The above photograph and sketch are from a class called "body comprehension/understanding" (translated, in German: Körperverständnis). Among our teachers was a Feldenkrais-Instructor who did exercises with us, after which we'd have to try to translate how our bodies felt into some sort of body-based, three-dimensional collage, using whatever we had - tape, paper, fabric etc. It was an interesting, new approach to design for me. We do a lot of these "impromptu collages and stylings" at school, and it takes some getting used to, because you only have very little time to complete them, and they never look quite like I want them to. But I'm trying to accept them as three-dimensional sketches (rather than anything finished) to work with later on, I have to let go of the "do everything perfectly" thing - there simply isn't enough time to fully develop an idea before you know if it's worth it design wise. In this phase of the design process it's quantity above quality, and that's something I need to get accustomed to. Need for speed!

These are some more sketches from school. We had about half an hour to style each other with whatever clothes we had on, and objects in the room, so I dressed Pauline up in a chair and lots of scarves and sweaters (see the three black an white photos). I really liked the chair outfit! It made for some interesting poses haha. Then we went to see a shoe exhibit at a muesum - it was amazing! The collection had some historical shoes and some really crazy new ones. My favorites:

"Black Crystal Meth" by Kermit Tesoro, "Ring" by Peter Popps, "Nunfides" by Valentini Argyropoulou, "Nova" by Zaha Hadid (my absolute fave!), "Juxtapose" Marieka Ratsma, "Blackmouldedleathershoe" and "Pressedleathershoe" by Marloes ten Bhömer and "Feather Men Shoes" by Aki Choklat. Also check out these shoes by Joyce Verhagen, I didn't have time to sketch them:

They're made from those rubber ball toys!

So after sketching our Stylings with different shoes and accessories, we had to work on different silhouettes. Basically you just keep redrawing the silhouette with varied lengths/volume/colors/texture, or use collage to develop different ideas and keep drawing and transforming that silhouette until you have enough material to work on the most interesting ideas. Again, I was not as fast as I could have been, had I not tried to be so precise. But it's ok, I'll learn, I'll get faster, and I still like what I ended up with.