Assignment 7

A Stippling Self-Portrait  The final assignment for Design II aims to re-create a self-portrait using basic shapes, color, collage, and stippling. The goal of this project is to show the fluting effect in terms of creating a color with the stippling.

Source Imagery

    To begin with, students took turns photographing each other to get the original source imagery of ourselves. The rendering proved to be more difficult than I thought it was going to be due to the fact that the goal was to use simple shapes, yet still create a recognizable form. I wanted to make each rendering asymmetrical to create a layer of interest. However, looking back, I definitely found myself responding more to the figure on the left due to the shape that created a highlight in what would be the "hair."

    When it came to color, students were advised to chose high intensity colors that the eye could really respond to when creating the key. The goal was to chose a color and then be able to chose five to seven other intense colors that could recreate the first color though stippling. 

Initial Rendering

    

The color and amount all come into play when creating the color assimilation. I made sure to use the color with the highest quantity for the initial background wash. Then I worked to carefully integrate the "funky" colors into the more pronounced, higher-quantity colors. This was time-consuming, but therapeutic in a way. It also worked to show me how stippling can create a deeper color that is greater than the original because of all the different hues that it is made of. In regards to the color shapes, I didn't want the background to blend in with the figure.
    Therefore, I chose those areas to be collaged to help push the figure forward. I switched the collage colors to feature the blue in the figure on the right to be in the background on the left and vise versa. In regards to a painting the other shapes, I worked with complementary colors to create a hard edge between the shapes to help push the abstraction quality. Abstraction can be done through color discord so it was fun to purposely push the boundaries of color while experimenting with stippling for the first time.

Assignment 6

Metamorphosis of Evolution A six panel transformation symbolizing moving from industral world of metallic saturated hues to the more organic, pastel particles of DNA. This transformation serves as the final project for the course Design II and showcases all the skills students have garnered throughout their design courses.

The first step in this process was to create a color scheme using source imagery. Students had to three different sources: a master painting, a personal photograph, and an object from nature. Following, students had to use make optical mixtures in order recreate the unique colors worlds found using the source imagery. The design for this project is based off of two antonyms that were supposed to aid in giving you inspiration and direction on this otherwise less structured project. The only requirements for this design included: transparencies, tetrad, deep space, and a vibrating edge.
    My goal was to show the transformation of evolution from organic to synthetic. At one end of my design I feature "gears" with dark saturated colors to show the industrial age while DNA strands with bright colors showing the organic side of life. I struggled the most with choosing the placement of each color. I tried to keep colors from the same source imagery near each other on the rendering. However keeping the amounts of color the same as on the color scheme proved to be more difficult. I placed emphasis on each transformation by creating a different color environment for each panel. 
    Due to my source imagery, many of colors were focused around red and green which forced me to mix colors together that I wound't normally have done, but it also limited me on the simultaneous I could create amongst the colors. Since my colors were so similar I had to make sure to separate similar hues to avoid color assimilation with a neutral tone or contrasting color. My favorite panel is the first one featuring the gears because of the time spend on painting each section of the transparencies with my least favorite the fifth panel because of the lack of intense color. Looking at the project as a whole, I am excited about how my design seems to flow from transformation to the next and I like the push and pull created from contrasting saturated, intense color with dull, lighter colors.

Assignment 5

Original Painting

Photoshopped Edit (Printed Version)

