Lesson video

Hello, everyone.

How are you today? My name's Mrs. Alton, and I'll be your art teacher for today's lesson.

Today is all about developing your textile voice.

And that's from the unit, Finding your Artistic Voice and Introduction to the Creative Process.

So let's get started.

By the end of today's lesson, I hope that you can reflect on what influences a designer's style and use visual resources to inspire a thread card study.

Let's look at some keywords for today's lesson.

Style is a distinctive visual language or way of working.

Influence is something that inspires or shapes your creative choices.

Experiment is testing ideas, materials, or techniques to discover new possibilities.

Our lesson today, developing your textile voice, is broken down into three learning cycles.

The first is understanding what makes a style.

The second is collecting visual resources, and the third is creating a thread card study.

Let's take a look at learning cycle one.

The outcome for this lesson today could be like these examples on your screen, but I'm sure you'll have your own really interesting ideas by the end of today's lesson.

Let's take a look at what these images have in common.

We have a printed textile example, a constructed textile example, so common methods of constructed textiles might include weaving and knitting, for example, and an example of embroidery.

So pause the video here and have think, what might they have in common? Well done if you recognise that they represent the three main types of textile design.

A quick check for understanding.

Which group shows the three main areas of textile design? Is it A, constructed, print, and drawing? B, embroidery, sculpture, and painting? C, print, constructed, and embroidery? Or D, print, photography, and constructed? Well done if you said C, print, constructed, and embroidery.

A style is a way an artist or designer makes their work look and feel.

It reflects their personal voice.

Textile voice is how someone expresses ideas, interests, and identity through visual choices.

Style is shaped by influences and experiments, so really thinking back to our keywords there.

Style can evolve as your voice develops, and we'll be looking at this more in the lesson.

So let's take a moment to think how artists and designers create a style.

You could pause here to talk to the person next to you or share your ideas with me.

Style is influenced by personal choices like colour, and colour can be all types of quality.

So you might think about bold, muted, neutral, or even neon.

Techniques like stitching, layering, printing, or weaving, some of the techniques we talked about earlier on.

Materials.

Maybe materials might be soft, shiny, recycled or delicate.

And themes that the artist or designer tackles within their work, and that might be cultural themes, themes of identity, nature, emotions.

That can be a really broad scope of ideas.

So let's take a moment for a quick check for understanding.

See if you can fill in the gaps from the words in the bottom box.

Style is shaped by choices like? Well done if you matched all of those correctly.

These artists use printed textiles to explore identity, heritage, and cultural stories.

Their textile voice and style are shaped by their colour choices, patterns, and the narratives or stories that they choose to tell.

Althea McNish brings Caribbean colour and nature into bold fabric designs celebrating her heritage.

She come to the UK from Trinidad and wanted to incorporate all this beautiful, vibrant colours into her silk textile work.

Yinka Shonibare uses Dutch wax prints to explore history, identity, and the effects of colonialism.

Shonibare often incorporates the fabric into his sculptures, painting, photography, film, and other media, often contrasting it with Western art, history and literature.

These constructed textile artists have developed their textile voice through the use of texture, form and materials to express identity, culture, and environment.

Their styles are influenced by how they combine and shape the materials.

Michael Brennand-Wood mixes thread, wood and found materials to push the boundaries of textile art.

He also looks at traditional techniques like lace making and incorporates these with new and unexpected materials.

Anya Paintsil uses hair, rug-hooking and stitching to explore race, identity and personal stories.

She also thinks about crafts from the working class, so which have evolved out of necessity.

These embroidery artists have developed their textile voice through stitch, texture and pattern to express personal and cultural stories.

Their styles are shaped by the techniques and motifs they choose.

Sue Stone layers fabric and stitch to tell stories about people, place and memory.

Sue Stone is a British artist from Wales who is best known for textural figurative compositions that often feature a fish, a symbol of her heritage.

Richard McVetis uses tiny, repeated stitches to explore time, stillness, and everyday moments.

He makes intricate minimalist objects that take hours of dedication such as wall hangings and sculptural cubes.

A quick true or false question.

Style is fixed and doesn't change once an artist finds it.

What do you think? Well done if you said that's a false statement.

