Here’s to success,

Aliyah

Or, as in my group’s case, up the mountain and endured injuries.

Our group project was a lot of fun and inventive. We took the nursery rhyne Jack and Jill and reinvented it using select images and symbols. SM, Wilson, Marc and myself got along well and came up with this story for a modern Jack and Jill:

Jack (a fearless bird) and Jill (sick with love for Jack)

went up the mountain

to go for a flight.

Jack got hit by a plane,

and lost his feathers,

and Jill went to rescue her man!

Critique went well for us. Everyone got the jist of what was going on. Our craftsmanship was good, with the exception of some streaking in the inking. Overall, it was a great project that got us collaborating and telling old stories in a new way.

“The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only one page.”

Dinging At the Hive

Boink, clank went spoon, fork

on dinner plate, clatter,

click, clink, clunk,

doink,

dunking cookies into splooshing ice cream,

spring, spring, of sprinkles

sprinkling across the table.

szoosh, soda being sipped and slooed

through straws and gurgled in throats,

HACK, choking on pork chop bones,

ahem,

settle down.

Another evening dinner at the Hive.

We all know the alphabet song, but seeing the letters through unique images is a whole different thing. When we were given the task of finding the letters of the alphabet and number 0-9 as they occur in our natural environment, I was freaked out. Was I going to have to spend hours outside to complete this? But with a little creative thinking, I came up with a fun solution- I strived to find letters and numbers using all the different parts of my coffee machine! Only about 3 letters and 4 numbers came from other man-made things. Here’s what I came up with!:

They all have one thing in common- they are spoken word poets!
I find that there are way more writing blogs than other fields of art and design. I believe because it’s simpler to post writing and to do so more frequently.
I hoped to find more links and where to find his work on Roger’s blog. It was very plain and doesn’t show his personality. What surprised me was Verlee’s blog. You would think she was a professional designer! I love how it shows who she is with the fun elements of the layout (esp. the scrolling) without cluttering the screen much. Buddy’s blog stands out the most to me. It’s super simple but with simple GREAT design that Roger’s simple blog lacks. It demonstrates that you don’t have to have a lot of images and elements to get the information to the viewer. Gibson and Saul’s come across the same to me. Simple layout, contact, store, and info are not hard to locate. It’s laid out simple so the viewer doesn’t have to scroll all over the place to find what they’re looking for. I disliked The Strivers Row blog the most. Right off, the Enter Here; it is so unnecessary to me. I also don’t like the big blog buildings with just the words above them on the home page. You have to scroll down to find out who they are and what they do! That should always be made clearly know to the viewer in my book. I feel like they were trying to incorporate a lot of design like Verlee, but she executed her blog way better.
I hope that you guys visit all of these blogs though and get to know and love these artists as much as I do!
~Aliyah

ORDER, INCREASE, BOLD, CONGESTED, PLAYFUL, TENSION.

Better pictures replacing these soon, I promise!

Order to me is like direction; a path for the eye to follow:

Increase is growing, becoming larger (a cheesey early Happy Valentine’s Day):

Bold is brave, so I kind of went the story route to show a little guy taking a stand:

Congested is a lot like concentration to me, so we have a glob that breaks off at the ends:

Playful is fun, legs kicking up in tall grass, so I did this, that reminded me of my niece’s wooden alphabet blocks:

Tension is unbalance, you sense something is about to go down:

I enjoyed our loose parameters for this. I’m interested to see how we all interpreted the terms differntly.

~Aliyah

First, we took two shapes and had one take a bite, chomp!, out of the other. I chose a star and a circle.

Second, we played with how we would place this motif in either a 1×1 or 2×2 inch square. I went with this in 1×1 squares.

Third, we came up with 5 different designs for a 10×10 grid. These were my experiments. Oh, and we could move the motif around any way we wanted but in a way that flowed from box to box.

We glued our chosen one onto tracing paper.

Fourth, we came up with 3 inking plans for our design. This is what I came up with.

Once chosen (I went with the first), we traced our design ,

and transfered it to our white illustration board (cold pressed, by the way). Then we inked! Boy did I learn a lot this project! India Ink and I will never be friends during project time, but it was a good experience.

This is my final product.

I took a lot from my critiques and understand what I need to do better.

My craftsmanship was TERRIBLY off on the ink, as I had gray and lighter spots throughout. Lesson learned. In class, I thought, “I should’ve taped around my enclosed spaces!” >.< That didn’t help then, of course, but I’ll have it for next time. Also, my design had no exact focal point for the eye to go to, and no flow for the eye to follow. Even I now find it visually unappealing! I went to0 random with the placemanet of my inked shapes and was looking more to have a flow of negative space to guide the eye versus flow of shapes for the eye to follow.

To doing better next time!

~Aliyah

You like to be around those clunky pots and pans girls,

Difficult to move around, can’t keep still, full of noise, can’t keep their lids shut girls.

They let their stew boil over, making messes over things, getting my shoes wet, blowing steam and undercooked rice like baby raspberries in my face.

Those sap girls like you, cling to you, smooth and sweet, but  when you wash your hands, they’re still there, scouring pads and steel wool sponges of your fingernails have to scrub and scrub, she’s soap resistant strong, cherry syrup never leaving your bed sheets.

You like the messes and the jugs of soap you make yourself go through, towels have

Circles of sticky sweet gunk, threads stuck in swirls like kiddie Twizzlers artwork

Sit back and sip ginger ale and champagne,

You like how they look the same, but do an entirely different job.

So here is my CONCENTRATION (sorry for the blur)

and my ISOLATION