Self-portrait

This was the last project of the semester for my 2D design class. The goal was to create a self-portrait from a photograph and paint it using a split complementary color scheme. And like the last post stated, we were also allowed to use white, black and achromatic gray.

A split complementary color scheme takes a color and splits its opposite into the colors that fall immediately on either side of it.

I used red as the primary color of my design. Then, I took it's opposite, green, and split it into green/yellow and green/blue.


I used the green/yellows with white and black for the the middle and lightest tones on the face. I then thought it would look interesting if I used a flat, desaturated red for the darkest darks on the face.

I used green/blue with white and black to detail my sweatshirt. This, in turn, made it look very minty and separated from the face. It seemed the colors in the face and the colors in the sweatshirt caused a lot of tension. So, to create more unity, I used the lightest colors of the sweatshirt as highlights in the face.

Space Collage, Space Reversal, Color Grid Compositions

The beginning of this project started out with a collage. We had to cut out various shapes from magazines and newspapers and use color to create a sense of space in our picture plane. For the next step, we had to take our collage and create a painting that reversed the space we had established. So if there was a specific object in the foreground (like my design), it had to be painted in such a way so that it receded into the background or became a void space in the picture plane. Next, a grid composition was made up of 12 drawn thumbnails taken from different areas of the collage design. Wherever there was something interesting happening within the design, I squared it off and made it into a thumbnail. With 24 to begin with, we had to take 12 of them and arrange them, 3x4 (3 thumbnails by 4), into something that started to take shape. Then, once some sort of recognizable design surfaced, we did some additive and subtractive touch-ups to accentuate that design. Once a solid design was establish, two color compositions were made from it. The first was painted using an analogous color scheme while the second uses a neutral color scheme. We were also permitted to used white, black and achromatic gray.

Though I used almost all cool colors in my collage, I feel I was able to make the object pop forward from the background by using intense greens and yellows against the dark blues.

For the reversal, I used the bright yellows and greens in the background and used dark blues to make the object in the foreground seem like a void in space. But since the organic shaped object stays inside the picture plane instead of moving off, the object is still trying hard to be perceived as foreground. I think if these branch like shapes were to move off of the page, the composition would have been more successful.











Here are my two final color compositions...

Analogous

Neutral

An Analogous Color Scheme uses a primary or secondary color and it's immediate tertiaries to the left and right. 

My design: red, red/violet and red/orange

A Neutral Color Scheme uses any color with its compliment. 

My design: yellow and violet

Word as Image

The objective of this assignment was to illustrate a word using that word only. We were allowed to take a literal or an ironic approach to our designs. Going against everything that defines my personality, I decided on the former. I came up with a lot of interesting ideas, but the two that I decided on were "sexual" and "topple".

This one is pretty obvious, so I'm not going to go into detail. But I will mention that the size of the letters aren't consistent with each other. I could have spent more time measuring them to make it a more accurate representation and thusly, a more effective design.

I was particularly fond of this one. Out of all of my ideas, I thought this was the most unique. The friction between the letters creates a sense of intimacy and the coupling of three even pairs worked out perfectly. In retrospect, I feel as though I could have created more contrast between the type and the background to make the word pop out a little more.

Black and White Study

This particular project was extremely time consuming. We were asked to take a masterwork from art history and re-paint it in a black and white study. The objective was to see what effect color has on the original piece and also to study the compositional structure. In this piece, there's a strong sense of diagonality and use of triangles.

You can see that it transfers well in black and white. I think value, more than color, is what really makes the image stand out and gives the figures a multidimensional feel.

This masterwork was originally done by Leon Kelly, an american surrealist.

Here is the process from start to finish:

My final design

Original painting
"Radioactive Human Residue"
1961

Letter as Image

For this project we were asked to use two different letters of the alphabet in any readable font to create a design. We could repeat the letters as often as we wanted but had to use at least four gradations of value between black and white in our designs.

I chose the letters "G" and "Y".

This was a simple project but I found that I had a hard time coming up with ideas and thumbnails. I didn't want to use an outrageous font and I aimed to keep it simple.

While playing around with thumbnails I noticed that the "Y" kind of looked like a tree trunk and that if I shrunk other "Y"'s, they would consequently look like branches. I then arranged small "G"'s around those branches to give the sense of leaves.












For our other design, the objective was to have the letters lose their identity.
My idea was simple; I arranged the letters so that they would be behind one another in such a way that their identity was obscured. Then, to add an interesting effect, I layered them in space from largest to smallest.

The Fighting Scots!!!

