My Final Combination Drawing

This was my final drawing for the cell phone and twig project. It was a piece that combined all of my previous skills and drawings into one final pattern.

Sticks and Cell Phones

These drawings showed the most contrast out of any of the work I did for this project



These thumbnails helped me to focus on small parts of a larger drawing. By drawing quickly all of these small images, I began to develop sort of a pattern. These sketches became less about perfection and more about simplifying my drawings in any way possible.


These drawings were more focused on combining, layering, and rotating my cell phone and twigs.





Assignment Description:
All of the drawings are part of a series. In class we drew our cell phones and twigs by using a 2"x 2" viewfinder. In some drawings more than others, as you can see above, I focused on different attributes of my drawing such as contrast. We started off by drawing the details of our cell phones and our twigs. We then drew 128 thumbnails of these drawings. Each time we started on new drawings we based them on our previous drawings but improved them. One thing that was really helpful in this process was learning how to use different sizes of pens and markers to adjust the thickness of my lines and curves. I developed a sense of depth and the more I used this technique the more visually interesting my drawings became. I learned how to draw the eye towards and away from certain areas of the page by doing this.

The Story of My Twig Project

My Project Step-By-Step:



This was my first model that was critiqued in our small groups. When we discussed my project I realized it needed a lot of work. Styrofoam was my binding agent and I had difficulty getting my twigs to remain stable in it. I also needed to do some work on my cutting job with the foam board. Also the project was very 2D, small-scale, and a little too simplistic at this point.



I spent a large quantity of time trying to manipulate the styrofoam in different ways to try to get it to hold the twigs better. I found some larger twigs to use and this helped improve the scale of the project as well as the stability of the twigs. Since they were both thicker and wider, there was more tension to hold the model together.




This is two views of my final project. Both views show more visual interest than my earlier models. I made up for lack of stability by using the paper as additional support for the styrofoam. This step also helped with making the project show up in a more 3D perspective from any angle which was one of my orignial goals.

My project as a Whole

This project was much more dynamic than the previous model I created for the leaf project. I moved away from a simple central focus to a more complex model overall. The goal I had in doing this was to make my model stand out. It needed more of a 3D support in order for this to happen. The transition I made was tedious but I learned along the way how to manipulate my materials better. Some improvements I made to my model was that I changed my twigs to colorful ones that stood out more, I moved away from a flat support and focused more on creating an abstract shaped support to add visual interest, and I became more aware of the precise measurements of my work. By the end of this process, my original model looked nothing like my final. I lost count of how many models I made, but it paid off to make more than I needed. Because I had so many separate ideas from each model to work with, I was able to combine all of these ideas into one concept.

Morning Exercises

I thought this was a good warm up because I attempted it more than once and I saw instant progress. I simply added some more detail and some shading and the image was drastically improved.

Final Leaf Model

This was my final leaf model: my first finished product. At this point I was scrounging for materials and trying to find paper that would not clash with the color of my leaf. I ended up using my folder for this class for the paper to use in the project. It was perfect in some ways because the light tan color meshed well with the dark brown color of the leaf. These two colors allowed for a nice contrast, yet they also were colors that would be found in the natural environment for a leaf. Also the paper folder was a good paper to use because It was sturdy paper that held the folds of the box shape of my model.

Twig Drawing

This was a drawing of my twigs bunched together so that I could get used to drawing and shading them.

Architecture 2030

Today in Studio Theory Hour there was a guest speaker who came to talk about sustainability and its importance. Our guest speaker was named John Lynn and he was very informative on national preservation of energy. He introduced his ideas in a way that appealed to the audience in a unique way. One of the first things he brought up was a rhetoric question: "What would you see if you were a fish?". Then he proceeded to show a series of slides about things that the average person wouldn't have thought of in response to this question. It was automatically interesting just to hear his point of view and this approach got my attention right away.

