Spring 2010 Semester Start

 

Flower Mandala in progress

Finished my first week back at school. I learned I will only have 3 classes this term as the Advanced Drawing class didn't make, only 4 students signed up for the class and that isn't enough to make a good study environment. I am not happy about this but hope to be able to utilize the live model studio time that the Drawing instructor holds in his studio on Tuesday evenings. I didn't this week I was too exhausted but as I recover from the bug I had picked up over the holidays I am hoping to be able to go and do this.  He has live models that will hold poses for quick studies, I need the practice so really want to go some evenings and draw.

My digital photography/Photoshop class should be a good one for me, hopefully I will learn how to better edit my photos and even take better photos of my work, both would be a plus and make the class well worth my time. 

The Intaglio class should be interesting, and starting next week I should have some images for the blog from that class. Our first assignment is to do a bug in dry point. I have a beetle picked out but need to finish my drawing of it. I plan to show the images of the drawings and the final prints. You might even see images of the proofing prints if I think them informative.

Graphic Design has us doing a brochure for the Non-profit organization that we did the logo for in Intro to Graphic Design. That one should be interesting and demanding. Later in the term we will be doing another poster, this one will be personal. Also we will be doing a book cover. I think I have my book picked out. Right now my plans are to do a cover for Charles Dickens Our Mutual Friend.

The only a couple of images for this week. The top one is another in-progress shot of the flower mandala I am working on, but as you can see I am out to the penultimate ring, and have even started coloring it in so have actually made some headway since I posted the first image. The drawing of the older woman is for another project I am working on outside of school. She isn't finished and there will be another figure to go with her, but so far I am pleased with how she is turning out. 

I need to get my act together and head down to Providence, I still need a tool for my Intaglio class and the store at RISD is supposed to have what I need.

Comments welcome, let me know what you think of the mandala. The yellow background is really more intense, I should have done a bit more color adjusting with the photo, I will try to remember to do that with the final image.

Package Design Finished

Above is my packaging project finished. We were supposed to be creating a series so instead of making a larger box (which would have been a royal pia) I used my 2nd label design for green tea. Course I have taken some liberties doing that as Red Rose doesn't manufacture a green tea.   Out of the two label designs I believe the label with the tea cup and the rose petals works the best. A fellow student suggested having rose petals floating in the tea. I realized that the red gets a bit lost against the color of the tea so to make them more apparent I scattered 3 across the label outside the cup.  The tea cup is from my Grandmothers China set, and it is actually filled with Red Rose tea.

I think the hardest part of this project was getting the boxes made, six sided boxes are not easy to make, and of course I made mistakes and had to throw one box out because I made the sides the wrong height. I would consider these gift boxes, not something that a supplier would use for regular packaging. Much too hard to put together. I also had an issue with the label that goes around the outside of the box, I didn't originally make it long enough so had to increase the size a bit (about a 1/4 of an inch), not to mention that I had to print it on 2 sheets of paper and then glue it together. The overall length of the label was approx 15 inches so even if I had purchased legal sized paper I would have still had a problem, and my printer doesn't print ledger which is 17 inches long. I totally understand why modern packaging is printed directly on the package stock instead of separate labels. Here are two more images of my final designs:

My other image for you today is a scan of my most recent scratch board illustration. This was a nature illustration, we were supposed to illustrate one animal from a set of pictures the Instructor handed out. I picked a chipmunk. As I was sketching it the Instructor stopped by my desk and suggested that I should add a bird of some sort. I picked a chickadee, sitting on a tree. I am not as pleased with this illustration as I was with the first one. I know I could have done a better job on the foreground, and am not sure about the rocks and the trees the chickadee is on, though I did do a bit of touching up on the rocks (adding in black ink to hide some of the white) so they are a bit better then they were.

That is it for today's post. The rest of what I have been working on doesn't photograph. I have been busy collecting images for my next Graphic Design project, and also doing some image work for my Dreamweaver final web site project. I re-took some photo's of last years art work and then processed the photo's in Photoshop for use on the web and created thumbnail images.

As usual comments are welcome.  

