For this challenge, to have a "3D" spray painted object and draw on it, I chose to do a road hockey ball. Originally, I was going to do either a mug or small cardboard storage/box thingy, but I messed up on the lettering on the mug in sharpie, and chose the wrong paint for the box which was too tacky for any pens to draw on it. So, I settled for doing the ball. It's not the most exciting object, but was what I could find on short notice after two failures. I feel like I was pretty successful in the lettering, even with some mistakes in it from a combination of my shaky hands and holding a round object, along with the sharpie not drying fast enough. This caused some smudges on the ball, and some wonky letters. However, I still feel like I successfully completed this challenge as the lettering curves with the ball. I also amused myself with the phrase I chose, as I panicked and settled on an internet joke when I ran out of ideas of what could be interesting on a ball. Overall, I did have a lot of challenges with the spray painting aspect of the challenge, as well as picking the wrong pen. In the future, I think I would have chosen a different pen and maybe done a few practice designs before hand on the ball, maybe in something like chalk.
For this challenge, I decided to create a small little hand-lettering design on a (blank) glass christmas ornament. I chose the phrase that I did because it's usually the first christmas song I think of, probably due to the Burl Ives christmas CD that my sisters and I always begged our parents to play on repeat around christmas time when we were kids, dancing around the living room to the variety of classic christmas songs. The reason I used an ornament was because my family had bought a bunch years ago from Michaels to hand-paint them, but we never used up all of them. I decided to due "holly" and "jolly" in a cursive font due to them being the main words in the phrase, and I wanted to them to match because they rhyme in the song. I also felt that this would look "festive", to match the spirt of the season. However, the reason why I used black was because I wanted the ornament to be more minimalist instead of a red-green explosion like most other ornaments, and because the only working glass paint pen I could find was either black or silver, and the silver was too light and shiny to be readable. I did a quick draft in my sketchbook to figure out the shape of the cursive before hand, but I also found that if I messed up on the ornament it was possible to rub it off before it dried, so I did the first layer with a sharpie (easily rubbed off with water or rubbing alcohol if necessary) and then the glass paint pen over top. There are some mistakes in it due to the tip of the paint pen being thinker than I originally thought, so the end of the "y" on "jolly" is too close to.the other "y". Other small mistakes were from my shaky, shaky hands. I also wish the "L"s on both words were more similar, but that was just a forethought that I missed. Overall, I feel like this was a success to do a small design on an unfamiliar object and get some practice with that, and I feel like my choice of object matches the Christmas spirit. Even if some of it was rushed and didn't come out as intended, it works as a learning piece for doing hand lettering on something other than just flat paper.
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For the first choice assignment, I chose to make some of the sketches I did over the summer into colour vectors. This was both of the quotes from the video game Portal 2. I did the "potato" quote (image 2) first in illustrator, then the 'blimp' one (image 1). I used some of the more familiar things for these vectors: some use of texture (in the background (1) / potato (2)), colour palettes from colourlovers, and the faux-dropshadow on some of the cursive. However, I did try out a few new things with both of these designs. In the blimp design, instead of just using a clipping mask and transparency for the texture, I used the 'overlay' function while it was clipped, so it brought the texture through without the colour from the texture photo. As well, I have a simple brush stroke going behind the "soaring" part of it, to bring more emphasis and make the nature of the word stand out, with "soaring" sounding/being sort of 'swishy' or 'floaty'. In the potato one, I tried out having a line going through some of the words instead of a texture, to slight differentiate them from the above word while still looking similar. I used very different colour palettes on each design, and even though liked the 'potato' design as a sketch I almost like the 'blimp' design better as a vector because I personally like the colour palette more. Looking at them now, I feel like I chose colour palettes that went with the nature of the sayings: the lighter colours and blue of the 'blimp' design bring to mind airiness and flight, while the darker, brown colours of the 'potato' design brings the feeling of earth and.. potatoes, in general. Overall, I feel like both of these were successfully converted into vectors, and each hold their own as a solid design while still possibly being able to work together due to blue and orange being complimentary colours.
For this fall-themed assignment, I chose a quote from the classic cartoon It's a Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. Personally, I felt like this connected to the 'theme' of autumn, being a movie based around halloween, pumpkins, and the general month of October. I also chose this quote specifically because it had an opportunity for repetition with the listing of three different things. For the repetition in this piece, I used the same block letters for the more prominent words, with the rounded lower case for the rest. I chose the lower case letters because I felt that it connected to the personality of Linus, the character being quoted, and that he is a young child, so I wanted to make the letters seem a little 'child-like' to reference this. In the film, Linus believes in a Santa-esque entity called the "Great Pumpkin", who arrives on Halloween night bringing presents. The block letters were originally a mix of cursive, but I felt like that clashed with the rest of the design and cut it out. The illustrative piece of the design is the large pumpkin at the bottom, symbolizing the 'Great Pumpkin' and pumpkins in general being a symbol for autumn, and the failed ghost costume of Charlie Brown, symbolizing an iconic part of the movie and the theme of Halloween and 'spookiness' being prevalent during the fall. Overall, I think that I am moderately happy with the piece, but when looking at it from the angle in the picture it seems that some of the block lettering at the top is slightly slanted, something I didn't catch until viewing the photo on my computer screen. This may have been caused by me using a small ruler, so while making a guide line in the middle of the page it may have become slanted due to it not being held against the edges of the paper.
The top image is the final image from this project, and the three images below in the gallery show various thumbnails and practice sketches I did while trying to figure out the final design. Originally, the design was with rounded lower case letters, but this was eventually changed because it made the letters too hard to figure out while reading the design with the "chaos" in it. The thumbnails are all very messy, some with multiple styles of inking in one to get a feel for what I should do. I feel like this helped me during the process, even though it was frustrating trying to figure it out. Eventually, I settled on capital letters, with a focal point of the planet in the far right, stippling in the background with all the 'space things' and letters inked in, and a white outline around the letters themselves. The planet itself also changed during the process, originally being more like jupiter but I felt like that was too similar to the space squiggles (and harder to draw), so it ended up looking more like Jupiter. I felt like the stippling provides a little bit more of the chaos for the design, and also provides the white outline for the inked in letters. It also provides some interest for the planet, with the stippling changing the tone over half of it. Overall, I feel that I was successful with this design, but there are some things that I would change or 'do better' if I did it again. Some of this just includes minor inking mistakes, like filling in the wrong space stuff, but I also wish that I had done a more even outline around the letters. I feel like this was a challenging project in general because of how hard it was to find balance between the order and chaos, in that over my thumbnails I kept slipping between the two without a balance. I think that I achieved it in the end, but it took a while and many sketches.
I actually really enjoyed the challenge of having music inspire the sketches. At first, I'd assumed that it might be "cliche" types of music being used, like classical vs. rap or etc. I was pleasantly surprised by the songs chosen and felt as if they were all good choices. My favourite pieces from this activity were from the second and third song. I feel the second song piece ("gravity") is a good, quick attempt at cursive, although I feel that I messed up on the thickness of some of the letters near the end (specifically the 'Y' and the 'T') but overall I like how it turned out. The other two pieces are from the third song, and are kind of attempts at doing cursive-esque printing. I think that makes it feel a little fancier, and a little more fragile with the thin little lines.
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MoniqueSometimes confused but getting there. Possibly. Archives
February 2016
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