Can you think why? Style isn't fixed.

It grows as artists reflect on their personal experiences and influences.

Alex and Izzy are discussing how they can identify a textile designer's style.

Alex says, "I look for repeated influences in their work.

It shows how their style and textile voice has developed." Izzy comments that, "I notice their experiments with materials and themes.

It shows me their ideas and unique style." Over to you for our first task.

Investigate a textile designer's style.

Choose a textile designer.

And you might want to look at one of the ones we've discussed during this learning cycle.

Look closely at their use of colour.

Is it bold, soft, clashing, or maybe even limited? The techniques that they used.

And you might refer here to whether they're a print designer or maybe they're a constructed textiles, or maybe they work with embroidery.

What techniques do they use within their field? Is it stitching, layering, printing, weaving, for example? Materials.

What are they working with? Is it fabric, wool, found objects maybe? And the themes that they're exploring.

So what really inspires them? Is it maybe identity, culture, environment, or emotions? Bullet point or write three to four sentences explaining what makes their style unique.

Pause the video here while you complete this task.

So let's take a look at what your work may have looked like.

This student has looked at Althea McNish.

And they've identified that she uses bright colours inspired by the Caribbean, that she paints brightly coloured backgrounds with layered flowered sketches.

Her drawings look natural and not too detailed.

She often uses dark or black shapes to create contrast.

And her work is influenced, that keyword there, what's inspiring her by her culture and her personal heritage.

You may have presented your work in sentences.

So for example, Althea McNish's style uses bright colours that remind her of the Caribbean.

Her textiles look like painted backgrounds with sketched shapes like flowers laid on top to make patterns.

I like how her drawings look natural and not too detailed.

The shape she layers are often dark or black, which makes them stand out and creates contrast.

Her work shows influences from a culture and where she comes from.

So let's take a look at learning cycle two, collecting visual resources.

A visual resource can be used to inspire creative work.

These can include such things as a fashion moodboard.

And on a moodboard you might include photographs, drawings and sketches, patterns or motifs, found objects or textures, images from books, magazines, or online, and personal items, for example, could be anything you've collected or little pieces of clothing or heirlooms, things that you can touch and feel are placed onto the moodboard.

A quick check for understanding.

What can visual resources help a textile designer to explore? Is it A, colour, pattern, texture, form, and meaning? B, fabric types, machine speed, and thread colour? C, sewing tools, clothing sizes, logos and zips? Or D, celebrity, seasons, and shopping habits? Well done if you recognise it's A, colour, pattern, texture, form and meaning.

Photos can be a great source of inspiration as I'm sure you've discovered.

This is an example of a photograph that's then been developed into a textile design.

So this photograph was taken of a garage door that had a mural on it, and you can see that actually photographs can come from unexpected places.

They can be taken really quickly to capture ideas as they happen, and they can be edited either digitally or by hand to explore and develop new ideas over time.

Drawing helps you observe details closely.

Here's an example of a drawing that's been turned into a repeated pattern.

Drawing helps you to slow down and notice shape, line and texture.

Quick sketches or detailed studies can help develop ideas from what you see or imagine.

Patterns inspire repeated shapes and symbols.

Again, here's a photograph of a coloured umbrella display, which was outside.

So from something that you wouldn't normally associate with textiles, it might spunk a really interesting pattern design.

And patterns can come from lots of different places, including nature, culture, or everyday life.

And collecting pattern references helps you recognise what themes attract you and can inspire new designs.

Objects too can hold personal or cultural meaning.

Here's a collection of natural forms. Objects might remind you of a place, person, or tradition.

Objects with personal significance can help you include meaningful themes in your work.

Maybe you might have some objects that you collect or you can think of objects either on you now, or that you have at home that may be a source of inspiration to you.

A quick check for understanding.

Visual resources are often used to spark ideas, develop style, or reflect personal influences in the design process.

Well done if you recognise that's a true statement.

Can you think why? Visual resources such as photos, drawings, patterns, and objects help artists explore and communicate ideas like we've just seen.

So over to you for our second task.

Collect visual resources that could have inspired your chosen designer.

So think back to that first learning cycle.

What did you learn about that designer? And if you are in their shoes, what kind of visual resource would you be looking for? You might like to take a photograph, find an image, make a drawing or choose an object.