Musings on a Shoe

Shoe?, your going to yourself, what shoe and why musings. For my 3D design class our next assignment is to create a 20 inch (or larger) cardboard shoe. One that could sit in the window of a shoe store. It is suppose to replicate an existing shoe, but be both large and eye catching. From the examples we have in the classroom of previous students work I can tell you that indeed giant shoes can be eye catching. My first problem in achieving this goal is that I think I have the most boring shoes. I have mostly gotten rid of all my heels, and the rest of my shoes tend to be simple loafer lookalikes.  Not that I ever really went in for fancy footware, I value comfort too much. However circumstances could be worse, I could own only a couple pairs of shoes, as I did back in the late 1970's, so I guess I must not complain.

Last year I was drawing shoes for Color and Design I, this year it is reproducing them, obviously Art Instructors love to use shoes. Anyway to make a long story short I still own a pair of shoe boots, see image below, and this is my subject piece.

Our first challenge was to draw the shoe from various angles straight on, sideways, top down, and to trace and outline of the sole of the shoe. I won't bore you with my drawings. Then we had to take measurements of the actual shoe and using a proportion wheel convert the measurements to what they would be if the shoe was 7 inches or 20 inches long instead of its true length. Using the smaller measurements we were then to construct a space sketch out of planes. Below are images of what my shoe space sketch looks like.

Then we had to do charcoal drawings of the finished space sketch (model). Below is one of mine, not wonderful, but as I was almost the only student in the class that had both the model and the sketches I am hoping I got an OK on them. Other students seem to be a bit confused about these sketches and why we do them of the built piece when we have already done drawings of the shoe. I think it is to verify that our models look like the shoe, you sometimes don't really look at something until you have to draw it.

So that is where I am, space sketch done, drawings of space sketch done, and today in class we started building the final 20 inch version of our shoes. Well, I started building, a lot of my fellow students were catching up, either doing their charcoal sketches or their space sketches since they hadn't finished one or both.

I have 3 more images for you today. These are from my Illustration I class. Our last assignment was to use a natural object for an illustration. The instructor brought in a box of objects and allowed us to choose one to illustrate. I chose a shell, see picture to the right, not a great one I know, but the ones without the flash were too blurry, and at least this way you can get an idea of what the shell looks like.

Then we had to draw it on drawing paper. Mine was a bit smaller then he wanted me to use for the finished illustration so I had to copy it and increase the size about 12%.

Next I transferred this image to Bristol board and inked in the lines using mainly stippling. There are a few lines but not many on this Illustration. Instructors comment was that it should be a bit darker in areas. I may go back and do that. Originally I was going to use Micron pens to do the stippling, but I ended up purchasing a set of Mechanical Pens. I probably shouldn't have, but I do love mechanical pens. I have owned sets in the past, and will try to take good care of this one so I don't have to toss any pens do to ink clogging the tips.

One last image for you, between my classwork projects I have been working on another Mandala, this one with a theme of trees, I am using leaves and seeds so far from various tree types. Colors are what I would consider fall colors, sky blue, reds, oranges and yellows with some greens.

That is it for this post, as always comments are welcome. 

Graphic Design Posters Done

Tuesday I finished my designs for my first Graphic Design project, and took a thumb drive over to Staples to have them printed. The size is 18 x 24 inches, so they were expensive to print, add into that the charges for having them mount the prints it all added up to a bit more then I would preferred.  As for the results, I was pleased with the posters when I first picked them up, but after our class critique on Thursday, I am not so happy. The instructor was generally not pleased with how the class did. I know I messed up with the position of the text on the 2nd poster, and in hindsight I should have lightened the table and the floor color.  Ah well, I really don't want to spend the money to reprint but.... will see what I get for a grade on this and then maybe decide. Because of the dark floor on the 2nd poster you can't see the lost button which is down in the lower left of the image. One reason why I am not happy with the dark floor. I am pleased with the graphic designs, I like the drawing of the doll, and I am happy with the family "photo".  I think if I had had a bit more time, but then isn't that the usual complaint with art projects.

I do have some other images for the blog. These next two are from my Illustration class. This time the instructor brought tools from his home and we each had to pick one to draw and then ink, using lines only. The tool I chose is some type of shears, not sure if they are for pruning or for metal. They aren't huge, but not small either. Anyway first image is my drawing. I think I drew this object at least 3 times with all the erasures and redrawing I did. But I feel the resulting image is fairly accurate. The last image is my pen and ink rendering of the tool. I feel the lines on the tool body and head work fairly well, I am not totally pleased with the line work for the handles or the shadows. I think the shadow work would have been better if I had used a finer pen nib. Oh well we are learning and part of learning is making mistakes. Homework for my next Illustration class is to use stippling on a natural object, in my case a shell.  So come back next week some time and I will hopefully have that image posted for you to see.

