Final Project

I am extremely happy with the way I was able to represent inti Raymi in my final project. I created five 4x8 compositions detailing the various steps of the harvest festival. I began with the progression of people to the main festival grounds. I created the background of the mountain landscape on illustrator to show the stableness of the natural land and the unchanging quality of it. I painted the people on with gauche paint and not too much detail, rather I emphasized specific characteristics of the Indigenous people as whole. I added further to this theme by not putting a face on each person. This helped take away the individualism of each person, and put more emphasis on the ritual. My final piece was brought together by the progression of the people out of the village at the end of the day. By including a large number of children in the final piece, I am hoping to show the hopeful future and sustenance of the festival. I matted the piece on bright red horizontal matt board to emphasize the vibrancy and life of the piece, as well as helping to the viewer see the finished work a s time line of sorts and a progression from left to right. I am hoping to display this piece in my house for a while because I really love it.

Modular 10: Advanced Color Modular

I was really excited about this initial piece. I chose the option dealing with a pointillism. it seemed like a daunting task at first, but I really liked the way that the finished products came out. I found a similar project on Google images that delt with an apple and lemon still life. I was thinking about doing an apple, however, I found a picture of 4 figs which I really enjoyed. I didn't want to do it at first just because that meant that I would have to do 4 pieces vs. the one that I had originally planed, but I set my mind to it, and after a lot of dot making with markers, I am thrilled at the results. I'm actually going to hinge mat this piece and use it in my drawing class as my favorite piece of art this year. I am also going to frame it and give it to my mom for Christmas.
I am inserting the original piece from which I did my pointillism project on.

Modular 9: emotinoal Word Modular

This modular was a lot of fun for me because I was able to come up with some really inventive thumbnails. I found it a lot easier to do depict words with a darker meaning behind them ,rather than a joyful one. A few of the first ideas that I had was to do the word pain in sharp, angular letter font. Or the word ghost fading into a grayish background. I finally settled on the word trapped. At first my idea was to have the word surrounded by cobwebs to make it look like the word itself was trapped. After talking to Adrienne, however, I decided to make the word part of the cobwebs, alluding even more to the emotion of being trapped. I painted the piece in grey and then pressed in the cobwebs using an unsharpened pencil. Finally I went back over the Trapped letters in white colored pencil so that the letters would stand out more. I am very satisfied the way that the piece turned out, especially after I mounted it on the black mat board, because that only added to the overall emotion of the piece. My inspiration for the trapped emotion was a cobweb, which is why I have I have included a cobweb for my final picture in theis modular.

Modular 8: Vibration Modular

I am a very hands- on person, so I was really excited about this modualr because we were going to be able to piant and collage our projects. I chose an organic shape with a raidiating center in medium chroma blue and pink tones. I think that this piece turned out successful, especially the longer that you look at it. If I could change anything about it, I would have chosen to maybe darken the pink tone and darken the blue tone to create an even greater contrast. I think that my second composition is very succesful. I chose a hue of orange- yellow with a tint of emerald. I used the whole 5x5 square painted in orange and then whole punched emerald circles and placed them throught the project to create a grid shape. The vibrance on this piece it horrible and hurts your eyes, therefore, it is highly successful. The following picture is very simliar to the one of the hole punches I did, minus the color change.

Modular 7: Color Collage

I chose yellow. I should not have chosen yellow becuase as I was doing my yellow collage every other color in every shade was more apparent to me than yellow. I had a very hard time with the middle tones as well as the very dark tones on theis collage. I spent a great deal of time on this piece and I really belive that it paid off. Although it was challenging- my final product works very well. I Chose to make all the pieces run either horizontally or vertically. I really enjoy the way the pieces fit together, although I wonder if were to put the pieces diffrently if the overall composition would have meshed better. The hardest part about putting together this modular was the dark and light tones. I think I got a very good grasp of the medium shades- just the dark ones- especially were rather challenging. rhte following picture is the gradient I used as a refrence.

