Ieva's blog

For this project we were given lots of freedom and we could truly go crazy. At first we weren’t introduced to the 2nd part of assignment and we were only asked to get  some sort of a map and basically destroy it! Do whatever we want with it! Not thinking about the outcome made this project really fun and inspiring! I did my best in trying to modify the map in as many ways as possible. I found a big U.S. map and here’s what I did to it :

I tried to put things on the map that would represent my interests and just the things that I like:

1. I spilled coffee on it :

2. I kissed it:

3. I drew some stuff with a lipstick:

4. I glued some cut outs from various flyers and pictures:

5. Then I glued some sugar on it:

6. I burnt some cigarette holes in it:

7. Then I tried burning it, though the paper was too thick:

8. Then I tried to make a paper plane out of it:

9. After I tried to mount it on a pole:

10.  Then I opened one of the books that I have, Truman Capote’s “In Cold Blood”, and noticed that a lot of states are mentioned in a lot of pages so a copied the quotes next to the states that relate to them:

And afterwards I just messed around with the map a little bit more and that’s how it looked  at the end:

After bringing our destroyed maps to the class we found out that then we had to create something actually meaningful. After analyzing my map a little bit I kind of got this film Noir feeling: lipstick marks, finger prints, cigarette burns, and citations from “In Cold Blood” related to crime. It inspired me to create a “Noirish” police evidence board alluding to the crime that happened  in the book I was quoting on the map.

That’s how my final piece looked like:

In class critique people seemed to like my idea however my piece could have looked more coherent. Some people commented that I might have made the cutouts in a more definite way. Also they thought that making it black and white would have made the piece more visually pleasing and more unified with the Film Noir theme. Furthermore, some thought that making it bigger would have helped to make the composition not as distracting.

Overall, I really enjoyed working on this project because of the freedom that we had.

For this project we were asked to find all the letters of the alphabet and number 1-9 naturally occurring in our environment.  At first I didn’t think this assignment will be that hard but I ended up looking for the letters for 2 weeks. However, at the end I started noticing a lot more naturally occurring letters, which I think was the purpose of this assignment.

My alphabet:

.

My numbers:

       .

And this is how i decided to present it for the class ( a simple display, though shows off the pictures well):

So for this project we were asked to tell a kids’ story “Jack & Jill” visually from given symbols that could be manipulated in any way we wanted.  We had to create 6 squares that would represent different little segments of the story. We were given the freedom to render the story the way we want to and also mount it on an illustration board in any way we want. The trick part of this project, however, was that it was a group project. Group dynamics played and important role in the process of creating the project from idea development to the mounting on the board. My group was the smallest in the class and consisted of me and another student Alexandra. We found it fun to come up wit the ideas in a group and it was easy to divide between the jobs for executing the piece because we could simply cut it in half.

The first step was to create the sketches for our 6 pieces, we didn’t struggle too much with coming up with ideas, we both wanted to represent the story more conceptually  without committing to any characters and leaving it more open.

1. Jack and Jill.

We wanted the first design to look like a title page.

2.Went up the hill

We tried to make the flow of images by repeating arrow and triangular motifs.

3. To fetch a pile of water.

we thought that it would be funny to represent a word ” fetch” with a dog face.

4. Jack fell down.

5. And broke his crown. 6 And Jill came tumbling after.

Then we thought of ways to mount the images on the illustration board :

but only after inking all the pieces and trying to arrange them differently on the illustration board we came up with a way.

After coming up with the concept for our project we divided the execution in half. I did three last pieces:

Jack fell down:

And broke his crown:

And Jill came tumbling after:

The overall thing turned out to be this way:

We decided the cut the illustration board into the shape of steps because we thought it goes well with the hill theme, and also makes and eye flow really nicely through the piece.

In class critique people seemed to like our piece overall. We got complimented on our craftsmanship, coherency of style, the idea of steps, nice flow of the pieces and natural movement of the eye. However, our piece seemed to lack coherency in representing the story, because in one piece we used a figure of a man, whereas it wasn’t use anywhere else in the piece. Also the head of the dog seemed to confuse people.

This time we were asked to create a visually interesting sound map of sounds that occur in some location throughout the hour. I spent my hour in Starbucks in Broughton Street and found out that listening is a lot of fun. The only sad thing that I couldn’t really convey the conversations of people talking around me: you couldn’t believe all the subjects people discuss while having their coffee. So anyways, I decided to show the sounds in a 3D diagram: width shows minutes passing by, and height, extending into space, their distance from me. Also I tried to convey the loudness through the scale of objects.

Okay, so I tried to search the web really hard to find some inspiring blogs. However, the filmmakers and video artists, that relate to my field and that inspire me, didn’t have their own blogs which was slightly disappointing. I thought that it would be interesting to read those artists’ blogs because I would like to see what they are thinking about their own artwork.

