Before I close this blog, I want to thank Ms. Netrice Gasskins for her excellent teaching and to my classmates for being so supportive. 

I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday. 

Here is my Final Project that was presented in class.

Critical Review

Clarity of the Concept. 

My final concept was Terrorism.  I think it is interesting because we just saw a terrorist attack in India and I felt it was appropriate me to address this issue. 

Technical Execution. 

I used Photoshop and Illustrator to design my work, and to show in a unique way what terrorism means to me. 

The evidence that I presented to illustrate terrorism was put into three parts. 

The first piece illustrated Tension, the second picture showed Shock and the last one depicted Devastation. 

I think the concept of terrorism was strong, extensive and looked finished.

Enjoy it. 

Tension

Shock

Devastation

I was thinking, planning, sketching and choosing colors, but did not feel comfortable with the outcome.  Breaking news was the terrorist attack in Mumbai India!  This struck a cord with me because I had to be evacuated from Saudi Arabia in May of 2003, because of a bombing in Riyadh.  I decided to go with terrorism as a topic. 

Here is a bubble chart:

I chose, Terrorism:  tension, shock, and devastation.

Tension:  is a feeling that terrorists struggle with, after all the sociological, psychological, political and religious problems that they lived with for years.  Many of their leaders were captured, many fighters were killed, many widows and orphans.  All this accumulated and forced them to find a solution.  So they planned and organized to relieve their anguish, looking for revenge and liberation of their leaders or money in exchange for the hostages. 

Shock:  is the feeling that all the people felt the moment the attack occurred. 

Devastation:  The attack produced anguish, pain, depression, suffering, destabilization, sadness, terror, loss, destruction and chaos.  The terrorists wanted to  make sure that the victims felt the same pain they had, so they might capture the attention of the world or maybe negotiate for some solution on their side. 

Here is a sketch about it:

I am planning to use these concepts to create a 2D series of three visual representations, using Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator. 

This is my final idea and I kindly request approval, so I can start doing my final work. 

I did research on World War II to see if I can get inspired, with a better concept that I can put it in a 2D form. I can say, that I refreshed a lot of history, so I arrived to a new concept.  This time it was “Nuclear Destruction” here is a bubble chart and the sketches (made in Adobe Illustrator).

This is only another idea, but it is not the final.  

Independent 2-D Project

Friday November 21, 2008

I presented my preliminary work about my final assignment. The topic I chose was

“Nuclear Testing” influenced by the movie, “Godzilla”, a character that portrays to be a consequence of the nuclear radiation, that causes mutations in flora and fauna. 

My bubble chart was too focused on the characters and I was advised by Ms. Gaskins to focus more on the concept.  Here is a bubble chart after the review. 

           The word “batik” is a combination of the Javanese words “amba” meaning “to write” and “titik” which means “to dot” or “point”.  Batiks date back between 1,500 to 2000 years ago.  The earliest examples of this ancient craft were found in the Middle East, Central Asia, India and Egypt.  The art spread from Asia to the islands of the Malay Archipelago, the Middle East and to the West.  In the 17^th century, the craft was introduced in Holland and in the early 20^th century, Europeans and Americans rediscovered this ancient process. 

            Now, art schools across America have batik courses as part of their textile curricula.  As an assignment in our Visual Issues class, I drew a design on a white a cotton cloth with a pencil and applied wax over the design in order to block the dye from being absorbed in these places.  I painted a sunflower with red dye and the background with blue and yellow.  The results were not the best, but I learned from my mistakes. In my second try, I made a composition of a Holly and cherries, with a ribbon and stars and I was very careful placing the wax.

             I learned that making batik, takes many steps, time, patience and discipline. 

My first try.

My second try.

Here are examples of the four types of texture. 

Abstract Texture

Actual Texture

Invented Texture

Simulated Texture

I.  After reading pages 140-175 in the book “Art Fundamentals”, I went to the Color Worqz website, and read the pages about color basics, systems, combinations and Itten’s Contrast.

II.  Then, I read Peter Piper’s Palette Picker and followed the instructions.

First, I created a monochromatic or analogous composition.

Second, I came up with the illusion of overlapping or transparent hues.

Finally, I made an artwork that is a combination of Itten’s Contrasts.

This picture is representing the contrasts of warm and cool colors. 

III.  For this assignment, I chose the work of Henri Matisse in his Fauvism Period. Fauvism comes from the French, meaning “wild beasts”, where the works are emphasized with strong colors over the representational values retained by Impressionism.

Here are examples of Matisse’s work.

The Snail

The Horse, The Rider, and The Clown.

Ice Skater’s Gliding Start

Blue Nude

IV.  After being inspired by Matisse’s Fauvism work, I made  this composition:

Flying a Kite

They are simple shapes in a monochromatic scale.

Wtih Warm Colors: reds and yellows.

With Cool Colors:  greens and blues.

With Contrasting Colors:  reds and blues.

I. To make a good usage of dark and light and to understand better on what is value, I constructed a value      scale.  I used the color blue, adding white, black and gray. 

II.  I went to the Godin Library and researched on some artists from the artistic movement that            emphasized color value. Here are some examples:

The one that caught my attention the most, was Charles White’s “Preacher Man”.

III. For this part, I used a song by the Japanese rock band, Polysics. After listening it several times, I found out that the mood is happy, lively and upbeat that for me that means, vibrant colors. So I went to Adobe Illustrator and worked with different kinds of shapes and colored them and put shades  as the ones in the scale.  Doing that, it came to my mind that a rock band must be represented by an exciting guitar and drums. So I designed an electric guitar, making it look very psychedelic and color them with different kinds of shades. I put colors with shades in the background to emphasize the final composition. 

Different shapes with different colors and different shades

At the end, I amused myself on how the music inspired me to design this album cover. 

They have different colors, but all are in shades of white and gray. So I think, the lightness and darkness are very well represented in this album cover.

Here are some shots, after modify the color in photoshop.

The Never-Ending Cave.

This is a silly one of a friend of mine who is very hairy and was nice enough to cooperate. By the way, he combed his hair before the picture was taken. This picture is called “Blown Hair”.

As for the this one, guess what part of the body is it?

This assignment was very challenging because I was depending on other people to be a model and it was not too easy, but as always, I can count on friends. That’s what friends are for.

Really the body, has a very nice landscape, but the best shots are to be taken in the torso. My models were not crazy enough to let me do it. For now, I am satisfied with this.

by Matthew Lamont

Here are some example of Body Landscape that I found on the Internet.