My Evaluation

This project has been all about nature. For the last 7 weeks we have had to produce, a sketchbook, visual sheets, mood boards, design sheets and a bag all to do with nature, and a season of our choice. I have enjoyed this project and although there have been some ups and downs and things I would change I do believe that I have really got my teeth into this project and you can see that in the quality of my work.
   For the first week of our project we had a full week of observational drawing, I believe this gave us a good chance to practice drawing from real life instead of our imagination or a photograph, although some people didn’t enjoy it, I though it gave us a good experience. You could also class drawing from real life a good way to research nature as we were so close to it for a week. Other ways that I also did research were primary and secondary. Because my chosen season was autumn, I have been lucky that we are in autumn at the minute, as I have been able to collect a lot of primary research throughout the project. My main source of primary research though, came from a day trip to Cawthorne Park; here I took many pictures of all things nature, including animals, rivers and trees.
   My secondary research was also quite simple to find, I looked through books and on the internet. Quite a lot of designers and artist’s incorporate nature into their work quite often so luckily I found a lot of nice artist research that fit well with my project.
   I picked autumn as my chosen season for a few reasons, first of all when I think of autumn, I think of the bright, rich colours that come along with it, the warm reds and the golden yellows, and I really wanted to incorporate them into my work. Also as I have said, we are in autumn at the minute and so as soon as my teacher told us to pick a season I knew if I picked autumn I could gather a lot of primary research.
   After I had collected my research I used it all as inspiration for my tree, for example, I had seen a picture of a hedgehog in autumn, on the internet which I really liked, so I stated drawing the hedgehog on my visual sheets. I then found an artist who drew autumn animals for children’s books and I really liked his work, so I took his work as inspiration and drew a hedgehog in a childlike way on my bag.
   Looking back at my project I would say if anything, the one thing that I slacked on was my experimentation. I did do the basic sampling of weaving, knitting and felting, but when it got to going into the workshop and experimenting with colours, textiles and patterns I didn’t do anywhere near as much as I should have done. Unfortunately I was so busy making sure I was up to date with everything else that my experimentation just got put the back of my mind. Also I was in a rush to get my bag finished and so I just wanted to test out my ideas that I had for my bag to make sure they worked. I think the problem that I had really comes down to my time management, I didn’t realise how short of a time period 7 weeks really was until I got down to the last week and a half and I was rushing to get everything finished.
   My chosen artist who gave me a lot of inspiration for the style of my bag and a man call Brian Wildsmith. He is an illustrator for children’s books and I just love his work. It is so colourful and bright, full of autumnal colours. Also his work isn’t perfect, it looks quite scribbly and childlike and very simplistic, no shading and not that much detail. So I did my own interpretation of his work and drew a hedgehog in a simple, childlike way and made that into a screen print to put onto my bag.
   We had two choices for the design of our bag, a slouch bag, or a tote bag. I decided to do a tote bag for a very simple reason; I believe it would be used more. I would have liked to use my bag as a bag to take to college although I later found out that we wouldn’t be able to have our bag for at least a year. But I thought that the simple design would be more practical for day-to-day life.
   I believe that my bag design would easily be able to be manufactured in a large quantity, as it is only a simple design and made 90% out of cotton it would be cheap and easy to mass reproduce. I would say this is also a good reason why it was good to pick a tote bag to make.
   I would say that my bag design looked a lot like my final design, I stuck to the colour scheme   and did my pattern the exact same as what it was on my design sheet. There was only one thing that I had to change on my bag that was different to my final design, this was my handle. On my final design, I had planned to weave it, 240cm of it but when it had taken me just over 2 hours to do around 20cm I realised that I didn’t have time to do it, if I had anticipated how long it would have taken me to weave that much I would have started a long time before I did, but me and my tutor came up with the idea to plat my handles instead. And in hindsight my handles are now a lot stronger than they would have been if I had woven them. I also believe that they look better than the weaving would have done too.
   Overall I think my project went well, I managed to hand everything in on the deadline, with no missing pieces of work and I would say all my work that I handed in was to a very high standard too although I wouldn’t say that I got to that point without a few things going wrong.
   My first major problem that went wrong was when I was dying my fabric for my bag, I had just finished dying all my fabric in light colours including yellow and orange when unfortunately someone got navy blue dye on my work, as my work was so wet the blue ran as well. I tried fixing it the best I could by rinsing it straight away under cold water trying to get the dark blue dye out, thankfully I did but unfortunately it took some of my light coloured dye out at the same time. To fix this second problem I just made sure that I came in extra early on the next class lesson so I could re-dye my fabric.
   As I wrote about earlier I also had a problem with my handles when starting to construct my bag, I thankfully fixed this problem though and actually came out with a better outcome than I was originally going to anyway.
   I would say my main problem of this project has been my time management, although I haven’t been slacking and not working on what I should have been, I think I have just been a little too relaxed in my thinking, and didn’t realise just how short of time, 7 weeks actually was. Until it got down to the last two weeks of this project I haven’t been stressing as much as should have been.
   So no I don’t think I have handled my time management well for this project, so I need to bear in mind for the next project just how little time I have to do everything and work as hard and fast as I can to make sure I get everything done.
   Overall I am happy with this project, I have enjoyed the last 7 weeks as I would say I have learnt many new skills and overcome quite a few problem, yet still I have handed in a project to a high standard without missing any deadlines, if I did this project again I would change my time management. But like I said, I am extremely happy with my overall outcome.