Planet Ruby Starrs

The first term of college in finished - Christmas is looming FAST!!! I have given it little of no thought concentrating on getting final designs finished so I don't have to fret too much over the holiday period and can try and relax!! I have achieved this mostly, the serious essay is pretty much written and I have most of my final scarf designs in the bag so to speak.. they need hemming and I'm going to try to hand roll them, a long and tedious process but a much nicer finish on the end product. I also want to try and do a couple more in different colourways.... But in the mean time I'm going to crack on with Festive fun... We braved the Metro centre for almost the most last minute Christmas shopping I have ever done!!!  We managed to get it pretty much done in one swoop - thats the beauty of lists, organisation and Dr Fred not being able to bear shopping for more then 15 minutes!!!  Just shows what can be done when needed!! I finally baked the Christmas cake

My tutor has found me some fancy torso wall hanging mannequin torso thingies to display my latest designs on and they are looking quite snazzy...  I've got seven different designs in the process of being worked up in this collection - the working title currently being the Bowes Bonkers Collection... module hand in day is looming - its actually after Christmas but I want to try and have some down time over Christmas without too much college work on my mind.  These designs started with hand drawings inspired by some of the porcelain collection at the  Bowes Museum at Barnard Castle.  The drawings were part hand coloured and then scanned into so the overall design could be finished digitally allow me to colour manipulate and place the images as i wanted to with ease.  I'm very pleased with myself regarding Photoshop skills!! I think finally this time round it has stuck and I feel quite proficient and even can troubleshoot to a degree.... of course I still have to ring

With little over a weeks notice the 2nd year students were invited to have a stand at the Hartlepool Art Gallery Christmas Craft and Art Fair.  It was quite impressive the way quite a number of people rallied and managed to produce some really lovely prints to sell at such short notice. We organised the day and arrived to set up the stand with a pretty brilliant display of prints, cushions and scarves and it looked really splendid, colourful inviting and individual.  We had a good spot in the thick of the fair right opposite the coffee bar and we had high hopes for some Christmas pocket money. Sadly it didn't happen.... we had quite a bit of interest and we did sell a number of prints and people were really friendly and often very chatty but just weren't up for buying the goods.  Shame really as they were quality limited edition prints and gifts but it just wasn't the right market. It was disappointing - but in all fairness it was a dreadful day weather wise, a

Lovely Sunday a couple of weeks ago spent learning a new skill and creating very wonderful little  birds and some crouching leaping hares out of wire.  It was a very clever and relatively simple but effective process and I really enjoyed making these creatures.

Excitement in the print room... I finally got designs for two scarves prepped and ready for printing and consequently had the honour of being the first fabric to go through the new sublimation printer at college.  It was a giddy experience!!! There are pros and cons about using this printer the main advantage being for cash strapped students its considerably cheaper then digital printing and also its on the doorstep (although I reckon the third floor doorstep took some doing ...Its giant bit of kit) so a relatively quick process.  The main disadvantage is because it is a sublimation printer in only prints on to synthetic fabrics.  It's a heat transfer process giving amazing colours - vibrant and striking but only works on surfaces that it can adhere to. I have always preferred to work with natural fabrics, I do use synthetics in places for additional decoration and applique but I have never made a complete sample using them before.   The fabrics we have at college for sale are

Just a quick reminder that not all art students hang out everyday in the studio doing lush things with fabric and design - occasionally there's a bit of hard graft involving contextual theory, writing essays and reading books with long words in them!!

Its all hands on deck full steam computers ahead and final designs are starting to emerge.... they are a little bit scary!!! Having spent a week or more colouring in digital images  - trying to establish a colour palatte that matches my original mood board I've come up with 15 shades based on 5 colours and while I personally think my mood board was almost sophisticated my designs are coming out completely bonkers!!! This is not entirely unintentional, my concept was to use traditional quaint porcelain posh ornaments as seen in the Bowes Museum collection and transform them into funky, naive, contemporary designs and that's pretty much what I have done! The colour palate however has got very vibrant - very primary - gaudy to say the least - but I got to the point when I thought if I want bonkers designs and gloriousness then there are no half measures. Its a slamitin Ruby style again!! I've done some market research and find that my work could well sit (colourw

Dr Fred and I held one of our star weekends this last weekend.  Interestingly this was at a venue very near the 'Lost amongst the Stars' weekend we went to the week before but it was quite a different affair- no less enjoyable and equally great fun but definitely a different atmosphere and disappointingly not quite so much clear skies!!! I didn't take any photos so here are are a few memorable slides from Dr Freds presentation... make what you will... What makes it different is not so much the people and location, these weekends are largely based on listening to lectures from Dr Fred, so its much more educationally biased, but of course the participants only pretend to come for the knowledge sharing when really they know they are going to get fantastic grub!!! We hired the Langdon Beck Youth hostel located just the other side of Middleton in Teesdale and very pleasant it was. Its a spacious building with plenty of bedrooms and a most fantastic view down the dale. 

