Uddevalla

Oh man I've left this blog unattended for super long! 

I was meant to upload many of the works and trips that I've done and taken. However didn't manage to squeeze in the time to. I've travelled quite a bit therefore much of my final assignments were only done after the travels, ie) 3 weeks before end of my study period. In another words, no time for blogging!

There should be quite a few posts that I could do regarding my travels and work, including my trip to Spain, Kiruna, my knitting project and my student directed project (digitally printed fabric). These would  s.l.o.w.l.y be updated here coz editing is a pain in the backside, even if editing was minimal.

The photos in this post were taken on 25th November 2010, when Sophie (French), Nina (German) and I took a train up to Uddevalla, a small town that one of our teachers is living in. 

Before going to her house, we drove to a small island off Uddevalla. Though it was only -10 degrees it felt like -18 deg coz it was by the sea. I've taken loads of photos there as well. But here are only those that were taken at Elisabeth's home. It's so cosy and cute. Loved everything about her little home and they actually renovated most of the interior themselves, including the bathroom!

 Pink Marimekko wall hanging for winter. She changes the cushions and the wallhanging to green one for spring!

Elisabeth with one of the books from her white, gridded shelves

Loooove the colours! Instantly brightening up any gloomy winter day

Cool stairs leading to the bedrooms, wasn't invited up of course

Cool old school stove that she leaves on when she's out so the house would be warmed up

Bulbous plant that you could find very commonly in winter 

Sophie! And typical Swedish food...cheese, ham, cucumber, peprika and bread/ crisp. Can you imagine having this everyday? Not me, thanks, though it wasn't bad. A guy in my student accommodation has this every single day, that's excluding the ham and peprika. Just bread, butter, cheese, cucumber, salt and pepper to taste. Omg.

Motherly :)

Super tasty soup!!!!! I had two servings yet wanted more :( And it's made out of...

...this!! Its texture is like potato...but I'm not sure what it's called.

Saffrony dessert with raspberries :)

Actually the photo looks yummier than it really was. The texture of the pudding was like...white carrot cake, for those Malaysians/ Singaporeans who know what I'm talking about, but with a hint of saffron and sugar. Not used to it but it looked so appealing. Anyway, shall not destroy the pic. So I'll say that it's still.....YUMMMM! Hahah.

Sophie (French) and Nina (German)

 Courtyard, with Elisabeth's car at the background

 Frozen apples still hanging on the tree

 Exterior of Elisabeth's house! Many of the Swedish houses are small and often square/ rectangular in plan

After the lunch, we went to Uddevalla's Art Museum. Didn't take many photos.  It wasn't that blog worthy.

Heading home on the regional SJ train. The kid at the background breathed really heavily, borderlined snoring. Quite distracting.

Anyway, still had a good trip, though it was super cold and I actually slipped and fell as I was walking to Elisabeth's house from her car :)!!

Hej då!!

Work In Progress

Happy belated 1st anniversary oatsforporridge!! I'm 8 days late. Oops. Was leaving Sweden for Spain that day.

Busy catching up on my work since coming back from Spain. Will post up photos of the yummy tapas soon. 

It's Kiruna this weekend, trying to catch the northern lights. Hopefully it'll be cloudless, that God'll let us catch the aurora and that I wouldn't freeze into a popsicle in the -20 to -30degC weather. 

Tribal Romance Revisited S/S 2011

Came across these yesterday at Zed-Eye.

The brainchild behind this label is Nigerian-born Ngozi Pere-Okorotie, who is a graduate from London College of Fashion and takes inspiration from Vivienne Westwood.

This collection is a revisitation to Ngozi's earlier collections, where she played with colours, textures and silhouettes.

For better photos go the site itself! I'm loving the headwear already.

Model Inspirations

This is how my screen's looking now. 

Studying facial features and trying to sketch out the best face I could for the subjects of my fashion illustration.

Fashion Illustration

Currently I've got a student directed project that allows me to do just about anything I want for the project, so long as it is fashion/ textile related, of course. 

I've always been fascinated with fashion illustrations. I love drawing girls with beautiful dresses. My best friend from high school used to think I might study fashion instead of architorture (which was SO not for me, hence I fired my bosses... JK!! Reno, Jenny and Tim are great people) coz of those drawings. Neither am I in fashion as well, btw, but in textile design :) Anyway, a decade or more after my first attempt in my extremely primitive sketches of girls with pretty dresses on, I'm now given an opportunity to fully control the direction of my project.

Here are really simple boards that I've come up with after diong some research. Illustrations are all by other super talented artists. Kelly Smith, Bec Winnel, Brittany Lee, Yulia Brodskaya and Catherine Campbell are amongst those whose works I've used to convey what the illustration style/ technique/ materials that I'd like to explore in this project. 

Laura Laine is exceptionally noteworthy. Her illustrations are simply amazing. I'd wish to develop my own style of illustration too and this project would defo be a great stepping stone towards that.

Hopefully they'll turn out as great as I imagined them to be. 

Textilmuseet I Borås- Part II

Here are some photos that I've taken as soon as we came up from the underground archive from the Textile Museum :)

They're mostly photos of machines from past and present that are used for textile making.

Textilmuseet I Borås- Part I

Those that have been following my blog might have already known that right now, I'm on an exchange program in Sweden at a small, textile producing town called Borås. 