Pencil drawing

Final inked image.

I have also been doing some work on a new mandala. This one has a tree theme, I am using images of leaves and some seeds so far. I may have an in-progress photo for you next week. That's it for now, as always comments are welcome.

First 3D piece finished

Well it is done, above is just one view, scroll down for more views. Because E-board, which we used to construct this planar object, is white on one side and cardboard colored on the other I took quite a few pictures.

First here is a picture of my workspace before I started gluing.

Sorry about the high contrast, the sun was coming in the window onto the table that I work on, I didn't want to wait to get started so the picture had to be taken under less then optimal conditions. On the left and toward the middle are the 2 stacks of E-board pieces, on the right is the stack of cardboard rounds that I used as separators. I cut the rounds in half and glued one half to each E-board section, then glued those sections together. I ended up not using the smallest units as the finished object would have been a bit larger then it was supposed to be, and I just didn't like the look, take your pick as to which was the actual deciding factor.  

Side view, showing white Side E-Board

Top down view from the Cardboard Colored side.

I have four images for you this week from my Illustration class. First two are from last week's class assignment of the berry basket, first my drawing of the basket.

Next my pen and ink version. Note these are all being done with quill pen points and bottled India Ink. Usually I prefer working with Technical type pens, not the real ones (too hard to take care of) but the disposable Micron's, the same as I use for my quilt labels, though of different tip sizes.

Over the weekend we were assigned two projects, one to reproduce a bottle that was part of a class hand out on various ways to use pen and ink, and the other was to finalize the drawing of a tool. My tool drawing is done, but inking the result is my homework for Wednesday's class so I will post the pictures next week. I did finish the bottle so I have the drawing and the pen and ink version images to show.

Pencil Sketch

Final Drawing Inked

I am not totally pleased with how this came out, I am finding myself getting impatient with the process and rushing it a bit, which isn't good. Still it isn't too bad an effort.

I was telling the instructor this morning, how I am finding myself a bit surprised at how I don't really like doing this type of drawing. I do and have always done what some might consider finicky detailed work, take the mandala, lots of detailed areas, and I had to do repeats, which does get a bit old. Still I don't have to use as much control to do those as I do when I do the illustrations. With illustration things need to be exact and tight, I am finding I don't enjoy working that way. Detail can be fun sometimes, maybe when I don't have to be quite so exact, I guess, have to think about this a bit more. I suppose it might just be the subject, but somehow I don't think so.

That is it for this post. I almost have my first Graphic Design I project done. I will have those printed this week so should have pictures for you next week at the latest. I also have a Fast Friday group challenge that I should be working on. That I am thinking about but not sure if/when I will finalize the design and actually sew. I am also making progress on another mandala, it might be far enough along to have an in-progress photo taken.  So there are several things in the works as it were, stay tuned for my next update, and as always comments are welcome.

Final Week Spring Term

It's done, over, finished, my last final, my last critique for the winter/spring term. Yesterday I had my Graphic Design final critique, Monday I had my Color and Design final and Tuesday I had my drawing final critique. When the dust settles I think I will have two A's and two B's but we will see.

I don't have a lot of images for you this week just my final projects.

First is my drawing final, we had to draw at least 4 people, I have 5 figures in mine. I used a photo in the April issue of Smithsonian Magazine that was taken by Eudora Weltry. By the looks of the clothing the photo was taken back in the 30's but it might have been later. Men taking a break from their work to enjoy some music. I left several background figures out, and my instructor suggested that I add her name as photographer to the drawing so I did.

I had been wondering what to draw for my final, but when I saw this photo I had an ahha moment and knew I had found my subject. Wonderful composition, strong lines, lots of lights and darks, perfect for my purposes. I am relatively pleased with how it came out, and know that I probably couldn't have done it at the beginning of this last term, at least not so well, my figure drawing skills have improved a lot.

Graphic Design final project was my logo design for a non-profit group or society. I chose Mass Audubon as my group. We had to write papers about our selections so that we would have an understanding of the what the group does and their ongoing goals. I did a lot of sketches and finally ended up with the following as my logo.

