Kite festival PDF

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practical based upon the Buhaus kite festival, document is my portfolio for the semester around our work and research...

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Summer project 2020 Bauhaus Kite Festival Megan-Jade Wright

Summer project- Kite Festival As fine art students, you follow the footsteps of artists at the famous Bauhaus art school. In the early 1920s, the Bauhaus (then located in Weimar) held a kite festival in October each year. Paul Klee’s son recalled that “after making the kites we went to one of the nearby hills, where we flew the abstract constructions in the autumn wind, to the astonishment of the local populace”. At the beginning of the Fine Art course, we plan our own kite festival, and we would like you to join us. This summer, you are invited to make a kite. Make your kite as astonishing as possible! Consider the following ideas: - Could your kite be a painting? - Could your kite be a sculpture? - Could your kite be a prop for a film?

Initial ideas: - Three dimensional kite - Mythological? - Have a connection to art/artists?

Concept: - Box Kite design? - Phoenix - Rebirth/finding of one's true self

Idea 1: For this kite I wanted to look at the idea of it being a sculpture, for this, I researched into different ways of creating a 3-dimensional shape using bamboo as the main structural component. I decided that I would use bamboo as it meant that I could harvest and strip each piece myself. The only downside to using bamboo is the size and weight of the finished project, this is because the amount of fabric needed to lift the weight of bamboo used with an unstable wind flow would make transporting the project difficult. Originally this frame plan had the wingspan at 4m by 1.5m, I have tried to half the size and therefore using less bamboo hopefully reducing the weight so that it is able to fly. Another problem I might face with this design is the angle of which the bridle must be at in order to allow it to fly. To get the optimum lift from a small amount of wind, the bridle will have to be between 20 and 30 degrees from the point of equilibrium.

Despite my concerns about the weight of this design, I decided to try it with freshly split bamboo, using fresh bamboo from my garden meant that it was more flexible than staithes that you will find in a shop. To connect the pieces together I cut notches into the bamboo before binding them with dental floss and securing with a bit of super glue. Once I had reached this stage, I realised that this design was completely impractical and I would find it difficult to transport which is why I then came up with new ideas and designs to try and combat this. Height

Side profile of a kite

Bridal length

Bridal point

Knot length

Knot angle (this angle will usually range between 20 and 30 degrees to allow for lift without too much drag)

One of the main faults in this design is the weight of it, unfortunately, even though it has the amount of surface area to allow for it to fly with the weight of it, it would have been too difficult to launch this kite inhibiting its ability to fly.

Idea 2: My second idea was to use the structure of a windsock as the base for the body of the kite, reducing its overall weight as well as not using any poles to keep its structure. My aim was to create a kite that would be easy enough to transport as well as lightweight and easy to fly. To create the shape of the wings I thought that I could look at the structure of a power kite, creating small air pockets that would inflate as the kite is launched allowing it to fly. Despite this kite being easier to fly in theory, it would have been much harder to calculate the bridal length and angle that would optimise the way that it would fly. Another thing that would have flawed this design would have been the amount of wind, if there was too much or too little wind then the air pockets within the wings would collapse, losing their shape and then not being able to fly.

Due to these points after researching the mechanics of flying a kite with a similar design as I wanted for the wing I decided against the idea, to ensure my design would fly effectively.

Example of a Power kite: The air inflates these pockets, giving the kite enough lift so that there is no requirement for a tail to counterbalance as there are no poles keeping its structure.

A kite of this design would have to be flown using two strings which would mean I would have to calculate the distance between the two bridals as well as the angle of them.

Idea 3:

My third idea was to combine the idea of a folding kite and having a sturdy frame. My inspiration for this design was the Chinese fan dance, “dance of the kites”. The fans used in this dance are large yet lightweight, allowing for the silky material to flow through the air, mimicking the movement of a kite dancing throughout the wind.