This sketch was for my Drawing I class. We had gone outside for the day and set ourselves up around this new sculpture erected on campus. It was pretty difficult to draw, not only because we hadn't yet had any lectures in human anatomy, but also because the body was covered in a large, wisping mass of cloth and cape. But, prior to this we had done several exercises in class to help develop our hand-eye coordination. We were instructed to draw outlines of still lives without looking at the paper on which we drew on. Over and over again for two hours we did this. It was very difficult to master, but these exercises really helped me understand how to draw this sculpture. Since I couldn't see the structure of his frame, I utilized what I had learned through the exercises (along with measuring techniques) to accurately capture the posture and scale of the figure. 

After I had established a line drawing, I then tried to capture values. I didn't have enough time to render the image completely, but I was able to depict a general feeling of the lights and darks. 

Positive and Negative Shape

For this project I was asked to find a household object that I thought would create interesting shapes and negative shapes while also considering principles of: symmetry, scale/proportion and contrast. I then had to take the object and draw it onto paper in four different sizes and cut them out. And, with those separate cut-outs, I had created various thumbnails by mixing, overlapping and experimenting with the positive/negative space that the object displayed.

I had used a corkscrew for my designs.




This first design is fairly simple. I took all four different sized cut-outs and arranged them on the plane so that they all overlapped each other. And for any instance that they did indeed cross over into one another I reversed the value. I thought this technique created a lot of interesting shapes and negative shapes throughout the entire piece.

This next design, though similar, had a different motive behind it. I again used overlapping while reversing values. Except this time, I chose exactly where I wanted the reversal to happen. I decided to have a tight source of expressive value change at the bottom left of the picture plain. But, as your eye follows up and over to the right, the different positive and negative shapes become larger, loosening up the values. This was my attempt in depicting contrast in scale of shapes.








For this last one, I experimented with radial symmetry. It's not a complicated design, but I feel the placement of the corkscrew throughout the plane creates a lot of really interesting positive/negative shapes while giving the piece fluidity and rhythm.

First Project: Line and Space

My first assignment of the semester explored the concept of line and space: looking at objects and observing how line shapes or creates that object and the space around it. I was asked to go out and take photographs, looking for design principles, such as: movement, rhythm/repetition, variety and contrast. With the pictures I took, I then designed various thumbnails trying to capture these principles.

After drawing up concept thumbnails, I completed a few semi-finals and eventually settled on three final designs.

This first design was taken from a photograph looking at a tree from the ground up. I simplified the shapes to create a sense of geometric movement and differed the size of the asymmetrical  branches to portray rhythm and repetition. I also left a very thin white space where the branches would typically meet the trunk to bring forward the image of the body. I feel that this small detail really emphasizes the perspective I was trying to capture and gives it a true sense of shape.
Initially, I tried to draw this image using more organic lines, staying more truthful to the actual design of the tree, but I failed at getting the same effect that this design accentuates.

This next piece was abstractly designed from a sculpture outside of a building on campus. The sculpture was a pile metal rails running off in all different directions for a few feet. I simply extended the rails indefinitely off of the page while also adding a couple extras to give a feeling of fluidity. The base of the object is true to the actual structure and was left that way to maintain stability in the design. The largest upside down triangle you see allows the eye to move around the entire design without going entirely off of the page or getting lost or confused within the other lines.











My final design was also taken from a picture of trees, but this time I attempted to stay more truthful to the organic shape without going into any detail in the canopy. The purpose of this design was to create a sense of depth in space. I used very thin and closely placed together diagonal lines to give a clear definition of foreground and background. I feel this, along with having trees in descending order of size, give true depth to the image.

South to Scotland

When I first began my college career I had no clear focus in mind and my decision to go was made simply because I thought I had no other choice. I had taken classes at Clarion and then Penn State Behrend, collecting credits and debt with having no real interest in the different majors that I dabbled with. And as I listlessly went through the motions over the years, I had realized the path that I was on would take me nowhere. I knew I had to change. The person who I was then was not who I wanted to be. I began to chisel away at the mold that had come to define me, uncovering and reawakening desires and motivations that I had forgot I even had. New emotions stirred within and these new realizations (among other influences) gave me the strength and motivation to pursue a better life for myself. Thus, I began my quest for an education in the arts.

Art had always played a major role in my life and was something that I had a natural ability in. After high school, though, I had convinced myself that I wasn't capable of pursuing it as a career. I gave up on it entirely. But now, after my trials and revelations, I am shedding my skin and going back to doing what truly makes me happy.  

This past August I started my first semester on the main campus of Edinboro University and I am currently concentrating in illustration, graphic design and advertising. This blog is a documentation of all of my projects, assorted artwork and life, in general, here in Edinboro, Pennsylvania. Not only will this be an online portfolio but the blog will also serve as an electronic sketchbook/journal that tells a story of my scholastic trials and my life, renewed by art.