The bird silhouette is done from a photo I found of a chickadee sitting on a branch. The chickadee is the State bird for Mass so I wanted to use one for my bird image. I am quite pleased with how this came out, though I received and used a fair amount of input from my professor and fellow students the basic concept is mine, and I made the final decisions about font's and layout. However it wasn't enough to design the logo we had to put it on stationary, letterhead, business card and envelope. The images below are my final designs.

So now I take a deep breath and try to figure out what to do next. I have some quilts to make for my Challenge group, I want to keep up my drawing skills, and hopefully create a "body" of work. Maybe do a website or two. In the near future the School is putting on an Arts Festival this coming weekend which I will attend. Lots to keep me busy.

Last week Spring Term

Last week of classes are done for spring term, a strange feeling, and I am trying to decide what to do next. Was thinking about a Photoshop class, but even though it is only for a month it is intense, as they meet 3 days a week. We would be doing a web site design at the end, which I want to do, but I think I need a break. Classes this spring have been intense and I have been feeling a bit of wanting out and done with the work. I have a little bit longer to think about this as next week is finals.

In the meantime I have images for you. I did my final presentation for Typography, a talk from my paper on John Baskerville English printer and typographer. I can show you the handout but the paper is a 9 page word document so we will skip that.

I am pleased with how this came out, even though I had to be lead to it by my instructor, still some of it is totally mine so I can take some credit.

In Graphic design we are still working on our logo, I will let you see it next week though it is really designed at this point. I am still designing the letterhead, but I think I have the business card and envelope done. Still until I glue it down I can always change my mine.

In drawing we had our last class on Tuesday. We spent half the class working from slides and the 2nd half starting our final drawing. Final drawing has to have at least 4 people in it. I am using a photo I found in Smithsonian Magazine as my basis and will have 5 figures. Wish me luck. In the meantime here are my last two homework pieces. One I like and the other is so so.

My not so good dwg, don't like his foot, or her arm


I like this one much better

We did 4 drawings from slides on Tuesday, first one was fairly quick and the others a bit longer. I sort of preferred the last one at a slightly sketcher stage, before I put all the dark around the bodies, but I think it still works.

This pose reminds me of a famous painting but not sure whose

That is it for this week. Next week I will post my logo final and my Drawing II final. After that any images will have to be either quilts I am working on or drawings that I am doing for me. At least for the summer. If I want to do art I have to have a body of work so I really need to be doing drawings this summer. Per usual comments are welcome.

April Fools?

OK I know I am not posting this on April 1st, in fact it is April 3rd. Hard to believe that it is already April, but I do know that I am ready for this winter to be over. School is keeping me very busy with homework, and I have a fair number of pictures for you this week. It is keeping me so busy in fact that I haven't had any time to work on my FFFC challenge. Well I have started a drawing in Illustrator, which would probably be done faster if I used pencil and paper, but I need to improve my Illustrator skills so I think I will continue to do it that way.

Where to start, well, I think I will start with Typography. Just an example of the word play we have been doing this past week. The idea was to choose a word then after reading the definition come up with a way to show the word and its meaning using just manipulation of letter forms. My best word is Obstruct, which I have an image of for you, but another that I liked was using the word arrow, making the letters form an arrow.

I now have to use this image as part of a headline. I think I have one, but suggestions are welcome at this point.

In Graphic Design I finished my poster project and turned it in on Wednesday. My Word was bias, and I chose to picture a traffic stop, view is from the inside of the car, with the police coming up to the car in the rear view mirror. I am showing you the blue background piece, though I also did one with white background. I had some issues getting the white background white (I had used a red gradient previously and getting the red out was interesting to say the least) But I did finally get it. Still my fellow classmates preferred the blue, and I think I do also. The poster was finished in Photoshop, the rear view mirror and its images were also done in Photoshop. The silhouette of the driver was done in Illustrator. I am fairly pleased with how the silhouette came out. The colored version of the driver is not so good, I need to work on hair and skin tones among other things,

Our next project in Graphic Design is to take a word and manipulate the letters in the word to create a visual image of the meaning of the word, but the word we choose has to be an object or event of nature. I am choosing the word volcano. This is similar to what we are doing in Typography but not quite the same as we can use different fonts and color. Still we cannot change the letter forms themselves so this should be interesting

In Color and Design we are doing more perspective work. The next two images are from my 2 point perspective studies. As homework this weekend I have a large picture to do using all three methods of determining perspective, one point, two point and 3 point, (which is a bit weird but works for certain views, like true birds eye or a worms eye view). I almost have it drawn out and hope to finish that today and start the inking.

