Letterform Compositions.

The project guidelines were to create 3 compositions with letters from contrasting fonts to create shapes where the letters weren't recognizable within the composition. This has been by far, my favorite project we've done in this class. And when my instructor was going around looking at thumbnails she told me that mine looked really nice and that I understood the project. But, seeing as how I already love typography....it worked out well for me. :D

Here are the letters I decided to use in their respective orders.

Project 3; Reinvent a logo/famous painting.

The resulting "I don't care how I look/didn't shower" hair.

The guidelines were to abstract the composition by simplifying it or making it more complex if already in a simplified form. The mediums we had to use were gouache, india ink, sharpie, & collage. Therefore we had to produce four 6x9 compositions total.

Me not being able to choose a logo that I liked that I though could work out well, had to choose the more difficult of the two options. I chose to do Edgar Degas' Prima Ballerina, which ended up somewhat horrible along with my time management skills (Let's do all 4 compositions the night before they are due!!). Needless to say, I went to bed around 4:30 am to wake up in time for my 9:30am class. Which was fun.... First off, I realized this was a bad choice of a famous painting for me to reproduce when I realized that I don't have much practice drawing figures, as one of Degas' favorite things to paint were ballerinas and that is exactly what was in my painting. Secondly, I had never used india ink before and I "experimented" with it too far apart from the actual time that I painted the composition, so my skill level was incompetent to begin with. But I did end up being really happy with the way my variation of the painting in the collage turned out. That composition alone only took me 6 hours... So we'll just wait and see about the others. During critique my instructor did comment that the Sharpie & Collage were my two strongest ones due to how the figure in the foreground was united with the background and not isolated as opposed in the india ink & gouache.

So, with all of that said, here is original & the final products.

Prima Ballerina by Degas (original image).

Gouache

India Ink (Major Fail)

Sharpie

6 hour Collage

My roommates possibly questioning my sanity with the mess I made....

Gouache [pronounced like squash but with a G] Chaos

OH, and they are facing the correct way this time! (YAY!)

If you don’t know what this is related to here is my original post… This is me pretty much done with the 3 squares minus touch ups on the black. This type of pigment is really difficult to work with until you figure out how it works…and by this time, I think I’ve got it. Alas, you can’t see every detail of the having too thick of gouache in some of the gray shapes, but I think from a far it looks quite nice (except for maybe the first one where my hand was really unsteady….considering redoing that one - opinions on this idea?) Anyway, any opinions in general would be appreciated. (:

Division of a Square.

Supplies for my 2nd project (Division of a Square) in Concepts & Practices 1:

1. Ox Gall
2. White Gouache
3. Black Gouache
4. Paint Brushes
5. 3 squares of Bristol Board (8.5 X 8.5 inches with a .5 inch margin)

The project guidelines go as followed:

Use no recognizable imagery. Design a square that will be divided into shapes that are horizontal and vertical to the edges of the square.  Design a 2nd square that will be divided into shapes that are all diagonal to the edges of your board. And finally, design a 3rd square that will be divided into a mixture of horizontal/vertical and diagonal shapes. Then shade different parts of the square with the black and gray gouache. There should not be any negative or positive space or any feeling that the shapes are overlapping. The colors should look flat and crisp, not painterly.

Along with these guidelines we had to research artists such as Malevich, Lissitzky, and Sarah Crowner.