However, I found a blog by a famous Lithuanian artist, Jonas Mekas, who does various kinds of art, including video.  I found that his blog is very elaborate and represents well his work, biography and his personality.  I thought that the blog is very welcoming and sincere which adds a nice element to it.

http://jonasmekasfilms.com/diary/

Also I looked up artists in other fields that I admire and I was able to find a blog by a photographer Rodney Smith whose work I find really fascinating.  I really enjoyed visiting his blog not only because of his wonderful pictures but also because of the way they are presented. What makes the blog stand out is its professionalism, minimalism, interesting contemplations of the artist and an intriguing title.

http://rodneysmith.com/blog/

Overall, I enjoyed reading various blogs. However, I found it hard to find blogs that would truly inspire me.  Most of them were kind of predictable and dull, and the artwork presented on there not really interesting or unique. On the other hand, I was overwhelmed by the abundance of various blogs, and I believe that somewhere among them there are some blogs by less known artists that would truly inspire and suprise me. I will definitely keep looking.

Recently in class we had our 2nd exploration assignment where we were asked to describe given words visually with black flat squares. I enjoyed the assignment because it’s interesting to see what comes out when you just think of some word and try to communicate it visually.

First word was ORDER. I don’t know why but when I thought of that word I immediately pictured a circle because to me it symbolizes harmony.

Second word was INCREASE. Instead of plainly showing squares that are in one plane and increasing in size I decided to render them in the way that they would look as if they are coming closer and increasing visually.

The third word was BOLD. At first I was tempted to show nothing but a big square but then I tried to convey the word with more squares.

The 4th word was CONGESTED. In this piece I tried minimize the positive space as much as possible.

The 5th word was PLAYFUL. I don’t know why but with this one I had the most trouble. Maybe because whenever I picture playful it somehow to me seems too random and chaotic.

And the 6th word was TENSION. I decided not to use a lot of squares because, in my opinion, when the eye is not distracted by a lot of stuff happening around the viewer can experience the tension more strongly.

Recently in design class we had to do a repetition grid assignment which required multiple steps to make it. Basically it had to be a  10×10 grid with 25 or 100 squares with repeating motifs in them. When I found out that the final piece has to be executed with India ink I felt sort of intimidated because it was my first time using it.

The first step that we had to make was to create a motif, where one figure would intersect, or “bite off” the other figure.  I tried couple of versions, however I’ve chosen the one with a little cross because I thought that I could do something interesting with it. 

After selecting my motif I had to figure out how I want it to be placed in the cell of a grid. I tried 3 options and I liked the best the one on the bottom left because I thought that it might form new interesting forms.

After that we had to create 5 design options of the arrangement of the cells ( I decided to do 100 cell grid). As I find out, my motif didn’t have a lot of options, because all the designs looked almost the same.

I finally chose the second one because I liked the four squares inside the design and I thought that I could ink it interestingly.

Then I had to create at least 3 inking plans for my selected design. I wanted to completely transform my design and leave only some parts visible, or only contours of some motifs.

I chose my second inking plan because a liked the variety in it, as also I like the way focal point is created by concentration.

I had to execute my final piece on illustration board using India ink to fill the black parts of motifs and I used pigment pens to draw the lines. I found it quite difficult to draw exact forms with the ink but I was kind of pleased with the final outcome. My final piece:

During the class critique I got some positive feedback which was really pleasant  because my craftsmanship is not very good, so there where some issues.  Furthermore, I didn’t follow the rules entirely because I used contours of some figures in motifs. Despite that some people found my piece creative and ,as they said, almost alive because of the irregularly rendered crosses.

Concentration 

Isolation

I decided to slightly redesign my diagonal composition because I felt that some of the angles of the lines are off and not parallel to each other. Also, in my opinion, it lacks balance. In my redesign I changed the angles of some lines that all lines would be parallel to each other, also I changed position and scale of some lines that the whole composition would be more solid and balanced.

I chose these particular designs from all of my sketches first of all because I pictured them looking good together. My first design of vertical and horizontal lines is simple, however I chose it for its overall view which is nice to look at because of its balance expressed through lines of different thickness and length. I chose the second design for my diagonal lines composition because I like the way the lines point to different directions, it kind of guides you around the page. My third design of curved lines I think is nice because of the negative curved shapes that are created by the dark lines. Well and I chose the particular design for my last composition of combined lines because I really like how the lines subdivide the page into sections.

After in class critique , even though my pieces weren’t discussed separately, I got the impression that the best designs where the ones that could greatly incorporate negative space in the design itself, which I could have done better. Also, I think that focal point in some of my designs is not clear enough, and maybe I could have chosen some riskier sketches. Furthermore, my designs had some minor craftsmanship issues. Overall, I think I did the best  I could for the very moment, though of course I hope to improve myself in my other projects.