Learning creative research

This post is illustrated from the work I've been doing on creative research.  I've been researching jean style jackets, their history and how they have been adopted and customised by successive waves of subcultural and countercultural groups.

Design stencilled onto different coloured gouache, cut up and recombined

It's reinforced that I love to research and write following a career in academia, and now I'm learning to add creative research skills.  In this case I'm playing with ideas for 'customising' using gouache, printed paper, stencilling, cutting and rearranging.  I realise that I've drawn on the techniques that I found most successful last year.  I like them because they can produce unexpected results and you can keep retrying and rearranging to produce multiple outcomes which I can select from.  They are also techniques which I feel more technically comfortable with compared, for example, with drawing and painting.

Sprayed with white paint, covered with paper which was peeled off to create acid wash effect

At this stage I am focussing on the structure of the garments, the different fabric pieces and how they are combined to give the distinctive jean style.  Interestingly, no one seems to have defined 'jean' style in the literature according to McClendon (2016) because it is so taken for granted.  I'm trying to identify exactly what constitutes jean style and the nature and quantity of the seams appears important.  Pockets appear distinctive too. 

Cutting out parts of a stencil to highlight aspects of the structure

Stencilled onto indigo gouache and Aldi leaflet! Both cut into squares and recombined

References
McClendon, E. (2016) Denim: Fashion’s Frontier. New Haven: Yale University Press.