Think about your chosen designer's textile voice and their style.

That might include their cultural heritage, their favourite colours or patterns, and the textures or themes that are important to them.

Pause the video here while you complete this task.

So there are many possible outcomes for this task, but your work may have looked like, for instance, Jacob's work here.

He says that he chose a secondary source of tropical flowers because he thinks that Althea McNish would like this photo because the colour and shapes are similar in her work.

Let's take a look at learning cycle three, creating a thread card study.

A thread card study is a small sample made by wrapping threads, yarn or string around a card like we can see in this example here.

Thread card studies help designers explore how a visual resource influences their style through colour and texture.

And if we take a look at these images, maybe you can spot some of the corresponding colours and textures in the thread card study.

Designers often use thread card studies to plan and experiment with ideas before creating textile work.

Designers choose threads that match qualities in their visual resource.

So these might be things like shiny, rough, soft or bumpy.

And this is to reflect the mood, material, or meaning.

A quick check for understanding.

A thread card study helps textile designers to, A, sew together fabric pieces to make textiles, B, match colour and texture to visual resources, C, look at visual resources to practise their drawing skills, or D, create printed textile design using stamps? Well done if you said B, match colour and texture to visual resources.

So to make a thread card study, you need to cut out a square piece of card.

They don't need to be very big.

This one is about six centimetres by six centimetres.

You might experiment with changing the shape of the card by cutting or punching holes, and this really depends on the type of visual resource that you're looking at.

Secondly, choose thread colours that reflect the main colours in your visual resource.

So we can see in these images the same types of colours being matched.

Try wrapping found objects like netting and feathers to add additional texture.

So your thread card study doesn't need to be flat.

You can really be inventive with this process.

Experiment with different textures such as thick, fluffy, fine, glossy, or matte.

You need to wrap your threads neatly around your card.

And this is the back of the thread card study.

You can secure the threads at the back by, holding the end in position, and overlapping and tuck in the thread under each of the following wraps so it holds in place.

You need to keep going until you have covered the whole card.

And think about keeping threads wrapped tightly and grouped by colour or texture.

A true or false question.

A thread card study helps you explore how colour and texture in threads can reflect your visual resource.

What do you think? Well done if you said true.

Designers use thread qualities like colour, shine, and texture to connect with their inspiration.

Now over to you for our last task.

Create a thread card study inspired by your visual resource from Task B.

Cut a square of card.

Try experimenting by cutting the card into shapes that reflect the texture, form or style of your visual resource.

Choose thread colours and textures that influence the main colours of your visual resource.

So we're thinking about all those textures that we mentioned.

Wrap threads neatly around the card.

Keep threads tight and grouped by colour and texture.

Pause the video here while you complete this task.

So well done for all your hard work.

I hope you had fun experimenting with all those different threads and textures in your thread card study.

Let's take a look at what your work may have looked like.

Here we can see the initial visual resource and how those colours and surfaces may be developed.

I'm sure you've come up with some wonderful and inventive ideas.

Let's take a look at our second task for this learning cycle.

Write a sentence or two explaining how your thread card connects to your visual resource.

Think about how your choices reflect both your textile voice, your personal expression, and the visual style that you've observed in the artist's work.

You might want to use a sentence framework to help you, and I've prepared one here.

So you can have a read through this if you think that's helpful.

Pause the video here while you complete this task.

So well done for taking time to reflect on your work.

It's a really important part of the designer's process.

So let's have a look at what you may have said.

Jacob here has said that he chose green and yellow soft threads to reflect the tropical flowers in his visual resource.

And it links this idea of Althea McNish's vibrant style inspired by the Caribbean.

He says that his choice reflects his textile voice because the colours remind him of warm places he's visited and express his love of nature.

So let's take a look at a summary for today's lesson, developing your textile voice.

Style is a distinctive way of working, shaped by the artist's influences, materials, and ideas.

Artists experiment by testing different techniques and materials to develop their style.

A personal style isn't fixed.

It can grow and change through reflection and repetition.

And influences like culture, nature, or personal experiences help inspire your textile voice and shape creative choices.

Thank you for learning with me today and I really hope to see you soon.