I bit the bullet this week so to speak and braved the ordeal of cleaning and producing two new screens for new print designs... It wasn't as hard as I had expected, but of course it was while my screens were in the exposure unit that the bulb blew rendering the unit unusable!!! Last week the steamer broke while my fabrics were being steamed and this week the exposure thingy!!!!! My mum always said I had too much electricity in me and everything broke - I think she actually mean't I was just plain clumsy but hey ho, whatever, she weren't too wrong!!!! The screens were finally finished but I haven't had a minute to go look at em let alone test them - that's the first job for next week.  As an antidote to the total frustration of screen printing I was able to employ some time making multi-directional patterns.  Good old fashioned cutting. sticking and colouring! Never happier, sat in the studio cutting up various drawing resized - flipped - photocopied to start so

Time marches on and I don't know how another week sped by... it was another a completely mad one which included an almost total melt down in the car park as I thought I had lost my sketch book!!! If anyone has ever lost all the computer work or a portfolio or sketch book they will know exactly how I felt!! BUT.. thankfully I eventually found it stashed away hidden under some evil bad hiding stuff!!! I started breathing again and with crisis averted, the rest of the week was spent sorting it out and getting ready for my first mid term tutorial which was great and made me feel like I am heading in the right direction... So despite a nasty sore throat and grim head all was well in the end.... and I finally feel I am getting used to this practically full time college lark.. we still have hardly any food in the house and clean clothes kind of emerge from time to time - but I'm starting to get a bit more organised (ha ha ) cant quite remember how the hoover works!!! And then a we

Finally a fairly catastrophe free week... a week full of screen printing at college learning discharge techniques - all of which produce interesting effects - take up loads of time and energy and don't particularly appeal to me!  I think it about practicing and finding the right colours and images, I have dyed a lot of fabric this week and I quite enjoy the process but I cant get the colours right - I cant get the depth of colour I want in the cotton fabrics and I'm loathe to use expensive silks until I either know what I'm doing or can get colours right!!! drying dyeing - but more colour but still not deep!!! I've had a further play with heat transfer printing and continue to be amazed at the colour transformation from paper to material.  Using an A1 sheet of paper I mish mashed a load of greens and blues and threw in a bit of bleach to lighten some of the tones - I swirled it about using a big brush and then dried it off with a hair drier - the ended result looke

Thanks for the help with making the blog work - its still a pain asit shouldnt need the fuss is it needs - i'm stillworking on it - but for the timebeing thanks to Maggie... the following works.. left click on the top of the left hand side of the blog and when the menu drops choose 'sidebar' and this enables you to add comments and also stops the  page from moving and rolling around.   new post about this weeksantics to follow later 

since I changed the blog layout and messed about some people (myself on another email address included) cant read the posts properly they will not stay still and just roll back.. I have no idea why this is and I cant find any help on the blogger site - if anyone can help could you leave a comment here and I'll try and access it - having problems accessing comments as well! thanks - hope I can sort this out...

Another crazy week, this week I managed to lock myself out of the house very late at night wearing mainly pyjamas - thank goodness for kind and resourceful neighbors who finally helped me break back in (took 90 minutes in howling gales)- its quite comforting to know how difficult it is to actually break into our house and believe me we will not be pursuing a burglary career... the start of a new sketch book ..(lacking colour to date) College yielded an excellent tuition session on Photoshop - never thought I would say that but it inspired confidence in my currently diminished abilities and I feel sure I can brush up and charge headily onto the world of digital design - yes I know that is optimistic but that's how I felt on Friday so long may it last - I shall make the most of the feeling!!! We had a lovely weekend in Leeds celebrating my youngest grand daughters 3rd birthday - given the current sad family circumstances it was a very good day - she certainly enjoyed the cop

