Through this project I have learnt a lot about printing and textures. As well as How to make my work look more professional. The key is time … 

The issue is I never seem to have any left when I come to choose an idea to settle on. I feel the outcome produced is of a good quality, all except the pyjamas. Unfortunately they were a last minuet decision; a good one, but extremely time-consuming. I’d never printed a repeat pattern before and mistakingly forgot to take into consideration: the size of the surface I was printing on, how the words would sit once printed, how the pattern would interlock to be repeated easily and how long the process would actually take. So many issues that occured on Thursday! Thankfully I am quite a fast screen printer, no clue how as I seem to be the slowest at everything else, yet there’s something about screen printing that I feel really comfortable with. I like the pace of printing, the actual process, and that you can transform one image a thousand times over with a bit of metal, some mesh material and a slather of green goo. It just makes me happy.

As you can see, the first overlay was beautiful, slick, perfect. Opposed to the last that was a mess!

Moving on, I know most artists can probably tell you straight off what their worst piece was…

This is it. However I don’t think it really is all bad. The text itself is rude, taken from a twitter troll, the typography was my experiment to see if I could freehand easily and efficiently. The answer was no. I found it useful and a turning point for me to reflect back and decide to move on with printed type. It may have been down to the size of paper and the type of pen I was using as at other times I could have done better, though I decided these were just excess and I now know my hand lettering either needs me to spend more time on each piece or I should learn the proper way of traditional lettering. Even the fact that I’m left-handed immediately gives me grief because my world is already backwards, it has less of an effect on my drawing as i can start from the right, where as with writing English I cannot. Perhaps in the future I will take up calligraphy to improve my skills, though for this project, a form of print was much more suitable.

Looking back the most successful part was the finished pieces as a collection. Displaying  for the presentation gave me a good sense of how people react to my work (I wish I had filmed some of the expressions I’ve seen in the print rooms the past two weeks). People seem to love the textures and colours, the fact the font looks so pretty, yet its complexity draws you nearer to read, then the shock of the text, people get closer to read it again, then the appall follows… but by this time they are too close to the object that people are left morally conflicted between touching something so cute and fluffy, the need to stroke it and knowing the horror of what is printed onto it. This caused me to realise truly just how colours can play on our minds. In the future I would love to film and analyse more reactions to see how I could improve my work further.

I feel my work has developed more in the latter stage of this project because I used better methods and began to think more carefully about presentation and materials etc, however I also feel that had I allowed more time in the experimentation process I’d have produced more clean, professional illustrations. Although my work with type and material is the biggest development of all; learning letterpress and how to manipulate it with fur fabric (something not even the technicians had seen) was a fun learning curve. I feel because of my knowledge of the way fur sits, from the experiments I’ve carried out on the sewing machine, cutting and generally manipulating it to create things in the past, I was able to draw on my prior knowledge and apply it in the printing process, that is how I managed the difficulty. On the other hand because I’m always printing on weird textures, now the technicians see me and sigh because they know it’s something complicated that I want to print on!

Side note : technicians are more helpful if you’re nice and bring them cake…

The terms of this current project fitting into my wider practice are quite unusual ones. Over the course I have done many projects in and out of Uni, though my best seem to end up with me turning something horrible or gross into prettiness. I’d never noticed it until coming to evaluate this self initiated project, perhaps this is something I will have to consider as a part of my practice, the art of making the ugly, beautiful. As well as that, I love making 3D objects and physical final pieces, which I feel is a big part of my wider work. I know I can paint and draw when I need to but what I love most is making and experimentation, so this term has been a lot of fun amongst a stressful dissertation! I feel like the processes I’ve used I will continue to develop more as I’ve had a good time creating through many mediums especially with letterpress. Now I can add to my list of wider skills for future making. I feel like I’m a little closer to knowing the type of artist I wish to be.

I’ve spent what must add up to around a solid 24 hours on the internet looking a troll tweet and 4Chan forums (where some deep, nefarious things go on). Even though I had nothing to do with the tweets and all my intentions where to not get involved and look upon them as a null party, to just read and gather research, yet still they had an affect on my subconscious. Lately I’ve been getting angry at people in the street, not out loud, but silently like “GET OUT OF MY WAY!” , “WHY ARE YOU SO SLOW YOU TOOL!” etc… Which might be normal for most people, but I seldom feel hate, and even more so anger. I couldn’t understand why I felt this way until I realised it was always soon after I had been looking at the tweets. It’s just astonishing to think about how they can affect you just by reading them, even when yo have no part or connection to it what so ever, the sheer amount of negativity and pure hatred rubs off. I also found this project tolling because I don’t swear either. Being around all of this abusive langue that you are not used to coming into contact with regularly had probably had more of an affect because I’m such the opposite.

Which brings me on to my conclusion, I began tis pink project to make people happy and explore pink happiness and I’ve finished with pink abuse . This project has had many ups and downs, spreading out across all fields to be narrowed down into a crazy juxtaposition that makes people feel conflicted, shocked and all warm and cosy at once. In this sense I feel like it has been a success. Hopefully for the exhibition I can produce a slick, professional ‘Hamper of Hate’. A cute, sweet little basket of all things cosy, covered in the troll tweets.