Marvin Gaye Chetwynd costume making: Gluing

My greatest work on Marvin's exhibition was the gluing of the dresses for The Green room performance. These dresses were already sewed from Marvin from white cotton material, all of the them with laces on the back in order to be applicable to different body shapes. Our work was to cut different shapes, mostly triangles and circles from various colors and to glue them on the dresses. These costumes were inspired by the 60's "dots" fashion. We decided that the easiest approach to this process would be to put the dresses on the floor, to arrange the shapes on them in the way we wanted to and then  to start gluing...

The shapes were made from two types of fabric - natural which were thicker and synthetic which were thinner. The glue as a making tool requires higher concentration because it can leave terrible stains especially on the synthetic matherials. While working with it, I would recommend using thicker fabric. Anyway, with a sinthetic fabric ugly stain effect could be avoided with a bit of creativity. One possible solutions could be just putting glue on the fabric in a certain very simple shape for example dots. Even though the stains would be noticeable if they're in the shapes of dots, that could add some freshness to the costume(as you will see from some of the uploaded pictures).
I'm uploading a collection of all the created dresses - some of them back and front, other - only front, if there's nothing different on the back :)

      

      

     

And finishing with a group photo of the performers wearing the costumes we made :)

Marvin Gaye Chetwynd costume making: Sewing

                Sewing was the second technique we use while creating costumes for Marvin's exhibition in Nottingham Contemporary. The first item was a liner to be worn by performers beneath the cousin It costume(Actually we made 12 of them but used only one or two). We used muslin fabric which cut into a rectangular shape, folded into two pieces which turned it into smaller rectangular. Using a sewing machine, I stitched up 2 of the 3 sides (the 4th one was the folded) leaving one of the shorter sides opened and also leaving around 20 cm hole unsewed to one of the longest sides.
                The next step was to cut 2 eye holes on one of the sides. A very important thing to keep in mind while cutting eye holes is always to make them a bit larger than you initially imagine. The other hole to cut was another approximately 20 cm gap on the folded part just opposite the other one (those are for the hands of the performer).
                Finally the last part of the process was hand sewing 2 lastic laces on the 2 sides of the costume on the level of the eye holes which will be tied on the back of the head to hold the holes stationery and make it comfortable for the performer.

Another garment which we made was this male costume for the Brain Bug performance. It was different than the other because of the body shape of the performer. Unlike the Cousin It liners, this was hand sewed and it introduced to me a very interesting sewing technique which does not require knots and is pretty quick. I'm starting the creation of a costume these days and I'm determined to record a small video demonstrating this very interesting technique.

Marvin Gaye Chetwynd costume making: Painting

                 I've divided my participation into Marvin Gaye Chetwynd's performances into 3 articles in terms of the techniques applied for the creation of the costumes. The First technique was painting and we used it while making some more costumes for the Brain Bug performance, because the performers were more than the costumes. We got 2 white cotton bodysuits which we had to transform into pale with curved black line imitating a bug's skin. First decision that we made was that the easiest way would be to paint them while they're on a human body. This approach is also applicable to any tight garment which need to be painted. The ideal team during this process consists of 3 people (exactly the same number as we were)- one of them wear the garment and the other two are drawing the lines. More than 2 people drawing could cause a confusion because they would bother each other because a lack of space.We painted our bodysuits in 2 types of black lines - one which were vertical, starting from the top and ended on the legs (they were ideally straight, but had their waves and curves) and the other were as a horizontal connectors to the others (they were quite short). And here is the result:

 That's me wearing one of the bodysuits we painted. =====>
A good tip for this technique is to avoid wearing anything beneath the costumes while coloring it. The paint could cause a inevitable damage to all types of under. I made the mistake of wearing another body under it.
By the end of this process, we had our job finished in 50%. We had our costumes in a bug pattern. The next step was to turn the white into other pale color. Thus, Marvin choose a combination of red and blue ready mixed with glue in a massive dish and keep it inside for 5 minutes, then let it outstretched until it dries completely.

Glue + blue and red paints

Which turned into a purple watery mixture

The result which are let to dry

Marvin Gaye Chetwynd: My experience

               Before a couple of days I finish my first practice period as an assistant costume maker for Marvin Gaye Chetwynd's exhibition in Nottingham Contemporary. The exhibition runs from the 25th of Jan to 23rd of March. It consists of a gallery which is full with some of Marvin's old projects (puppets, installation, movies, sculptures, etc) and 3 performances: "Diorama" & "Brain Bug" which are performed in the gallery and "The Green Room" performed in "The Space" hall. There was also a great camera presence because of a documentary about Marvin which is made by or going to be projected on BBC(couldn't find much information yet, will post it as soon as I see an article on BBC's website or got the information from one of the assistants in Nottingham Contemporary ). Assuredly, these series of events were planned to be huge.
              At the beginning, as I already mentioned, I was chosen to participate in "Brain Bug" as a performer. Afterwards, I spoke to Marvin (the designer and choreographer) if I could be useful in the costume making because I need such experience for my MA project and she gladly welcomed me "behind the stage". So I could sum up my involvement in the 2 performances on the following positions:

•  Brain Bug - dancer/performer, assistant costume maker,
•  The Green Room - assistant costume maker.

