~Design Narrative Work~

In Design this unit we were challenged to explore the elements and principles of art further and start working on Illustrator to create our narrative project: visual art based on our short story written in English. What I valued most about this unit was how we learned Illustrator and create something from start to finish that tells a story in a new inventive and creative way including the application of artistic elements and principles making our artwork even better.

Color Pencil Project

With this exercise, we were assigned to use color pencils to create visual interpretations of the 7 elements of art. This project was especially fun for me because we got to work with high quality expensive colored pencils, and I really enjoy working with color pencils. I think it was a crucial experience that allowed us to better understand how to create good art.

Narrative Creature Illustration

For this project, we started off by using one of our classmates as a model in order to figure out how we would position our characters in our artwork. We then collected a morgue of photos that we would eventually use to trace and put together our creature and our background and finally started connecting all the pieces together. We also searched through a Pantone color scheme book to create color swatches/ schemes for our creatures and background making sure they contrasted well.

Artist Statement:

On Cloud-9

My story is about a young Indian girl named Amira and her white fiance, Jason. It follows her in her decision to tell her parents about Jason and their secret relationship, then engagement, but takes a turn when she discovers they had set up an arranged marriage for her behind her back. She ends up standing her ground something foreign to her but allowed her to believe in her strength so she could follow her heart. The story takes place in Toronto, and the scene I am depicting is the night Jason proposed to Amira. The majestic mountain range and purple sky made the romantic night, and Jason’s proposal on the side of the busy road, where they had met four years prior when his car broke down, perfect, and everything Amira had hoped for.

Deciding what animals took time as I analyzed the qualities of Amira: motivated, smart, kind, strong, and calm. When thinking of Amira’s motivated personality, I thought of predators, motivated in search of their prey. I ended up choosing a shark which I used as the body of my creature. Amira’s genius translated into the ears of my creature that resemble that of intelligent bats, and her kindness inspired my choice of a hummingbird head. Her strength made me think of strong reptiles leading to my creature’s sail-fin dragon tail. Lastly, Amira’s calm demeanor motivated the addition of butterfly wings. The creation of these parts was a process of tracing images of the actual animals and adding small embellishments of my own, then after using color schemes for cohesiveness and a different one for my background as well. My use of perspective is shown through buildings of Toronto and the CNN tower, peaking through the clouds which I did have difficulty with positioning, but eventually worked out. I would have maybe spent more time on these to make them even more detailed. My creature is floating above the clouds surrounded by the mountains and purple night sky, sprinkled with hundreds of hand-drawn stars, that set the scene of their meet-cute and engagement. Being above the clouds was meant to represent Amira being on cloud-9, truly happy.