Design Work
In design class, we have been applying what we learned last year in Illustrator and with our cameras to create pieces of work like the Micro Macro Miniature Photo Final, Public Service Announcement, and Aboriginal Art.
Micro Macro Miniature Photo Final
Artist Statement
This scene is about a group of people who find a waffle with syrup running off it and use it as a beach area to hang out. They bring floaties and enjoy the area by floating in the water and playing volleyball on the beach, while a few others sit down and relax in the back. You can see how popular the beach is by the amount of floaties stacked up in the background. There is syrup running off of the waffle and it can be inferred that the puddle of syrup is runoff from the waffle.
The process of this project consisted of brainstorming through looking at pictures on google for inspiration. Once I had gotten my idea, I went to the grocery store to pick up the fruit loops, waffles, and syrup, and picked up a plate and fork from home. I used a light box for the setup of the scene, placing everything together and using miniature people that Mrs. P provided. Once everything was set up, I used an external light source, a vijin, as well as the light box to light up the scene mocking warm sunlight. I shot the scene using a macro lens and then picked my favorite one on the computer. I took the photo into Photoshop and applied a curves filter and a cool photo filter. After that, I selected the background and deleted it, placing a sunset image instead, and feathered the edges of the scene. I blurred the sunset background to match the blur from the small aperture of the macro lens, and then it was finished.
Public Service Anouncement
Artist Statement
My PSA is a picture of a road in the middle of the woods with burnt trees everywhere. A woman is walking on that road with a green dress that is on fire, and the sky is all red with a large dim clock behind all the trees. The tagline is just above the woman and it says, “You can’t buy time”. This all means that the world is on a timer that we keep shortening with the way we live, like emitting lots of carbon dioxide. The woman in the picture symbolizes mother nature, and her dress on fire symbolizes the urgency of the situation humans put her in. The reds in the picture represent urgency and danger because the targeted audience is people that are passive about climate change, and the green of the woman’s dress makes her appear more like mother nature.
I made this PSA by planning it out in my notebook at first, and then driving up to Big Basin to take photographs of the burnt woods up there. I ran into the challenge of the road being closed, so I couldn’t actually get to the trail I wanted to take pictures from. The way I worked around this was by taking pictures of the road where it wasn’t closed, because the trees were still burnt on the side of the road. I chose my favorite picture and put it into Illustrator, applying a 16 color image trace and deleting all the sections that had the sky in it. After that I made the clock, I lowered the opacity of it, and placed it behind the trees but in front of the sky gradient rectangle that I had made. I drew the woman in and made the text layer after that. For the color of the text I chose a brighter red than the sky to make it readable and have it stand out more. I applied a drop shadow to the text and then that was it.
Aboriginal Art
Artist Statement
My painting depicts that no matter what kind of journey you may be on, there are others on their own journeys that you will run into. We are all in our own story or journey, and I love hearing from others about how they came to be where they are right now. I don’t take for granted that my paths cross with others, and I try to be hospitable and provide a table for those who need it. In my painting, there are long journey symbols on the bottom and the right side, with both of them connecting at a table with people gathered around it. On the left side, there is a pot pouring water out of it, with steam coming off of it. This is the Aquarius symbol, and the steam represents that it is an air sign. Lastly, the constellation in the middle is the Aquarius constellation, which is my star sign.
I created this piece by first researching other aborigine dot art pieces, looking for symbols that I could incorporate into my own piece. I used Photoshop for the whole process of painting, which started with an outline. I drew everything that I wanted on the painting as a rough idea of where to position all of the symbols, and then I got to painting. I started with the long journey symbols on the bottom and the right and then drew the table that connects them. I moved on to the pot that is pouring water on the left and then drew the steam coming off of it. Lastly, I used all of the open space in the middle to draw the Aquarius constellation. The painting ended up looking a little bit empty, so to fix this I took the colors that I used for the symbols and made them darker, painting the background around the symbols with their corresponding colors. I wanted to leave some space open however so I left the area in the middle with a much lighter concentration of dots, with the only dots there representing stars.
Reflection
I really valued the process of taking time to create these projects. One of the main things I love in design is that I have enough time to make work that I am proud of. I value learning things, but I also love putting my head down and working and putting time into the planning of these projects. Each of these projects had been visualized before I started working on them and I love being able to use a medium to express my ideas.