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.