Modular 6: structure

I found this modular extreemly constructive as it really helped me analyz as well as self critique my earlier works. I decided to recreate my first modular since it was my most immature example of Adobe. Even spread really attracts me fbecause of the compleity and the emotion transmited through even pread pieces. I love Jackson pollack and decided to recreate a symetrical even spread. My first attemp I piled on too many layers, but once I went back in with the transperacy tool as well as other effects, I was able to get a clearer picture of a symetrical even spread. The hardest part about creating this cpompoition was getting everything equally symetrical. Secondly, I decided to create a diagnality piece by using my original asymeterical piece. I copied the original asymetrical work various tymes and then warped each piece so that there was a varience in angel, size as well and motion. I added a few little circles to bring in the attention to the middle three circles of diffrent sizes which created the overall effect of asymetry. To bring the piece together, I added a gradient with a smaller white circle so that the emphasis of the sharp angels comming in from the sides would be predominant. Finally I recreated my radial piece with a circular structure. I mage the background completley back and the radial piece as well as the circles surrounding it white to cause a contrastvarrrience. I really enjoyed going back over my pieces and seeing just how far I've progressed.

Modular 5: Texture Modular 10/19/07

Working on this project has helped me see just how far I have come from the day that we did the symetry/ asymetry modular. I am very happy with the results of this modular, although it was a lot of work. I started off by picking my composition as my awesome cat, Garfunkel. I ended up using a picture of Garfunkel on the day that he caught his first mouse. Since he was laying outside I was able to chose many natural elements for my textures. I went to walmart and found a piece of furry leoprd print and used that as my background cat fur. The faux fur works very well in black and white, especially with the stripes that I drew on, accenting Garfunkel's actuall coat. I also scaned a plastic highlighter to use as his tag, an earing to use as the metal for his tag, mulch as the mulch and finally I scaned string for his wiskers. The mulch turned out really well. I chose smaller pieces of the natural elemnt so that when they were scanned -the looked a bit larger and I was able to apply a texture to them inorder to help them blend into the background. The White gravel in the back was difficult and I ended up applying about 4 or 5 diffrent textures/ artistic tools, and in the end it came out sucessfull. The hardest part about this modular was Garfunkel's face. Through the use of the feather and the blending tools I was able to achieve the furryness I wanted. Most of all this project helped me see the whole page as a composition instead of focusing on just one element ie; just a cat.

Deep and Shallow Space: Modular 4

When I first did my thumbnails for this modular I had problems becuase I was unclear on the deffenition of deep and shallow space. The more I drew my thumbnails- the worse it got. After talking with Adrienne, I was really able to see how deep and shallow space worked with eachother. For my deep space I chose an over head view of a small vase and a large vase. What I am looking to accomplish in this piece is an exaple of deep space as it related to the height of the two objects. I really hope that that is the way my workis percieved and not as a flat piece. I am including the picture of what my thumbnail was based off of. Shallow space was alot easier. I zoomed in on a space between a silver pitcher and some wooden pallets. The size of the large pitcher really helped emphasize the shallownaess of the space between itself and the wooden pallets. After doing the volme modular, I really gained some Illustrator skills and I think that my Shallow space composition is my best piece so far.

Modular 3: Value Modular 9/26/07

This has been my hardest modular to date. I've done the most sketches for this modular, but the better my final sketch is the easier it will be on me when making the final piece. Apart from in studio time- I took a picture of the piece that I am concentrating on. I am going to reproduce the small vase, candle, wooden pallets as well as a corner of the basket. The part that I am most nervous about trying to do is the shading on the vase. It took me a while to get a hang of it and at first, the shading and drawing of the composition was giving me a hard time, the matter that I had to start over becuase my file didn't save right didn't help. This accident, however, actually helped me in the long run becuase by that time I had a better use of all the skills and I was even able to make a slight varience in the color of the wooden pallets to help enhance the illustion of depth on a 2-D surface. Overall, I am very happy with the way the composition came out.

Space Walk 9-24-07

Durring the Space Walk I was able to see the diffrent prespectives of spacial depth. I saw how the positioning of an iteam on a flat surface (sketch book) could help show its relationship to another iteam. For example, in my sketch book I was trying to imitate the deep spacial depth from one tree on campus to another. B drawing one slightly infront of the other as well as including a little hill, I was really able to show in a sketch that there was a significant distance between the two objects. I really think that this is going to help me in my next module having to do with voulume.

