Summer 2014 Part 2

Part 2 of Summer at PCC was just as challenging and thats what I wanted and expected to have from what I heard about the art dept. Next up was 2D and Color design with Prof. Mahara Sinclair. I thought it was going to be more color heavy but it was both that and abstract design. Abstract I think is not my strongest but people disagreed. It did get more fun as the class progress,especially when we got to do organic design and color! Ah color! 

This was project 1 with black paper cutouts. Pick a word of movement and design that abstractly. Mine was raking spaghetti squash and DNA. Through the first few projects I found that my default shape is the wispy curl. 

This is project 3 I think? This is not how my project 3 final turned out tho because it is a bit complex for that short amount of time and my scheduled of day job. I wish I had made this one but now that I have the sketch laid out I may do it soon and also in color. 

This is the sketch for project 4. Design with a word in mind again and use a 3 color scheme. I used primary triad,I'm a sucker for pink and blue. I designed this inspired by hair braids and knots. I twisted them all together to make a hair piece that was the most epic I could muster. Another rule about this project was to go in and out of values so that no value was next to the same value and we had to do it graduated. It's difficult at first but once I got the hang out it I loved it! The numbers are there to help me remember the value number. 

Yes there is a right way up to hang this because of how I wanted the strands to flow upward. Acrylic on illustration board 15in by 15in square. 

How I work usually since sketching for design and just life in general was that I need to sketch thumbnails of EVERYTHING I want to make bigger. As soon as Prof. Sinclair said we could do anything we wanted to the final with the fantasy landscape jumping off point I went a bit over board but I think it worked. Worked on this for 3 weeks before the final and then painted the final over the course of 3 days about 6-7 hour rounds with some clean ups in class thats 6 hr lab. 

This is what I ended up with. I wanted the colors to compliment and contrast each side and I didn't want to do a standard orange and blue design. I went peach to blue to violet to blue gray. I added the tree for fun to have a personal laugh at how long it took me to learn to draw a conifer tree. It was always going to have characters on the foreground but I went and added what I liked about the project 1 and made it not only break the frame but break the frame forward. 

Each character was painted then cut out to the edges where I added cotton balls to the backs to make it pop off the page itself. 

It turned out just how I wanted it. Characters going one direction and the enviro in the other creating a zig zag. I loved this class and all it's challenges with deign weight,shapes and color especially. I will be making more pop up art like this with even more depth as soon as I can. I have 3D design in the Fall.