GREAT WEEK

hat a wonderful week this has been for me.  It was filled with so much good news, opportunities and the like.  The beginning was a bit stressful, as I was scrambling to complete my record. Printing in the Mac lab is always a big hassle, but once I got all of that finished, I felt a big load off my shoulders and had a nice finished product that I am proud of.  Unfortunately, that caused me to put my type posters off until the last minute, so they are not as great. Spring break should be a nice time to relax and get back into gear.

      There will be a lot of anticipation and waiting over break because I submitted 3 pieces into the Undergraduate catalog, as well as into the undergraduate art show.  The catalog is an annual publication produced by the VC program that publishes up to 3 pieces of artwork from VC or Fine Arts students. I submitted my sequence , my royksopp type, and my green dropcap.  For the undergrad show, I submitted the sequence, as well as my records and my collaborative poster.  Even though I don't know if I will make it into the show or the catalog, it is a great feeling just to submit.

      The anticipation shouldn't kill me too much, because I will be kept busy over break.  I got a job lifeguarding at the UD pool over spring break and he said that I could continue working for the rest of the semester and also next year if I want. Yay!

      I also got the official offer to be manager at the summer pool I work for this week.  That is very exciting and should help my wallet out quite a bit.

      The final exciting piece of news is that an old friend who works at Cupcake Heaven approached me because her boss was looking for someone with artistic talent who would paint a mural inside their store. I immediately thought of the LBO group because we have been looking to paint a mural somewhere.  This is not the ideal place obviously because they have a certain subject they want us to paint about (cupcakes, heaven) but it IS a creative outlet, and we can work our own ideas into it and it is a way to get our names out there and represent the VC program.  Right now I am in the process of looking for 4 to six people to help me out with the mural.

      Well, now it's off to work for me. :)

Record Packaging

1' x 1'

For about the past week we've been working on making record packages for our Form/Comm class. Before we knew the final direction of the project, we were just illustrating how we thought the song "sounded". I wasn't too thrilled with it at that point, but as soon as the project had a solid concept and form, I thought it was really cool.  

I chose the song Röyksopp Forever by Röyksopp.  We had to then create a 7" single and a 12" album. (The album was the album the song came from, but the imagery was to be inspired by the specific song still)  Ashley guided us to make the album and then make the single be a "teaser", a simplified version containg just one or two elements of the entire album artwork.  

1' x 1'

7" x 7"

By the way, we were responsible for everything, from the outer cover, to the inside sleeve and the paper circles on the center of the vinyl. The only thing we didn't handcraft was the vinyl itself, but we did have to buy that from a local record store.

UPDATE:

This piece was featured in the 2010 Not Yet Famous Artists Revealed UD Undergrad juried Art Show, and won the Illustration Award.

I miss taking photos...

     As I was sitting in Recitation hall tonight at a meeting, I kept staring out the window at the CAT and how the yellow light from the building was amplifying the yellowness of the machine.  As soon the meeting was over, I ran home and grabbed my camera and decided to go on a photoshoot.  It was drizzling and the sky was all gray, but it looked really neat and I got a couple of decent photos out of it.

To get the shot of the CAT vehicle, I had to sneak into the construction zone.

Sketches done on the bus trip to New York

Camden was passed out with his mouth wide open and Alyssa kept yawning.   

It was the same face, just different hair.

Also, this was done in the hard cover book I made over winter session.  I've been using it lately.

A crack at the Random System

...that is if you can call it a system.  It's more like anything goes.  Anyway,  I guess I made more of a mixed axial composition, but I feel as though I need some order.

This was my first try.  I wanted to do something completely type based.

Process and Inspiration for Green Drop Cap

This week's drop cap assignment was to create a green drop cap (due on St. Patrick's Day).

I was originally thinking about illustrating a green little monster letter, but I realized that is overdone.

While I was shopping for supplies for experimenting on a new poster, I came across colored sand in The Learning Station. GREEN! CLICK! I had to buy it, even though I didn't have a clear idea for it yet.

I thought about drawing a letterform with a stencil and adhesive and sticking sand to it, I thought about creating a mountainous landscape with sand that when photographed from the right angle, would look like an F. 

   Then I googled sand, and letters and saw a montessouri teaching video of a woman drawing letters in sand and sounding them out. That sparked the idea of sign language for some reason in my head and I thought back to last year when I covered my sister's foot in glitter:

This gave me the idea to cover my hand in sand and photograph a sign language F.

This meant elmers glue needed to be bought and thinned with water, and then poured over my hand...

Then I covered it in sand, photographed it, and...voila!

I forgot to scrape the sand off of my fingernails, which I think would make it look better. So I will do that, reshoot next week, and photograph an entire alphabet.

So. Sick. Of. THIS SONG

Process for Ashley's Form & Comm class. I'm illustrating this song's sounds, so naturally I have to listen to it over and over again. I'm glad that I chose a more chill song though, because I was going to go with Vitalic or Sticky K, and then I would have had such a headache!

Found Object Drop Cap

For this found object project, I was inspired by a previous assignment.  I thought back to the found letterform design project from freshman year.

Full Alphabet

F

Instead of constructing a letterform out of found objects, I decided to keep to this idea of finding a letter in nature.  I started scouring the landscape trying to find the perfect f...I only looked on google maps however.  So far, this is what I've found.

The last one was found on Google Moon.

Dilational Process and Inspiration

For the first poster, I was inspired by the playful and wacky work of Dr. Seuss:

But I needed to make it more modern, cold, and electric.

Basically, I just started making circles and positioning them into a spiral.

The text at the bottom took some tweaking to get it right.

Printing it out at a low quality and looking at it from afar really helped.

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For the second poster, I wanted a more vibrant and emotional feel.
I was inspired by a specific frame in the title sequence for Goldfinger (1964)

Again, I wanted electric colors.

So I took this photo:and edited it in photoshop. I played around with colors a lot, but finally settled on the right mix of magenta and yellow to get this image:

...and then worked it into my poster

I then added sponsorship, tweaked the text, and added a much needed background.

When you think of dilational type posters...

...you think of am_space.

At least according to google.
Cool!

2nd Try at Dilational

This one is definitely working better I think. (compared to my first one)

I'm gonna keep working on it though.

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UPDATE:  I printed it out, looked at it, asked for advice, and fixed a few things.

First crack at Dilational system

Since I have most of my work done for the week, I decided to take an early stab at the dilational system for the posters.  Yes, it's difficult to work with, but I am definitely liking it better than radial.