Area choice

After the 8 weeks of the subject areas, I'm still unsure as to what to choose from out of Visual Communications and Fashion & Textiles. I wouldn’t want to take 3D Spatial any further, even though it was actually better than I expected it to be. I enjoyed making the sculptures and 3D things but I didn’t find it as stimulating as the other areas and it’s not a pathway I want to go down.

Before this Foundation course, Fine Art was the area I thought I would definitely want to go into – it was also the area I found most challenging. I think this is mainly due to it being the very first rotation and for about the first week and a half, I found it difficult to break out of the A-level way of thinking and free up. The independence we were given and the vague brief was good and I liked the freedom but it was just hard for me to adapt to at first, coming straight out of A-level. It was also very intimidating seeing everybody else’s amazing artwork. I think if we had Fine Art second, third or fourth I would have found it less confusing and enjoyed it more. Saying that, towards the end I started to loosen up and understand the project better. My final pieces were completely different to what I would normally do and if we had more time I would have liked to have done more painting, but I don’t think I’ll carry on with Fine Art.

I didn’t think I would have ever thought about regarding Visual Communications as a path to go into but I really enjoyed the area. In my opinion the ‘Go Slowly’ piece I did felt like my most successful project out of the four areas. I really liked rummaging through loads of images and cutting them up, photocopying and tracing them, drawing over them and creating them into something new. Although, I found the last stage of Visual Communications quite difficult, where we had to think about the audience and having to create our pieces/images always bearing in mind how the audience views it and whether they will understand it. That is one of the main things that made it difficult for me to choose between a Fine Art route and a designer route. I like the freedom of being able to create things without having to think about whether the audience will understand it but then again it could be interesting always having a certain brief to work to and interpreting it in your own way. In Fashion and Textiles I was told that I am more designer-related which cleared things up a bit better for me and if I do go down the designer route, I can always paint and do more 'fine art' stuff in my own time.

Fashion and Textiles is another area I wasn’t planning to go into but I enjoyed the area a lot. I like working with different textures and especially enjoyed the project where we had to cut into and deface the photographs we took, I also find fashion and fashion photography in general very inspiring. I’m just not sure whether I am suited for that area and I like doing a range of things such as photography, painting and mixed media as well as textile work so I don't know whether I'll be restricted in textiles. I'll be happy to go into either Fashion & Textiles or Visual Communication; it's just difficult deciding on which one I'll enjoy continuing, develop my current skills in and be successful in. Hopefully at assessment I'll be pointed in the right direction.