THINKING THROUGH DRAWING: PRACTICE INTO KNOWLEDGE 127
Introduction
As an established knitted textile and knitwear
designer and tutor, I have been engaged in a
longitudinal practice-based research project into
the iterative links between drawing and knitting.
Through observations I have investigated the work
of students and industry designers and my own
practice, and whether drawing offers scope for
design innovation in the industrial manufacture
of knitted fabrics and goods. The range of drawing
encompasses figurative, decorative and gestural
compositions. The range of textile work utilizes the
patterning possibilities of hand machine and digital
machine technologies in the production of fabrics
and the intervention of hand manipulation skills
during and post fabric production. (Fig 1)
The symposium offered an opportunity to
explore drawing through hand knitting, using pre-
sentations and discussions about “thinking through
drawing” as the context and inspiration. I was con-
fronting the main premise of my research through
a slow process of hand knitting and within defined
parameters of materials, location and time. I real-
ized I placed myself in this situation to challenge
my own thinking and methods of working.
Drawing and textile design
Established teaching approaches in design draw-
ing for constructed textiles (knitting and weaving)
have emerged from the pedagogies developed by
the Bauhaus School of Design’s, Weaving Workshop
(Wortmann Weltge, 1993).
Drawing was seen as a means to make sense of
the textures and patterns in nature. By recording
these qualities through the use of studio media,
there developed a heightened sensibility of visual
and tactile material properties of surface and pat-
tern. Bauhaus Weave graduate comments:If we try to have a rhythm of horizontals,
of verticals and horizontals, or of staggered
diagonals we will arrive at results that
resemble actual textiles, for the dominant
textile elements are present : the straight
lines of the directions of the surface activ-
ity (Albers, 1965).Material Thinking:
Drawing to Record, Understand and Respond
Ian Mc Innes
School of Textiles and Design, Heriot Watt University, UK
Figure 1. ‘Trench momento mori’