John Lynn introduced sustainability as an important issue that needs clarification and attention. He talked about the impact that humans have on the environment and what it would be like if we were not here on this Earth. He used and overall idea of a storm to illustrate his thought process on a close up basis as well as zooming out and looking at sustainability from different perspectives. The storm was an interesting analogy because he explained about how when a storm destroys a place it is also creating all along the way, it is designing something new with its own path. This is similar to what humans do. We tend to rebuild and rebuild new things but we don't always see what we are destroying along the way.

One thing I really liked about this presentation was that our guest speaker was very passionate about what he preached. He seemed like he honestly just wanted to get the message across that some things, that we as teenagers aren't educated about and probably never think about, can be very important minor details. These are the types of things that will make the world a better place as a whole.

Major Issues in Our Twig Models

Some major issues i noticed in our critiquing today dealt with sloppy usage of a binding agent, overall craftsmanship, and proportion. With some projects, it was also difficult to determine if the "story" they told was more about the paper than the twigs themselves. On one project where someone used a hot glue gun, they left splotches of glue in obvious places that was extremely unappealing and it could have been easily fixed. Several different models seemed to have to much going on in the visual. Either they had to much color, or they had twigs that didn't have much potential to stand out against their environments.

In my own model, i learned that there was quite a bit of room for improvement. The twigs i used were tiny and didn't stand out very much from across the critiquing room. It was also small and not as 3D as it needed to be to make it more visually interesting. Some ideas we had to improve my model were to raise the bottom platform and/or angle it to one side, put more emphasis on the twigs by making them larger, and to use color to contrast the twigs.

There were also some positive ideas that I was introduced to today in class. One girl was going to use tension as her binding agent which sort of led me to think differently about the concept of a binding agent. Another classmate used geometric shapes for every angle you could possibly turn his project. This caused his model to look neat and precise from all different views and prospectives.

My Precedent For The Twig Model

Windmill

For my precedent I chose a windmill because my model resembles the same central based structure. My model has a grouping of twigs that reach out just like a windmill. Although it doesn't appear to be precisely the same design, my model still carries the same elements and general structure of a front view of a windmill.

Left And Right Hand Drawings

This assignment consisted of drawing my right hand with my left hand, and drawing my left hand with my right. This was an exercise that challenged me. I had no problem in drawing with my right hand, but when I was forced to use another part of my brain to draw with my left hand, I had difficulty focusing on the contours of my drawing. I also had trouble darkening my lines and going over them so that the image turned out differently as a result. It is obvious that i used a different hand for each of these drawings. It is also interesting how my left hand work is disproportional even though I was trying to make it just as good as my other drawing.

Song Lyrics

5 Things and Hand Drawing

Negative Space with Bike

This bike drawing did not turn out very clear the first time so i retraced the lines and drew and scanned it again.

Negative Space with Chair

Blind Contour Portrait

I want this project to be marked as one of my first projects that caused me to actually use a different part of my brain to think and to draw what I was seeing. It is important because this is when I began to see how much more there is to looking at an image and drawing it the way it appears by using contours. This picture I drew also shows that it's okay to learn from my mistakes. This did not come out the way I necessarily wanted it to, but now that I've seen where I can improve, it has helped me more than it would have if I had done it perfectly on the first try.

Leaf Project

These were my photographs using the special lighting effects that we learned about in our photography workshop. I used the umbrella and backdrop to adjust to the proper lighting. This was my first time in using these materials. It turned out well considering the unanticipated work that it took arrange the proper lighting and angles that I wanted.

Mess#3

Mess #2

Mess #1

More Quotes

Quotes

     

Upside Down Drawing

The above drawing is my revised drawing. I made the lines darker and I rotated the image.

This was my original post. This drawing was interesting to create because it was challenging and used a different part of my brain.

Lettering Exercise 1

My Shoe Exercise

This was a warm-up exercise at the beginning of class. The idea was to draw the shoes and/or feet of someone sitting close by. I chose to examine my own shoe. This is one of the first drawings we did in class. It is simplistic but it was a good introduction to how we were going to start class off by doing exercises like this almost every day.

Shoe Drawing Exercise