Color Theory Project

We've been studying the color theories of Josef Albers. Our assignment has been to make 2 colors appear as one, one color appear as two, simulated transparencies and simultaneous contrasts. All the other assignments were painted, but this was done in illustrator. Being who I am, I had to put in a quote. The runner up was a quote from Marc Chagall: "All colors are the friends of their neighbors, and the lovers of their opposites."

Come On In

After staying up all night on Tuesday/Wednesday and only sleeping three hours last night, I am proud/pleased/relieved to be done with my Art History hypothetical museum project.

I'm tired so I can't remember if I've said it before, so here goes. In Art History we were assigned to make a hypothetical modern art museum exhibit. I chose works of art that focus on integrating the viewer into the creative experience, using methods like visual/optical blending, paintings that let the viewer decide what it was about, and even art works that invited viewers to add to it, or art works that viewers added to without the artist's permission. It was a fun-ish project, but it took way longer than I expected, I had said all I needed to say after 4 1/2 pages and it was a minimum of 6 pages. What you're looking at is the front and back of a pamphlet I made for the exhibit, mostly just showing the more famous works of art in the exhibit and a little bit of info about it. I'd post the paper I wrote, but it's an academic paper and even I think it's boring, so I'll spare you. If you really want to read it or are looking for a sleeping pill let me know and I'll email it to you. Now that I'm done, I'm going to get some deserved sleep. Only one project left for the semester!

3D Design Part 3: Thinking Outside the Box

My final project was to use found objects and make something out of them. About 90% of the class made robots out of VCRs, old cassette players, wooden bowls, aluminum cans, etc. I had the idea of having a large hand made entirely of toys coming out of a toy chest. Either because it's 2011 or everyone already bought them, I couldn't find any toy chests even though I shopped at 3 DIs and 1 Savers. What I did find however were toys and lots of them. However, even at $25 a piece they can add up, so I recruited my dear uncle Jim and cousins Andre and Ivan to loan me some of their toys. By some, I mean about 2-300. The finished product wasn't quite what I had envisioned, apparently a little bit of wire has a hard time holding up so many toys, but it turned out pretty cool, several other students actually took pictures of it and the teacher told me if I did a series of these I would be able to get into Grad school. Not what I want, but it was very flattering and warmed my little black heart. Made it fun to dream for a minute. Now I'm going to have to dismantle the thing, I'm going to take it over to my uncle's and see if they'll help me take it apart, as they wanted to see it completed.

looking up at the hand.

yes, that's Appa at the top.

3D Design Part 2: Before and After

Since I took a picture of this rock before I carved it I wanted to show it both before and after. Besides the fact that it broke several times, I'm mostly happy with the way it turned out, the rock underneath turned out to be a beautiful color.





The teacher said the finished work looked like Nessie, the Loch Ness Monster. I think it looks like a polished piece of pink poo. In a good way. What do you think?

3D Design Part 1: A skull, a pear, and a thing

Here are my first 3 assignments, The wire sculpture, the matte board fruit and the non-representational rock. Enjoy.


I don't love any one of these, besides the rock I thought them a colossal waste of time but it was a required course and I got to visit with friends and learn from a true artist, the teacher and the amazing Derek Hegsted was in my class. Check his site out, he's incredible.

Neil Gaiman on Dave McKean

My final project for Graphic Design is complete! We were to design a brochure, I decided to do mine on the collaboration between the writer Neil Gaiman and the illustrator Dave McKean. I found a great article on Gaiman's website that I used for the text, here's what I did:

Progress

In Rendering the Human Head I've been rendering a lot of human heads. I thought it would be fun to see my progress. I'm not sure if it's a coincidence or intentional, but one of the models from the beginning of the semester posed for us again today. The image on top is the one I drew at the beginning of the semester,
This is the one I drew today. The nose and neck are too long and one of the eyes seems a bit off, but I still think I've improved. What do you think?

Franklin Gothic

For my Typography class, we were assigned to a certain font, write 300 words about it, and make a poster using only typography.

I'm not quite finished but here it is so far:



Those of you interested in learning more about Franklin Gothic or if you would just like a helping of my witty sense of humor, here's the essay I wrote and included in the poster:

Franklin Gothic is a sans-serif modernist typeface created by Morris Fuller Benton in 1902. It was named in honor of the American printer Benjamin Franklin. Hence the Franklin at the beginning. “Gothic” is a term for typefaces which originally meant sans-serif, and is becoming increasingly out-dated. Much like the contemporary Gothic culture.