A Brave New Transparent World  Assignment Five pushed students to work with creating unique color worlds and combing colors to make illusions of transparencies. The first part of the assignment involved going through the color aid and finding three colors. Two that created the illusion of transparency in the third color. The process continued through choosing a total of 16 colors (including the original three) to create a unique color world. 
    The goal was to transition from one color, through the neutral, and then onto the next color. Adding in a "funky" color, or a color that wouldn't normally be considered harmonious was advised to make our color worlds unique and stand out. The colors chosen were equally as important as the quantity given to each color (as seen in the key.) I personally struggled with finding my initial three colors that created the illusion of transparency. I tried to work with complementary colors when creating the transparency. However, after figuring that out, finding colors in the rest of the key was intriguing.  I enjoyed mixing and matching using the color aid to see what worked together and what didn't. It was in this stage that I really learned how "funky" colors do have a place in every color scenario.
  As for the project itself, students were told to mix the colors and paint an asymmetrical design featuring the illusion of transparencies. The painting would be later edited on photoshop and printed out on a larger scale. Upon my initial rendering, I felt my design was too simple and after discussing with my professor, I added text as a form of source imagery. I embedded the word "the" in different forms across the work. I made sure to maintain the color quantity and the color associations in my color key in the final painting. For me, this project was vital in learning and experiencing how colors work together. Upon reflection, I got caught up in figuring out the placement of every color and wish I had integrated transparencies more. I really grasped the concept that color worlds don't always have to go "together" the way one thinks they should. I embraced adding in accent colors to make the design "pop" and look forward to experimenting with creating more unique and varied color worlds in the future.

Assignment 4

A Twist of Color With this assignment came the challenge of 3D construction. Students were asked to pick a polyhedron of their choice that would be used to showcase two gradation scales between two pairs of complementary colors.
   We started out by using the color aid

to find complementary colors (which are colors located directly across each other on the color wheel) and then mixing paint to match the colors. Bristol paper served as the background for our painted gradation scales. Then came the 3D construction...
   After rendering our figure on Bristol paper and then coming up with a design, we tested how well we could contract our figure. Most of the class went on to make their figure out of illustration board, however because my polyhedron twisted in on itself, I chose to make mine out of Bristol paper. (However, looking back the illustration board would have looked more professional, even though it would have been more of a challenge to construct.) I painted my gradation lines across my polyhedron opting to paint the ends of the polyhedron black to put more emphasis on the color. While the design and color came together nicely, the polyhedron itself continue to create havoc. The scoring went well, but there was no easy way to hold the figure in place in order to glue it. (I spray-mounted addition pieces of Bristol paper to the backing of my painted shape to give it more stability, but that didn't give the help I was looking for in regards to glueing the shape together as a whole.) Eventually, with some binder clips and Sobo glue, my twister triangular prism finally came together (minus the twisted part because that proved too tricky for a student working past midnight on a Sunday....)
   While this project gave insight into 3D construction, I didn't need this assignment to tell me that 3D design is going to be difficult. I do wish I could have constructed mine better or somehow figured out a way to utilize the illustration board. This project should have been mainly about mixing neutrals and creating gradation scales...but proved more stressful in terms of the 3D construction. In regards to the color, it was interesting to see how the 50/50 formula did not always provide you with an exact neutral since the various pigments affected each hue differently. All in all, this project was time consuming and stressful, but I did enjoy my color scales and dabbling in the neutral tones that I previously did not have any experience with.

Assignment 3

The Illusion of Color  As with the Piranaesi project, color theory was directly applied to our third assignment: creating a diptych. This diptych aimed to touch on the constancy effect and showcase how color can push towards another color due to its surrounding color. During the in class studio practice, we worked with color aid, pairing colors up to see if we could get two different colors to look similar. Optical mixtures were used to match the colors, and then we rendered an asymmetric, nonobjective design that would push two colors to look like the same color.  Finishing touches included scoring the illustration board in order to create the two-dimensional effect.
   The original challenge was to make two colors look the same and then vise vera, but I found it quite enjoyable to see what colors worked well and which ones didn't. The next challenge was to mix paints to match the color aid swatches. (For me personally, the key was to go slow when mixing colors. Only mix a small amount of paint to see what works first, and then go back to make a larger batch that will have enough to cover the surface of the project.)
    As seen above, I worked to push a blue-violet and red-violet to a more violet state in order to make them appear as the same color to the eye. By placing an intense dark blue with the blue-violet, I was able to cancel out the blues of the original color, which in turn pushed the blue-violet to appear lighter and more violet. On the other hand, I surrounded the red-violet with an equally intense red-pink to cancel out the red of the original color to again, push the color to appear darker and more violet. The aim of the project was to make two colors appear the same in the diptych so in order to insure that the two colors would come out similar, I made sure to isolate the blue-violet and red-violet with the dominating background color. This was one of the less time consuming projects, but still creatively demanding. With no art background, my eye was definitely opened to the ability of pushing a color towards another state. I found this intriguing and ending the project with a photoshoot using various color lights helped to emphasize and illuminate that color is not always what you think it is. It can be manipulated to appear in a way that I think will be a highly effective tool in my future career as a design and merchandising major.