To allow this design for this to work I would have to brace the wings at multiple anchor points, to ensure that the wings stay open when struck with the force of the wind. I would use this same idea to branch the tail to keep it open during flight as well as making it easy enough to collapse to make for easier transportation. The main things I would have to look out for is the balance of the weight throughout the wings and tail. This is because the points at which the bamboo would cross on the tail would have a larger mass than the wings put together creating an angle which would make the flight a lot more difficult. For this design and my other ideas afterwards, I decided to use fabric to create the sails on the wings ands tail to make the kite stronger in case it fell during a flight test. Plan for placement of the tail pieces:

Idea 3: For this design, I had it so that there were fewer poles, hopefully then reducing the weight. In this image I have highlighted exactly where the poles would be situated within my first prototype, this was so that I could get the shape that I wanted without the excess weight of trying to create a complete three-dimensional structure. My plan was to have the wings two dimensional as they would appear three dimensional when in the air and then have the body so that it was cylindrical and more lifelike when in flight.

To ensure that I had the correct proportions of the body length to the wing size I looked closely at my pet birds to figure out where their body’s end and their tails start. When looking at the body size of this Parrot I noticed that the tail is proportionate to 1.5 body lengths and the head is 1/3 of a body length. With these proportions in mind, I came up with the design and plan for prototype 1 with room for adaptations to the tail length depending on the overall size and weight of the final product.

This is a birds-eye view of what I wanted my kite to look like, as I was going for the mythical creature of the Phoenix, I thought that instead of feathers I could create the illusion of flames. Despite having this idea and design it wasn’t practical to layer that much paint upon the fabric as there is a chance that the paint could split or add unnecessary weight in places on the kite which would limit its flying capability. However, if I was to do this project again I would experiment more with this idea to try and create the illusion of flames upon the fabric.

This was the final design of the kite, I decided that I would use Rip-stop Nylon to create the sails of the kite. I created patterns using paper to cut the three different colours of fabric with each layer of the wings being made up of a different colour. I then used bamboo from my garden as the kite poles as they were flexible and lightweight.

Finished Piece: This was my finished piece, to construct it I cut out the fourteen separate pieces before pinning them in place. Then using the sewing machine I started to sew the body sections together, creating a closed-ended tube with two channels for the bamboo to slide into. After this, I then took one layer of fabric at a time to start sewing the tail sections together. For this, I used a straight stitch and adjusted the tension of the cotton to try and strengthen the stitches. I wanted to make sure that the edges of each layer of fabric would still move in the wind so instead of going around each of the feather shapes I sewed a line around the inside of each layer of both the tail and wings. When it came to sewing the wings, I began to have issues with the tension of the cotton and the fabric bunching underneath the stitches. This was caused by there being so many layers of the fabric that the sewing machine foot couldn’t keep them all still while I was feeding it through. To try and resolve this issue I unpicked the stitches that were causing the bunching and then pinned the fabric together more securely to reduce the amount that it could move before then taking it back to the sewing machine and following the line of unpicked stitches and pins to secure the layers of fabric together. After fixing the rest of the pieces and sewing the body to the wings, I decided to create a couple of small multicoloured windsocks to use as the long tail of the kite. The tail of the kite is important as it not only helps counterbalance the weight of the front of the kite but it also helps it fly in stronger winds. To create these I used the offcuts of my red and yellow fabric, cut into triangles, to create a striped windsock that would spin in the wind creating the illusion that there is fire trailing behind the bird. To keep the structure of the sock I twisted some wire into a circle before inserting within the seam allowance which I had converted into a channel, this also then became a stronger anchor for which I could add the string to attach the windsocks to the main body of my kite. The way in which these can be attached means that I can move them from the tips of the wings to the tail depending on the amount of wind to allow for a better flight.

Test flight 2: (kite mark 2) No photos were taken on test flights of the initial kite, this is test one of the second version of the kite. After the first test flight, it was obvious that the weight of the kite was an issue, even though it did fly it needed a lot of wind to get it off the ground or a constant movement from the person flying it. Because of this, I decided to try and find something lighter that I could use as the sticks within the kite. In the end, I ended up using a fibreglass pole from a pop-up tent as two of the four kite sticks, which reduced the amount of weight helping it fly. however this was not enough, the kite was still too heavy to fly properly, finding it difficult to get it high enough off the ground to fly in lighter winds. One way that I tried to combat this was by reducing the dihedral of the kite wings, by doing this it would create a larger surface area for which it could catch the wind.