              During my experience in Marvin's creative team I learned many techniques and art approaches which I'll be sharing on my blog. Although my costume experience finish, the  Exhibition is still running in Gallery 4 (Nottingham Contemporary) with 3 more Brain Bug Performances left - 15th Feb, 1st Mar & 15th Mar. However, I plan to divide my posts here into

• 3 articles about created costumes during the practice with the techniques used, possible problems and solutions
• 1 article about my point of view for Marvin's costumes as a dancer
• 1 article about the exhibition and the variety of art pieces and different media it presents
• Articles (probably around 10 with interviews with Marvin, questionnaires with the audience, my analysis and conclusions)about my 2 case studies about the 2 performances : The Green Room and Brain Bug

           
           

Costume design and making - Project Briefs

 For my main project I was searching for as many as possible practical involvements in productions as an assistant costume maker. With this intention, I went to the costume department of Trent University and met who is the course leader for BA Costume Design and Making. We discuss my future practice and she gave me the following project briefs in order to build a costume portfolio:

Project 1: Strictly Come Dancing



It aims to design 2, male and female costumes, for the BBC show "Strictly come dancing" for one of the following dancing disciplines: Paso Doble, Argentine Tango, Viennese Waltz, Quick Step, providing possible fabric samples for their manufacturing. The project requires 2 pieces of flat artwork, a record of the research process made and the material samples.

Project 2:  Recognise Record
This second project tests our history period accuracy in terms of garment shapes. The research should be based on 3 given years and explore the form, silhouettes and items used to create these shapes (panniers, improvers, panty girdles, brasiers, bum pads, false rumps, stocks or padding, heels, etc.). The years given are 1630, 1860 and 1970. They will be illustrated with a male and a female outfit drawn for each year.

Project 3: The Nutcracker
This aims requires a creation of a whole set of costumes for the Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s

two act ballet of 1892, “The Nutcracker”. Overall artwork consists of sketches for 20 costume designs. The costumes should not be created within the classical tradition but following a modern interpretation of the piece. They should also consider the ballet requirements for costumes.






n.d. [digital image], Strictly Come Dancing Logo. Mirror. Available at: http://www.mirror.co.uk/tv/tv-news/strictly-come-dancing-line-up-2013-2104602 [Accessed 12.02.2014]
n.d. [digital image], Newest Fashion For May 1829: Morning & Evening Dresses. Wikipedia. Available at: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1829-Morning-Evening-Dresses-World-of-Fashion-May.jpg [Accessed 12.02.2014]
n.d. [digital image], The Nutcracker Ballet. Coloribus. Available at: http://www.coloribus.com/adsarchive/prints/the-nutcracker-ballet-the-nutcracker-755905/ [Accessed 12.02.2014]

Life Drawing Sessions

"We don't let students to graduate college if they cant draw" - said my drawing tutor, Huw Feather.

             Drawing has been a great approach to illustrate your ideas, especially while exploring the creative branches of science. Although the growing amount of new computer made techniques, it's inevitable every designer to encounter this ancient tools of representation.
             For that reason, I decided that drawing lessons could be a great addition to my abilities and attended the life drawing sessions at university. This training (which I'm still attending when I find time) gave me knowledge about life drawing and was a good rehearse for the costume drawing for my project. Unlike the fashion designers, which most often use silhouettes and measurements of people with very skinny figure,  costume makers for performance often meet a variety of figures which to fill their garment. So that sessions is also providing me the opportunity to explore shapes and forms of the costume body, where could some problem occur while wearing costumes and a time for me to think about solving these problems before the actual costume making.
             The sessions consisted of 4 5-minute warming up drawings of a naked model in differents positions which don't have to be accurate and aren't assessed. Then, starts the real life drawing with the same model, with lighting added. Those are also 4 but this time we have 20 minutes for each. Life drawing do NOT include perspectives so its very important the piece of paper to be in a 90 angle from our eyes. Here're some of the sketches which I created during the first 2 drawing sessions as a complete beginner:

That's my very first drawing using measurements. The "x7" is the amounts of heads in the body or in other words illustration for the classic measurement approach: with a pencil measure the head of the model, keep your finger on the point where the head finishes and measure how many "heads" the other part of the body consists of. Then, draw a head (just mark it as a circle or oval form) on the list, measure it and add the same amount of heads as you already measured with the model marking each head with a point (as you can see on the drawing), then start connecting each dot with parts of the model's body.

Repeat the same exercise no matter whether the models is standing, sitting or lying