Mapping Project (week 6)

My main goal in this project was to create a challenging drawing that is aesthetically pleasing if not deeply captivating. I want to intrigue and impress others with my work while learning about my style and the materials in the process. My audience includes my peers, professors, friends and family. These are the people that I interact with and inspire me daily. I want to return that sense of inspiration to my audience though my work. My secondary goal was to create a good portfolio piece that exemplifies my drawing skills. I am very career driven and am currently looking for a job, co-op, or internship and have been strengthening my portfolio. I purposely chose an ideology for this project that was common and easy to convey, so anyone looking at my portfolio could understand and relate too the work. In this sense, my audience would be potential future professors, employers, and co-workers.

Due to my dedication to graphic design I haven’t had any studio classes since Life Drawing a year ago. In addition, I haven’t done as much drawing as I usually do in the last year. Thus, I chose to challenge myself with a detailed drawing on a larger than usual scale. I normally work with a 9/12 Canson sketchbook and this piece is on an 18/24 sheet of recycled paper by Strathmore. I also challenged myself by using charcoal. I always use graphite when I draw detail because it is easy to control and predictable in how it sits and spreads on the paper. When I was using charcoal for the photo-realism in my piece I could really feel the loss of control. To over come this had to use both vine charcoal and charcoal pencils. The vine charcoal wiped away too easily and was difficult to sketch with, but worked great for layering shading and getting rich darks. The pencils didn’t erase well so I couldn’t sketch with them, but I could shade rite over the pencil and not lose any marks. This was important to me because each mark has purpose behind it in sending my visual message.

The ideology I wanted to work with is the common connotation that life is a path. Life is said to be filled with “winding roads” and “bridges” that everyone has to cross. In a literal sense, we map the pathways around us using road maps. I wanted to create a road map were each path is named after major “road” or “bridge” that we “drive” through in life. For example, I used names like “Death In The Family Crossing” and “Final Exam State Bridge.” I wanted the audience to feel like they are looking at a mapping of the subject’s life and at the same time be reminded of major events in their lives. My hope is that these memories with stir up emotions that allow the audience to feel connected to the work and give each viewer a unique experience. I feel satisfied with how the work came out visually, but I am curious to see how the class will react and if they are intrigued by how I conveyed my concept.

Mapping My Process (week 5)

Here are some sketches I did for my first Drawing 3 project. In Jeremy Wood’s piece, Meridians, it is apparent that Wood chose the location very carefully to best express the quote he chose. He was conscious in his decisions on the size, shape, and location of each word. Without this attention to detail and planning, his work would not have the same effect or meaning. I wanted to make my piece as strong as possible to best convey my concept, so I chose the subject very carefully. In Julie Mehretu’s, Looking Back to a Bright New Future, the imagery is very abstract and the message is hard to decipher. The work seems to rely on its name to give the viewers a sense of what the artist is getting at. I decided to use the human figure and road maps for my subject to make sure that my message is clear. The model had to have captivating eyes so that she would be intriguing even with out any facial expression. I didn’t want my audience to be focused on an expression and try to see meaning that wasn’t intended. I wanted her body to stretch across the page and be a surface for the topographic effect and road map that I wanted to incorporate. I also wanted her to have light color hair so it wouldn’t be distracting or disrupt the visual balance. I did 12 sketches in my sketchbook using a few stock photos of women that fit my criteria. I focused on body position and looking at the negative space to decide what to do for my final piece. I did not feel inspired and was going to resort to combining the sketches, folding it up like a map, and treating the paper to look old. Instead, I kept looking for a photo and found one that didn’t fit my criteria, but after one more sketch I new what I wanted to do for the final work. This model had the eyes I was looking for but her body is not visible and her hair is dark, so I decide to use her hair to map the ideology I want to use.

Humane Expression (week 4)

I was reading Katelin's intro on her blog (http://drawingkatelin.blogspot.com/) and her appreciation for the human expression and form in her work stood out to me. I decided to post my response:

The figure is also one of my favorite subjects. I consider the face, body, and hands the most difficult, and thus satisfying subjects to draw. I love to reproduce unusual and captivating facial and body expressions. I'm sick of every photo where every person has that cheesy "Say Cheese" smile on there face. Of coarse, the beauty of a true smile is endless if you can capture it. I prefer goofy or weird expressions so that with my artwork I recreate those feelings in every viewer in some small way. I think part of the reason we both enjoy drawing faces is that there is a whole section of the brain devoted to facial recognition. This part allows babies to recognize there parents. It allows us to picture people in our mind and remember a face we haven't seen is a long time. It's the reason we see faces in ink blot test, clouds, and that bumpy ceiling stuff.

Here is a poster I made using photoshop for my 2D Digital Imaging class. The purpose of the assignment was to convey an expression, and in this case "frustration" was my subject:

Mapping My Ideas (week 3)

My first assignment in Drawing 3 is to use maps and/or mapping as the subject. We are free to use any mediums or approach that we can justify. The work can be illustrative and narrative or abstract and conceptual. You can map more than just places. Life, time, and even dream spaces can be mapped. You can map actions, ideas, emotions, and people. Maps give information and expose something. So any injustice or hidden agendas can be revealed by mapping the issue. Maps can be boring, exciting, funny or scary.

Ideas:
1. Map the out side of a person- start with a realistic drawing at the top of the body, that fades into a shaded topographic map, then to a linear road map of the body
-use a woman laying on her back in an expressive manner facing up towards the drawing plane and cut the page so it is skinny an tall
-or use a woman laying on her side and cut the page to be short and wide.
2. Abstract World Map- made up of realistic drawings of people from each country, each person located over their home land, wearing clothes common or unique to that area.
3. Prime a rectangle wood board and layer paint, glue, electrical equipment, glass, and paper mache to make a 3D land scape representing a place or places. Draw with charcoal the roads and places of importance to me.
4. Create a map in the shape of a human body. Lable the roads as paths that people commonly such as "Education Rd" and "Family Traditions Circle." The bridges as struggles people face such as "Death in the Family Crossing" and "Final Exam State Bridge."
5. Do a combination of these ideas and some new ideas (based mainly on number 1 and 4) to some how gain a satisfied feeling (in this one piece of art) that I explored all of my ideas related to the endless possibilities of mapping.

Types of maps:
Printed- road, typographic, statistic and census info.
Digital- google, map quest
GPS- garmon
Hand drawn- directions

Things that maps do:
Tell stories
Give direction
Inform
Expose
Lead
"All maps are cognitive."

Keep in mind:
People with power create maps
Technology allows precise maps
You can map things that are wrong in daily life, politics, etc.