About a month or so we visited the Textile Museum of Borås. Just one trip there totally made my entire exchange experience absolutely worthwhile. The amount of collections and preservation of the archives are orderly, neat and every articles handled with much care. 

The photos will be devided into 2-3 posts as there are just too many that I've taken!

Here's a post of the underground archives. Felt a little like a dungeon, sort of. I was the only one taking photos in my class therefore fell behind and was locked inside here alone for under a minute. Kinda scary.

There are only 10-12 of us in my class. One of them looks like Diane Kruger and Agyness Deyn. See if you can spot them ;)

One of the museum curators/ staffs handling a kid's garment

 Traditional Swedish costumes

 Clothes are all alphabetically categorised

 An item from a wedding in the 18th C, with initials of guests all embroidered on it

 A wedding gift to a bride from her husband. As dated

 Collections of fabric swatches

That's Malin on the left. She could be the sweetest looking girl I've ever, ever seen. Maybe a pic of her next time

I like!

A designer from Marimekko. Just passed a couple of years back

That's my teacher, Tonje on the left :)

See you in the next post!

Soul Mama

I absolutely love soul and R'n'B. I love the rhythm, beat, mostly everything about it.

I realised many great songs from this genre are mostly, if not all, sung/ composed/ produced by talented African Americans. Haven't been listening much to it now since the songs nowadays are about girls wearing skimpy clothes and how much the guys wanna bed them. Long gone are the days when R'n'B lyrics were much more discreet and songs were about love. 

Now I'm loving classic songs from soul/ R'n'B singers like Babyface, Toni Braxton, Brian Mcknight, Tamia, Musiq Soulchild, Alicia Keys and the list goes on. Been listening to them for a few days already! 

Here's my illustration as a tribute to gifted R'n'B singers. Keep good songs coming!

København

A little more than two weeks ago I visited Copenhagen with my floormate over the weekend. Most of the photos of the trip are up in my Facebook already but I thought I wanted to only show some of the more interesting ones here. Well, they were photos I took over at Amalienborg Palace, where the Danish royal family are residing I think. 

Frankly speaking, we weren't suppose to take photos inside, unless given special consent. I only knew this when I was happily snapping away and the second guard I talked to told me no photos were allowed. The first guard I talked to saw that I was taking photos and didn't tell me anything about the no photograph policy. In fact, he even helped me in getting my photos right (due to the constant change of natural lighting) and shared that he takes photos as well and would always want his shots right too. 

Many photos were taken but I'll select my favourite ones of my visit to Amalienborg Slot (Palace). They were taken in one of the buildings at the palatial compound, which was open as a museum for exhibition to the public.

Images below are personal items that belonged to the current Danish Queen, Queen Margarethe II, and rooms that she used to live in as a child/ young lady. This exhibition was specially held as a celebration of the queen's 70th this year. This palace was where she was born and it was an amazing feeling to be standing in rooms that real kings and queens, whom you'd only read on books or Wikipedia, used to live in.

I think this was a room that Queen Margarethe used to spend time in. The toddler dress on the right could have been belonged to her

Crafts of the young queen then. She is considered a creative queen as she loves handicrafts, apparently

How many pipes does one need or can one actually smoke in a day?

 Photos of the royal family

 They'd do well if this was a test. I wouldn't be able to go pass 3 generations before me

 Interesting tradition. I guess you could guess Crown Prince Frederik 9 and our lovely Aussie Princess Mary's son's name, if you haven't heard of him already

 

 Uniform belonged to the Queen in younger days

Imagine if your dad told you these are photos of your great-great grandma/ grand aunts and cousins. Woah.

Sorry if the photos are a little dark, as I was in a hurry on the day of the trip and these are unedited. And I can't be bothered to edit as the main reason for this post is only to share the experience.

Hope you all enjoyed it and have a sense of awe as I did over the amazingly maintained items and above all, the carefully recorded history of the lives of this family and their forefathers.

The history was simply amazing. Another castle that's definitely worth visiting is Frederiksborg Slot. THAT one was the highlight of my trip to Denmark. That would be my favourite castle to date (only to visit, not live in it). Pictures are on my Facebook page.

You should visit Denmark if you've the chance!!

Colour Theory

Sorry for the lack of post!

Have been really busy with uni and travelling around. Have taken loads of photos in the time between the previous post and this one. 

Actually, that was an excuse. I've just been lazy to blog :P But I did take loads of photos. Many really interesting ones that I will share soon, including our class's excursion to Textile Museum of Borås and my trip to Copenhagen over the weekend. So this time I've gotta catch up on my work after my travel  Plus, the textile students and lecturers are going for a textile conference in Stockholm  this weekend and my parents are coming for a visit the weekend after. So...lots to be done!

Here's what I was doing just yesterday at class.

Colour Theory with Elisabeth. So fun! I truly felt like a kid again, looking at all these colours and doing all the gluing and pasting!

I've done many similar exercises that Elisabeth is teaching now back in Melbourne but we've never really gone that much depth into colours as we do now. It's really interesting.

We are usually more familiar with Pantone fans and colour identification, for those who know what that is. Here we were using the Swedish colour system called NCS (Natural Colour System).

So totally love the machine cut, 2x 2cm colour chips that come nicely in small self-seal bags with the exercises :) Real neat.