Katie Nolan

Initially, I began the project with a pre-existing image of the type of work that I was going to produce, this made it hard to develop my work in the first couple of weeks of the project as In my head the work I was producing was what I liked doing. However, as I was shown more processes, began to think more critically about my work and took more influence from my drawings I became less precious about retaining my desired style, and became more focused on experimenting with material and process. This change in the way I approach my work has definitely aided the development of my studio work and has opened me up to far more than I expected. My initial ‘100 Objects’ sketchbook was fairly small and didn’t provoke much inspiration in terms of translating my drawings into textiles. It soon became clear that in order to take my work further I needed stronger inspiration, which wasn’t coming from my sketchbook. I began working on loose A2 sheets, this different way of working immediately

So far in this unit, I have definitely grow in confidence with regards to my approach to working. I have been pushing myself to use different processes, colour schemes and materials. With regards to my drawing I have slowly become more confident in my drawing and therefor haven’t been limiting myself to a small sketchbook and have been working on bigger sheets. Due to my drawings becoming larger, my samples followed suit, this allowed me to form a stronger link between my drawings and my samples, although I am still working on this, I didn’t expect to work so large scale considering the size of my samples produced at the beginning of this project. Giving myself more surface to work onto, I found myself keeping my work simpler, something I was probably afraid to do before. In comparison to the last unit, I feel more engrossed in my work, and have been working better independently, utilising the studio more outside of taught hours. I better understand how to develop my own wor

In order to loosen up my drawing style, I created a set of handmade drawing tools that I felt would challenge the way i usually draw; my usual process being using small marks and precise line to build up my drawing, often utilising a lot of white space.  I was mostly happy with the drawings produced using my tools, i found that i was less precious when using bigger paper and wet media.However, i felt this process produced some very messy marks that i wasn't hugely fond of. Although,  I was able to create an interesting variety of marks i wouldn't have if using pens/paint brushes in my sketchbook. Below are the drawings i produced using the tools, using a range of emulsion, inks, gouache and pens/pencil attached to other longer tools (such as string and long cardboard tubing)