iran.






Here are a few of my practice design pieces showing my initial and developing ideas 

                                                                                                                                     During the month of April I entered an Art competition called 'Who Are You?' which was open to 16-18 year olds. The brief was to produce a 2D landscape image answering the question 'Who Are You?' using any materials processes and techniques to portray your creative abilities. I entered the image above which I created by gathering a series of photographs that include myself with people who have had an influence on my life and therefore made me who I am. In order to put the images together I used Photoshop and the bare back of my models body as a canvas to indicate the imprint they have made on me. After that I printed out the image on photographic paper and scratched out sections revealing the caption 'I AM WHAT U MADE ME'.
          In total 10 winners had to be chosen and luckily I was one of them. I was extremely happy to have gotten the opportunity to display my work on five billboards around the country as the prize. All the ten winners are shown in this folder if you are interested in checking them out! http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.332735993460611.77267.133779400022939&type=3

Here is me standing next to one of my billboards displaying my winning image