Pink Light

Yellow Light

Green Light

Assignment 2

Creating Space  This second assignment challenged students to rework the color formulas used from the first assignment to match their given color scenarios for this project. This complex assignment consists of three different parts.

   To begin with, students were asked to create four panels with four diverse color worlds using a color scenario that was given. (My project involved a secondary color scenario.) After amassing four different color worlds with twenty-three different colors, those colors were the only colors that could be applied to the final part of the project, the main landscape (as seen the bottom picture.)

Cropped Piranesi Design

   The second stage involved creating a rendering from an original sketch of Giovanni Battista Piranaesi's work. Taking and cropping a section of one of his architectural designs, students were then asked to abstract Piranesi's original into shapes and lines that would create deep space in the final piece (that would use the same hues from the first four panels.)

Original Rendering

    Lastly, students were told to create deep space on the atmospherical side of the final piece and shallow space on the abstract side all while maintaining a sense of symmetry between both sides of the work. We were allowed to tint or shade hues in order to create space. 
   In my personal project, I worked to create deep space on the left side of my board using hues that were dull with a lower intensity in the "building" towards the top left corner of the page. In what would be the middle ground,I kept the colors more dull, but played up the intensity in the greens and violets. Finally, in the foreground I used leading lines to aid in pushing the more intense colors forward on the page. Moving onto the abstract side, I made small changes in the rendering, but mainly focused on changing the color hues to flatten the space. As shown on the abstract side, most of the colors are saturated. There is not a large range from dull to intense color because I wanted to eliminate the deep space that was created on the opposite side. In order to maintain a sense of symmetry, I maintained similar color worlds in each section of the piece, background, middle ground, and foreground, but as mentioned before, switched up the hues to abstract the space. 
   Overall this project was extremely challenging due to the great amount of colors used and rendering the design. I learned how to create deep space using cool hues that are dull to pull back, or recede in space, while warm, high intensity colors push forward in space.

Assignment 1

A World in Color  In this first assignment, students were asked to create a color wheel featuring the twelve primary, secondary and tertiary colors. This wheel was rendered on illustration board using a protractor and compass. For this project I worked with specific color formulas to make the best pure hue. Moving inward in the figure, the hues were tinted adding white. While in most cases the color grew duller, yellow specifically became brighter with the addition of white. Looking toward the outer layers of the figure, the colors were darkened by adding black. The goal was to have equal gradation moving from the inner most ring to the outer most ring. Similarly, each ring moving around the circle (traveling across hues) should have its own unique look. To illustrate, the inner loop consisted of the least intense color while the final ring on the outside was the darkest, most saturated. Final touches included painting the inner circle white and adding a middle grey tone to the background. 
    The most challenging aspect of this project was finding the right formula between the different pigments for gradating the cool hues. Because they are so dark to begin with, there is not a wide range from dark to light so making seven distinct rings proved difficult.  As shown in my wheel, the gradation for yellow has more distinctly different colors than that of violet. All in all, this was a good starting project that introduced me to the world of color. I found it very intriguing to learn how different colors consisted of diverse pigments that mix differently than they would according to color theory.