Two point perspective is done using 2 vanishing points. The drawings we did had to have the same frontal vertical lines so that you can see what a change in horizon does to the view. The one with the middle horizon line was done first then the 2nd is with the horizon line moved up.

I want to use 2 point perspective to create my design for my FFFC challenge for March, not as complex as what you see here, but it should be fun.

We didn't have a life model in drawing this week so we were doing longer studies from photo's. I some ways I prefer to work from photo's, the live models can move even during a pose which can make it tricky to get them down on paper. First though I have my homework from 2 weeks ago. We did arm and hand studies, and one of just the bones.

Only 3 images for you today from the Drawing class, as I said we were doing longer studies and only did about 5 or 6 instead of the 20 or more quick studies we do when we have a live model.

These last 2 were done on better paper, and are possible keepers. Oh yes she is that skinny. As you can see we are starting to add more of the area around her to give the bodies a setting.

That's it for this week. We are expecting heavy rain for this afternoon, so I will most likely stay home and work on homework, or even read a bit, or work on my pattern for the FFFC challenge.
As always comments are welcome.

March Winding Down

Almost the end of March is upon us. The weather looks like it isn't going to be quite as nasty as it was for the beginning of the month so we may have the traditional "in like a lion and out like a lamb". It is starting to warm up a bit, and we are having rain instead of snow, Yeah. I actually saw some crocus blooming the other day. Spring is actually starting to come after our very cold snowy winter.

I was back at school this week after last weeks "break", wasn't much of a break for me because of all the school work I was trying to get done but there weren't any classes. I did note that this weeks classes had rather poor attendance, I guess a lot of kids were trying to recover from their spring break. The up side of being back in class is that I have pictures for you again.

Lets start with Color and Design. I turned in my drawing of the 7 houses on Monday. Our next assignment was to draw two views of a room, one from standard human view, and one from either a birds eye view, or a cats eye view, I chose to do the lower view, though mine is probably more of a large dog then a small cat.

Standard Eye view


cat/large dog eye view - lower then the the Standard view anyway.

We now have to draw our 7 barns/houses in 2 point perspective from 2 views. Those images I should have for you next week.

No images for you from either Graphic Design or Typography. In Graphic Design we are still working on our Poster designs, though we have moved into the computer design phase. I need to have 3 files for Monday of my final poster design. In Typography we have started our research paper. I have chosen to do a paper on John Baskerville. He was an Englishman who lived in the 1700's and was actually a friend of Benjamin Franklin. He not only designed the Baskerville Font, but developed hot press paper. Since almost all of the paper we now use is hot press that was a significant development in the process of printing. I promise that I will try to not bore you too much with details of his life as I learn them.

We were back in drawing class on Tuesday, and I got back the homework drawings I turned in just before break. These were our leg and feet studies. We had pictures of a male model for them and I took the liberty of obscuring some of the details on one photo of my drawing. I was going to get creative and draw a fig leaf, cut it out and put it over the proper area, but decided that a small block of post it notes was the perfect size and so used that instead. It doesn't seem quite fair that I post my female nudes with no qualms but mask or select out photos of males that expose too much. But such is life I guess.

Bones of the legs and feet with pelvis


Basically the same view, except covered by skin and muscles


Side view legs and feet

We had a live model again on Tuesday and spent the first part of the class doing quick full studies of her. Then we viewed some slides about drawing heads and faces. Then we went back to class and did some drawings of her head. I have 3 of my quick sketches then 3 of my portrait drawings for you this week.

These may be sketches but I think I am starting to get some of the energy of her poses transferred to the paper, so I am relatively pleased with them.

That's it for this week. I have also been working on my FFFC February challenge quilt and hope to have that done this weekend so I can post to the blog pictures of that one. Since we received our next challenge (March) this morning I really need to get this one done. I fear school work and some pleasure reading have gotten in my way this past month. Hopefully I will do better with March.

As always comments are welcome.