Bihan Jiang

week 1 、2- Introduction to sustainability

1. This 3d model made up of bronze wires caught my eye, especially the side parts. Compared to the front, the side part is much simpler, but the pattern is also more vivid. The artist used the bronze wire to form different structures to make the whole artwork more interesting.

2. At first glance, I thought the pattern of the woman dancing her body was very pretty, but when I looked closely at the lines on the paper, I realised that it didn’t look like a drawing, but rather a zinc plate transfer, and I thought that the way it was printed was very interesting as well, with irregular lines and varying shades of ink adding to the spirit of the whole pattern.

• This week our talk was about sustainability, where we learnt about the many ways in which sustainable objects can be used to create something new. So for our Friday workshop, we used many sustainable items to make transfers on paper, creating a more layered image by using different items on each layer and applying different colours to the transfers.
• 1. I used a yellow posca pen to dip the weeds and printed them on black paper as a background, then i inked the maple leaf with purple and blue ink and printed it on the paper, and lastly i inked the branches with fwhite ink and stampe them randomly on the paper.
• 2. I painted the leaves with dark purple and gold colours on his veins and leaf skin respectively, and then printed it on the paper to create a dark and light effect
• 3. For the first layer, I inked the maple leaf in pink and grass green and then stamped it on the paper, for the second layer, I inked the edges of the maple leaf in gold and stamped it again on the paper, and lastly, I inked the pinecone in white and stamped white dots of varying sizes in the middle of the leaf.

1. The first thing I did was to think of fibreglass. I placed blue and white fibreglass inside a heat press and used the heat press to melt the edges of the fibreglass so that they fused together, then I used a hair dryer to shape the fibreglass, twisting it to create the curvature that I wanted, and then I experimented with placing it on my arm.
2. I used a knitting technique to tie the fibreglass and regular yarn together with a knot, forming them into the shape of a collar, which was then placed around a real person’s neck for adjustment.

Week 3-Emerging Technologies

This week’s lecture was about energy technology, which introduced us to the field of digital media and how it can be used in many different fields. Nowadays, many digital products are becoming more and more popular, and I found out that my profession can also use digital media, such as 3d clo. Firstly, I download a model of the human body, and then I can model the body of the mannequin with the ideas that I have in my clothes, and then I can adjust it in time if there is any mistake, and I don’t need to change the wrong place and re-measure it again, which greatly reduces my time cost and also reduces my time cost. I don’t need to re-measure the clothes as I used to do, which greatly reduces my time cost and also gives me the most intuitive feeling of the final garment.

• I made a 3d clo of a dress, I started by pinching a trapezoidal shape and pinched a lot of little corners on it
• I made a mask with a raised middle part that can be put in place and stuck on the bridge of the nose
• I modelled the womb and united it with a flower to make a three-dimensional miniature

week 4-Nature

I used ps to go and change the tone of my painting. In the first picture I drew flowers and grass. In the second one, I drew the tulip, but changed in its shape. In the third one, I drew what I imagined to be a cannibal flower

I transformed them into patterns based on my drawings of flowers and used the laser cutting technique, a flower pattern divided into two layers on two separate sheets of felt paper with a different pattern cut out by the laser cutting technique and combined them again to form a flower!

week 5-Cultural Sustainability

I went to Jingdezhen, China last summer, where there is a strong ethnic culture, and one of the things that inspired me the most was the uneven texture on the floor and walls created by the locals when they break a lot of ceramic bowls into pieces and then set them into walls and floors, and then infuse them with cement.

The thangka has a very sustainable cultural identity in my opinion. fig.2 is a thangka I painted, which is a characteristic art form in Tibetan culture, and the painting I created is called ‘One Thought’, which can be seen in the left part of the painting as a character with a demon as its image, and in the right part of the painting as a Buddha, which is a symbol of compassion in Chinese. The symbolism of the painting is compassion. And the middle of the two paintings blend together to represent that when people sometimes make a decision about something, it is often just a thought, a thought of hell and a thought of heaven.

The first thing that came to my mind for cultural sustainability was Yunnan, China, where one of the most iconic animals is the dragon, so I used French embroidery, combined with gems and sequins to make the whole thing look even more gorgeous.

week 6-Empathy

In my opinion, empathy refers to the ability to empathise with other people’s feelings and situations, which is why I created the two paintings in Figure 1. The top painting means that a person is feeling the feelings conveyed to him from the outside world, and a stronger empathy will allow him to sense the joys and sorrows that others are experiencing. The lower painting expresses the idea that there are two people standing in the darkness and in the light, and although they are experiencing different things, the gap between them is slowly melting, so that they can both gradually feel each other.

Figure 2 is a collage I made, in my opinion, the tree and its roots are the channel that connects and transmits human emotions, this tree is like empathy, as if it can enter into the other person’s inner world and feel the other person’s emotions.

self reflection

I learnt a lot of new knowledge through these weeks of blogging. The theme of the first and second week was Introduction to sustainability, which was the first time I learnt about sustainability. Through the lecture I learnt that the fashion industry wastes a lot of resources, but there are many artists who are doing works about sustainability to appeal to the public. In the second week’s workshop, we used sustainable objects to make prints, and it was my first time to try printing with leaves, and the whole process was very new and interesting to me. I also tried something else with glass filament and was pleasantly surprised by the results. In the third week we learnt about the theme Emerging Technologies, I tried to do the more immature 3d clo, which was a very bold attempt for me and I think I should learn more about technology in the future as well because it will cut down on the cost of your time in a way. In week 4 we did something on a nature theme, I tried to draw a lot of pictures and make patterns out of them, I then tried laser cutting and formed them into a lot of flower shapes. I think next time I could try more ways of doing print and do more nature elements other than flowers. In week 5 we learnt about Cultural Sustainability, I chose to make a French embroidery with elements that represent a Chinese ethnic group and I strung pearls at the bottom, I liked the overall effect and I hope that I can study more about culture in the future. In the sixth week we did the Empathy theme, which was completely new to me, and I did a little bit of painting on this theme, which allowed me to explore new areas of my life and try painting in this style for the first time.