The Final Design: After trying to fly the kite and discovering that it was too heavy I decided . to completely remake it, this time using less fabric and only the fibreglass rods. there was a similar issue with the dihedral within this kite, however, it worked well within very strong winds. To combat this i have an extra fiberglass rod which is used to brace the wings open so that the dihedral is minimised for a less windy day. the only other thing that was changed within this new design was the body, instead of trying to make it three dimensional, adding excess weight, I decided to just use two layers of the red Rip-stop Nylon in the shape of a birds body to create the illusion of a bird in the sky.

This is what the poles within the kite will look like when inserted within the fabric, without the extra one used for bracing. This configuration allows for strong winds as the wings are free to adjust themselves as the wind speed and strength changes, making this a very versatile kite.

Construction: The construction of the kite is very similar to the first, just with a larger wingspan and less fabric used. Here are some photos that were taken to document the construction process.

For the paper pattern, I used wallpaper as it is more sturdy and then created a template of a feather using a flexible plastic board which I traced around onto the paper pattern so that I knew where each of the feathers would overlap on the different colours of fabric.

Wing pattern piece 1

Wing pattern piece 2

Wing pattern piece 3

I then carefully pinned the pieces and sewed them together, to try and limit the amount of bunching in the fabric I made sure to pin either side of where I was planning to sew on the fabric. Once I had compleated the sewing of the body and wings I decided to make two large orange and yellow windsocks as well as four small ones, this allows for me to adjust the weight of the kite depending on the amount of wind and the amount of tail that it will then need.

Windsock tails I created these windsocks as detachable to help balance out the kite when needed depending on the amount of wind. Below is a photo that demonstrates how the windsocks work to balance the kite to help it fly. It is evident in this picture that the windsocks need to be put on swivels to allow them to spin better in the wind, this is because the strings got tangled, closing the end of the sock so that they couldn't inflate any more.

Photos of my kite in flight

First Flight: Tuesday 25th August The first time taking my kite out in strong winds.

Using all of the windsocks I had made up to this point I decided to see how my kite would fly in very strong winds. After flying it I discovered that I needed to reinforce all the points that the poles finish as after a short time flying the poles broke through the Rip-stop Nylon that I used, so afterwards I repaired the holes in the wingtips and the head using Nylon strapping cut from a ratchet strap. Although these repairs are visible, they have made my kite much stronger at the points that have the most strain on them. I also used this opportunity to create loops at the end of the wings and tail so that I can attach the swivels for the windsocks to hopefully stop them from becoming tangled.

In this photo, you can see where the windsock has become tangled and folded in on itself. once it started twisting up the kite became more difficult to fly, especially in the stronger wind. Due to this issue, I decided to attach keyring loops to the ends of the rods so that I could add swivels to the tails so that they could move more freely.

Painting my kite: I decided that I wanted to paint some extra details onto my kite using paint, however, I didn't want the paint to split if the fabric folded, so I decided to use a liquid acrylic ink and an airbrush to paint the highlights and shadows of feathers on the wings and body of my kite. This was my first time using an airbrush so to start off with I used my stencil that I had made and practised making the desired shapes onto some scrap paper. This allowed me to adjust the distance that I was painting from as well as the amount of paint that was coming out with the amount of air. It took me a while to get the hang of, but once I was confident enough to use the stencil against the kite itself I started on the red section of the left wing, creating the shadows of the feathers using the black acrylic over my stencil. This was an effective way of adding depth to my kite without the weight of extra layers of fabric or thick paint. I then went in with white and added highlights to each feather using the edge of the same stencil to ensure that they were highlighted in the correct shape rather than freehanding them. In some of the areas, I decided to freehand some of the details on the feathers, adding more highlights, lowlights and shadows wherever needed. This was effective as it meant that although the wings are similar they were not completely symmetrical making the kite more unique with certain features standing out due to the way I painted them. Painting the kite

This was the final product after airbrushing the fabric, there were a few things that I wish I could have done differently that I have learnt through the process of painting it. If I was to do this again I would create multiple stencils of different sizes to make the feathers more lifelike.

Once the airbrushed paint had dried I then added details into and around the eye with an acrylic paint pen and a Sharpie. This completed the kite and made the eye stand out more against the vibrant colours of the feathers. I also then braced the face using two strings and a thin piece of bamboo to ensure that the face points down instead of twisting around in the wind....