Types of Franklin Gothic include: Franklin Gothic, Condensed, Extra Condensed, Italic and Condensed Shaded. Types of Franklin Gothic not included: Diet Franklin Gothic or Franklin Death Metal. (Although there is Hot Metal and Cold Metal). Franklin Gothic has been known by many different names such as the imaginative Gothic #1, Gothic #16, Square Gothic Heavy. Variations/copies of Franklin Gothic have been implemented by such companies as Alphatype, Autologic, Berthold, Compugraphic, Dymo, Star/Photon, Mergenthaler, MGD Graphic Systems, and Varityper.

Distinguishing features of Franklin Gothic are such things as (apart from being a bold sans-serif typeface) the double story g and a, the ear of the g (is it not cute?) and the tail of the Q. Franklin Gothic fell out of use around the 1930's, however, with fonts such as Futura and Helvetica, sans-serif fonts like Franklin Gothic experienced a revival and it is still popular today.

Franklin Gothic appears in many places, such as New York University, ROCKY, The Dark Knight, (the movie, not Batman), and Cardiff University. It was once believed to be in the famous opening crawl of Star Wars, but later it was said to be News Gothic. However, News Gothic is based on Franklin Gothic, and Franklin Gothic is still used in the subtitles of the Star Wars Films. Other places you'll find Franklin Gothic are the computer/quiz game You Don't Know Jack, The Museum of Modern Art in New York, section headlines of the N.Y. Times, the Showtime logo, and the Onion magazine's printed publication. In the 1980's, it was used in Nickelodeon's intertitle and in CBS Sports. Finally Franklin Gothic can be found in many places most of us may not have heard of like Frederator Studios, the art of Lawrence Weiner, The PBS Series “The Electric Company,” and many more.

And of course, this poster.

Creative Monograms

Deciding to Draw

No Nanowrimo for me for 2010. I have 150 more 1/2 hour sketchbook drawings to do before December, so I'm going to spend my spare time doing that instead of writing a story. This will be the first time I've not attempted NaNoWriMo in 3 years.

So, to my writer friends, you have to do Nanowrimo for me. No excuses, unless they're as good as mine.

Caffeinated Sprites

Our assignment in Drawing for Illustration was integrate fantasy creatures with modern objects. I had fairies drinking soda, or as my cousin Carrisa pointed out, Sprites drinking Sprite.

Ego

I got my light painting assignment back, and the teacher gave me 100%!

He also wrote:

As Mae West once said, "Too much of a good thing... is wonderful!" Nice job with the light painting and exploring the process!

Earlier I got my in class essay back in Ethics, something I was very worried about, I told myself I'd be happy with a C, as I overheard several others in the class complaining about getting D's, and I got an A! (This is the same teacher I wrote this paper for. I followed my advice and it paid off!)

Also, I made a new Che Morrison image I'm happier with. For those of you who saw that I posted it but then took it down, it was because it didn't look right. This isn't perfect, but it's better. Let me know what you think. It takes Che Guevara, Jim Morrison, and the Obey Giant into a unified, ripping off whole. I think I'm going to get a t-shirt of it made.

Cleaning Out The Ol' Mail Box

My inbox in my email is getting a bit out of hand. It had 608 emails. I've so far narrowed it down to 84. Still too many, but I'm tired of going through old emails.

I found a few things I wrote that I completely forgot, as well as many conversations I forgot about.

I also found a few pictures that, while they have significance to me, they may not so much to you, but I wanted to keep them somewhere, and my mail wasn't doing the job. So, here are some pictures I found in my email that I wanted to keep record of but didn't want to save in my inbox.









The impressive stuff is done by friends and artist Harry Clarke. Two are photographs sent to me in chain emails, one is a video game character I made, and the stuff that's not as cool as I think that's near the bottom is by me.

Self Portrait of a Mirror

I know what you're thinking. "Enough with the self portraits already!" but it was an assignment. And I know what you're thinking again. "Suuuuuure, Austin. An ASSIGNment. You just wanted to look at yourself some more." While true, I assure you, it really is an assignment for my Typography class (class schedule update and life update and Morgan updates coming soon!) tell me what you think. The only rule was be creative and use typography creatively. First I wanted to make a 3D model of myself with the text bending and bulging to make my form. Then I was going to use different shade text where my face was, but the web tutorials I found didn't translate, either the tutorial was incorrect, photoshop didn't look like the tutorial, or my face broke the design. So I just used a story I wrote as background, split my face into 4 colors, deleted the 2 middle grays and added a few quotes from stories or poems I wrote that I'm more or less fond of. The quotes are (I know you're dying to know)

Let your Imagination think for itself!

The world is so much more beautiful when you can't see it properly.

I really do think Cupid has a gun by now.

)Hello(

Revenge is a dish best served with parsley.

Dammit this planet has nothing so grand as lying there whispering and clasping your hand.