Action packed week at college non stop info overload - lots of new words learned, Hetero-normative - not a word that crops up in everyday conversation.... but it popped up a lot this week as we considered fashion and clothes choices, design trends and historical bias for men and womens general attire... Do we wear clothes for modesty or warmth or really to make a statement!  Why are mens outfits so often stereotyped - boring - formal - plain - all similar styled?  Why do we notice when men wear florals, pink, flamboyant colourful outfits, flowing shirts, skirts etc.... and what messages does these clothes send? It was an interesting informative thought provoking lecture and I feel an essay coming on .... I've got to write something for the module - I was going to do boring ethics and sustainability but this sounds more engaging and I'm feeling a wee bit low of sustainability at the moment having just purchased lots of synthetic material - but I will be making works of art w

fine liner on paper I have just survived a wonderful week of failed van - no car - and an almost melt down of electrics at the house.... nothing totally calamitous just events to mess up the week and slow everything down!  It did mean I got organised and did some proper drawing at home and have set up a good and potentially productive work space which produced work!! Then we had family visit and this entailed me having to be  hospitable and not hiding in my work room drawing and sewing all day - fortunately I have more or less caught up this weekend. I have spent a lot of the week drawing the exterior of the Bowes museum to use as a screen print template - I have used a couple of photographs I took,  enlarging them and then cropping them to use the front part of the house.  I drew them free hand using a fine liner and light box, and having had a practice run I did them again using a ruler for very clear lines - I like both versions but think the more formal straight lines suit

The weeks are beginning to fly by at college.. We are in the midst of Material Culture lectures and these are throwing up all sorts of moral dilemmas - can we really save the world - they are very thought provoking and to be honest its a little bit depressing... When you get to your 7th decade and you still cant quite get your ethics together - my latest most immediate dilemma is the cost of printing my final fabric samples... using plastic based synthetic materials would be very seriously cheaper then using organic plant based fibres... but then the dying, producing, manufacturing costs are economically and environmental unsound in both cases and what difference does a few samples make on an already produced cloth... The textile industry is second only to the oil industry in causing the most environmental damage - its a hard one to reconcile and the changes have to start somewhere and in an ideal world it has to be with today's up and coming designers!  There is a definite move

I had a quick wander around Light Night in Leeds - it was good but we were with tired small children and the parade didn't start until 7.30 and our little people were very weary so we didn't see it all - what we saw was very impressive, including the high wire chappie in the Trinity shopping centre - our nine year olds were totally entranced - I know they were just waiting for him to fall off!!!! The over sized paper lantern puppets were great - the kids loved them, they were celebrating womens suffrage - 100 years of having the vote...

A great day playing wet media and big paint brushes... Just what I needed to back into a creative head space.  We were asked to bring a object in to draw, drawing from photographs is never quite the same.  I figured it would be a good idea to take something that was relevant to my brief of interesting creatures so I took in a wooden puppet dragon, something I picked up in Vietnam.  Again in keeping with my concept of translating the traditional into contemporary design I decided to stick with a blue study and spent all day mixing various shades and tones of blue ink and procien dyes to paint large dragons with. this is on lining paper and all the inks bled a lot making it blurry I had very mixed results, getting used to wielding a paint brush again was fun, working on a larger scale then I am used to is quite challenging and puts me out of my comfort zone.  I decided to work on different surfaces to see how the wet media worked and it was an interesting experiment.  I painte

My goodness this going back to college malarkey is time consuming, great fun, slightly over whelming, informative, and I'm busy busy busy.... Its taking some time to find my feet, well to find just about everything actually - this morning I was heading out early as I had some work to catch up on but first I couldn't find my college pass- essential for getting around the building photocopying, computer access - so I couldn't leave home without it - then I noticed I had my top on inside out.. and while righting this and finding pass I lost my car keys!!! this about sums up my life at the moment, its going a bit faster then I am at the moment!!! However once I got to school - I settled down and had a very productive day which finally set me on a path for my creative module and started a vague clarification about my concept.  I always find this bit of the brief difficult so many ideas bouncing around my head and they need sorting and filing into good, bad, and plain ugly.

Alongside the regular Bowes museum display was a fantastic exhibition ''Catwalking: Fashion through the Lens of Chris Moore''.  This exhibition showcased a large selection of iconic photographs documenting the fashion industry from the 1960's to the present day and includes a number of stunning dresses on show from Fashion designers such a as Vivian Westwood, Alexander McQueen, Yves Saint Laurent, Chanel, Versace and many others. I was a exemplary student and as requested I didn't photograph the McQueen collection but I have to say it stole the show and this exhibition, which is on til early January, is well worth a visit for the costume exhibits alone - but the photographs are interesting and I enjoyed the accompanying video of the 2013 (need to check this) Vivian Westwood catwalk show. http://thebowesmuseum.org.uk/Exhibitions/2018/Catwalking-Fashion-Through-the-Lens-of-Chris-Moore