Wire Project

Natural and mechanical forms of inspiration for my wire project. 

I chose the leaf mainly because of how readily available they were given the time of year. When I gathered the leaves, they were soft and pliable which appealed to me, because I thought this would enable me to twist it into a variety of shapes.

I chose the kitchen multitool shortly after studying the leaf in drawings, where I had found out that the leaf was not as simple to position as I had first thought. I felt due the complexity of the multitool, this would be a more interesting study subject. 

Studies of natural and mechanical forms; using opposite hand with ink brush attached to a stick 

I noticed the leaf started to resemble a map or network (such as London Underground Tubes) when incorporating all the veins. Using tracing paper I experimented with adding liners to my leaf studies first in the style of a tube map then in the style of a road map.

I next went on to explore contour lines using various parts my two inspiration objects. I found the lines reminded me of the veins running through the leaves but also allowed me to express shape, something I felt was lacking with a basic line drawing.

Here I practised using wire to copy some of my drawings. I initially found this very fiddly because I found it difficult to work out where to start. When I used wire to replicate a contour line drawing, this made the process slightly easier in terms of working out a starting place but it was still difficult to achieve the precision I had hoped for 

I notice that certain elements of my inspirational items reminded me of a car bucket seat. So decided to research a few current bucket seat shapes then study elements of my inspirational items that were of particular interest in order for me to come up with a design. 

I initially created a design in my sketch book, incorporating various inspirations from my sketchbook.

I realised that the way I had designed the edges of the seat would not only be difficult to achieve using wire but would also not be practical considering it would be a seat, so decided to smooth off the edges .

Another issue I realised whilst experimenting with wire earlier on is that when there are a lot of layers of detail the piece can look very messy. Because of this I decided to use wire for the base and general structure of the seat then to sew into foam to create the design for the cushion. Towards the end of making the final piece I wanted to make the seat self standing so used two additional loops of wire to balance the chair above the surface where it is sat.

To avoid being too literal, I created a second seat design based on one of my wire experimentation pieces. The idea was that it could bend and twist like a slinky to mould to the shape of the person using it. This links back to my thoughts earlier about a leaf being a structure similar to a map of some sort.

Illustrations to demonstrate both of my seat design ideas. 

I then looked at the fabric designs of Emily Feaver who uses repeat patterns in her work. From this I created my own fabric designs using the initial studies of my leaf, below are the fabric samples I created along with colour variations for each one.