In my Final Major project, I will be continuing with the exploration of my theme from the Design Sympathise project; to explore the perception of female beauty and the male gaze. However, in the FMP I want to focus this idea to become less on the concept of female beauty in terms of makeup and clothing like I had in the past, and focus specifically on the body, its form and movement using the “nude” as a main focal point, exploring all bodies not just that of the female. I will explore the body's movement and natural folds through zooming in on the body's features and use fabric to emulate the body's unique shapes. I will also explore the nude body through an almost surrealist lens looking at how the silhouette can be preserved differently by altered and deforming the figure. I will investigate these themes by doing research, expanding on my original photography research taking new photos and exploring different techniques to create new imagery to work with. The photos will focus on the body, the shapes created and texture. I also want to work more with sculpture, I started exploring this last term with fabric sculptures to emulate curves on the body. I want to push this further and explore deforming and distorting the human form to create new shapes and from that recognizable human figure however with unique and deformed shapes. In terms of drawing research, I want to experiment a lot with acetate and the ideas of transparency and layers, I am going to use this to help develop my composition with layering designs.In terms of materials and print techniques, I am going to continue with my devore experimentation, bringing in a new process of digital devore as I feel this will help me experiment and push my print concept and compositions further. I also want to use my digital skills to continue pushing my prints, specifically, that of the photographic nature as I feel manipulating and creating a final design through digital works very well with this idea.I want to experiment with more unconventional materials that better relate to my project's concept. So far, I have been using a lot of silks and wools. I will be continuing experimenting with silk as I enjoy the way digital prints come out on this fabric as well as the sense of movement it adds to prints and the luxury quality of this fabric. However, I will also be exploring more materials that emulate skin texture such as maybe plastics, lynx and similar materials. Through some research on sustainable and unique materials, I will collate a collection of fabrics that make the viewer feel as though they are wearing a second skin when the fabric is worn. I will focus on translucence and movement in fabrics.I want to work on larger scale in terms of sculpture and drawing research. I started experimenting with this in design syntheses through fabric sculpture and a1 drawing but I want to push this further and use scale in a purposeful way that really adds to my design process. For my final prints, I will aim to have at least 10 large scale prints.