Modular 2: Shape Modular

Geometric: This is my favorite of the three. I am very pleased with the way it turned out. This piece helped me better utilize some of the adobe tools because I was having problems with closing the triangle. Also after talking with Adrienne, I really saw how the placement of figures can cause tension in the piece making it overall more esthetically pleasing. The two specific types of line that I used in this piece are Implied and Delineating. Implied because there are overlapping figures and your eve automatically finishes the piece of square that is "behind" the rectangle. Delineating because you are able to see the boundaries of the shapes ie; triangles, however, there is no volume to the shapes. They are on a flat plane.






Organic: My original thumbnail for my organic piece was just centered around one organic figure, however- by putting other organic figures around my original piece- I was able to fill the white space and accent each organic shape's relationship with the 8x8 paper. I had some good input on this piece from my peers and was able to adjust one of my accenting figures accordingly. The two types of Line I used in this piece are Organic and Outline. Organic because such was the piece type. I had free range of the pen tool on adobe which helped a lot. Outline because there is a clear sense of boundaries in the piece as well as how they relate to each other on the picture plane.






Ambiguous: I loved looking at my peers ambiguous pieces. When going around the room it was evident who understood it and who didn't. My original thumbnail had a black plane with many small black circles. After starting that draft on Adobe, I saw how the piece would be more easily achieved if I used a greater contrast between black and white so I made the circles much bigger. I later went back and placed smaller circles inside the white ones- which ties the piece together and achievs it's goal. The types of line that I clearly used inthis piece are Delineating as well as Structural. Delineating because there is a clear evidence of where the circles are, although if they are the center of focus is unclear. Structual becuase the lines drawn help explain the shape.

Modular 1: Symmetry, Asymmetry & Radial

Symmetry: symmetry is something that doesn't really attract me. I appreciate symmetrical figures, however the preciseness that comes with these figures is not as interesting to me as an asymmetrical figure- so these were the hardest for me to draw. I ended up deciding to go with a figure that wasn't 100% symmetrical but- it has a very close likeness on both sides. A great example of symmetry that I was drawn to is da Vinci's Symmetry of Man because if you notice the left foot of the man is opened to his left. This slight variation helped me see that symmetry isn't always exactly symmetrical.

* Image can be found: http://www.allposters.com/-sp/Symmetry-of-Man-Posters_i1035370_.htm

Asymmetry: this was my favorite piece that I've done so far in Adobe although it did take me a while to get the work out the way I wanted originally pictured it.

Radial: I am having a very tough time making my radial the way I wanted it. I 've made my original drawing on Adobe, and have had to spend a lot of time forming small individual lines on the outside of the piece and going back through and tying each piece together. This is my most frustrating piece to date, but I think that one I really finish it- that I will be content with the over all piece.


Below is a link I found online for an example of Radial. It is an optical illusion . What really interested me about it is that fact the the yellow rings appear to fade into the blue, although there is no fading effect on the piece itself.

Walk Through Campus 8-28-07

On my first walk through on the MC campus I was really able to keen in on the different principles of composition which we were talking about in class. Something that really interested me was the principle of proximity because of the way that one since object, depending on its' relation to another object, can form an overall unity. For example, I had never really taken the time to look at a few of the individual bricks that make up our iconic Anderson Hall, nor had a thought about how a single blade of grass is just that- a single tiny plant. When planted together in a grid, however, all those single little plants because something much greater, like the fields our athletes play on.


*image can be found at following website: http://www.naturaltapestries.com/nancyportfolio/closeups/pages/Blade%20of%20Grass.htm

Walk Throughs - Chattanooga 9-1-07

On my walk through of Chattanooga I was able to see many dimensions of hierarchy, especially in the natural elements such as Lookout and Signal Mountains. Also the Tennessee River is a natural element of consistency which creates a great visual balance between the North Shore and the main Down town. Overall, I was really able to see the amount of planning that went into renovating the downtown areas to greater achieve gestalt. I am including a link a picture of the overall downtown area as an example of balance between the natural and man made forms within Chattanooga, as well as the gestalt that is achieved and the way that proximity of the bridges tie whole downtown area together.

* the picture shown is can be found at the following website: www.ronlowery.com/200images/a041overchatt200.jpg