-Sam

It’s still a work in progress, but I have about 10 posts, one of which is written by one of my friends.

Chain mail

kaleidoscope – alph project

Also, here’s the stool I made in Tockwotten studio with the ripped 2x4s this weekend.  It was so much fun!

This movie reminded me of our stop motion project but using paper to do the effect. Really interesting…

Tiare

In this tree, the base is made out of cardboard covered with tissue paper.  The trunk is cardboard covered with tin foil and the branches are paper clips covered with tin foil and stuck into the cardboard trunk.  The yellow stuff oozing out of the roots is hardened glue.

The versatility of the can makes it very usable for me.  For now, I will probably use it as a disposal for sugar packets near my coffee pot.  I did like the suggestion someone gave of using it as a piggy bank also.  I’ve been trying to find an attractive way to store my change, so maybe I’ll use it for that eventually.

Also, I am really inspired by the use of glass and light in this table arrangement I saw a while back on apartmenttherapy.com.  I find it amazing that the glasses are only simple Ball mason jars (plus maybe some other kind that I can’t quite place).  They take on a whole new life when placed together on such a grand scale.  And I find it to be even more of a statement with the jars also used as drinking glasses here as well.

I had decided to make a dress out of newspaper… I guess you could say I was inspired by the challenges of Project Runway, but really, I’ve had my eye on fashion for quite some time now.  Pleats, draping, beading, and woven materials have never ceased to fascinate me.  I chose to make a voluminous skirt out of accordion-type folded newspaper. I was lucky to find about 100 copies of the College Independent in J-Wal with a great color scheme on its cover.  As for the top, I needed something streamlined to contrast the volume of the skirt.  I didn’t want anything too plain, so I decided on a sweetheart neckline outlined with long twisted strips of paper.  I added a duct tape belt to try and make it look more finished.

http://www.threadsmagazine.com/item/3659/clone-yourself-a-fitting-assistant

This is the website I referred to when making my body form (the mannequin type thing I used to fit the dress on).  This was extremely fun to make, although I found it difficult to breathe once the duct tape reached my chest.  The good thing about this dress that it fits me exactly!

Sam

this reminded me a lot of the other video we watched, with stop motion on a whiteboard.  this video isn’t stop motion, but it’s still pretty cool.  Kseniya Simonova draws in sand and is able to illustrate a story just through moving around the grains.

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=30125871&l=caf8f0b1bc&id=1343310228

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=30125871&l=caf8f0b1bc&id=1343310228

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=30125871&l=caf8f0b1bc&id=1343310228

I went to Philadelphia a couple years ago and they had the most beautiful mosaics decorating the sides of buildings.  In addition to this, they had random alleyways that were glittering with glass bottles and … well, trash.  I’m not really sure what the purpose of it was, but it was very nice too look at, and actually aesthetically pleasing! I’m not exactly sure how to post the actual pictures on here, sorry for the hassle of the links!

Ideas about the constancy and transcendence of the speed of light flashing in my head, I looked for a book in my room on astronomy.  Noticing the other books on my shelf, I found it curious how many titles reference light and color. The Sun Also Rises.  Bright Lights, Big City.  Born on a Blue Day.  Night.  The Scarlet Letter.  Twilight (don’t make fun).  Aside from titles, tons of famous literary references occured to me.  For example:

“ The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.” – Henry David Thoreau, Walden

“Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

“Then Tea Cake came prancing around her where she was and the song of the sigh flew out of the window and lit in the top of the pine trees. Tea Cake, with the sun for a shawl. Of course he wasn’t dead. He could never be dead until she herself had finished feeling and thinking. The kiss of his memory made pictures of love and light against the wall. Here was peace.” -Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

“Let me show in a figure how far our nature is enlightened or unenlightened:–Behold! human beings living in an underground den, which has a mouth open towards the light and reaching all along the den; here they have been from their childhood, and have their legs and necks chained so that they cannot move, and can only see before them, being prevented by the chains from turning round their heads. Above and behind them a fire is blazing at a distance, and between the fire and the prisoners there is a raised way; and you will see, if you look, a low wall built along the way, like the screen which marionette players have in front of them, over which they show the puppets.” – Plato, The Republic

“The beauty of the colours in the dream was only a repetition of something seem in my memory.” -Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams

“The light which I see is not located, but yet is more brilliant than the sun, nor can I examine its height, length or breadth, and I name it ‘the cloud of the living light.’  And as sun, moon, and stars are reflected in water, so the writings, sayings, virtues and works of men shine in it before me.” -vision of 12th century nun and mystic Hildegard of Bingen, whom neurologist Oliver Sacks identifies in The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat as someone who experienced migrainous manifestations because of the inclusion of “a shower of phosphenes in transit across the visual field, their passage being succeeded by a negative scotoma” in all her visions.

Right now I’m toying with the idea of capturing one of these scenes in painting.  In addition,  I noticed that some of the colors and light that these quotes illustrate (no pun intended) reflect individual characters’ associations, which is leading me toward the concept of how our memories of certain objects and situations “color” our future experiences of them.  I am also interested in depicting the symbolic role of color and light in metaphysical practices, like aura reading, chakra clearing, and visions like Hildegard’s.

The video is actually really intricate, so I’m kind of thinking the producers might have used more than stop motion.. but either way, it’s fun to watch.

- kim arredondo

http://vimeo.com/7225514

-Ss

Adelle Material Alchemy

This artist, Jen Stark, does a lot of work like this using construction paper. It looks pretty amazing to me I wonder how she does it.

I’m working on trying to recreate it with paper right now, but I’m also thinking of putting together a spoon with foil and paperclip(s).  Also, a fork or plate might be nice complements to the spoon.

http://www.industrialdesignserved.com/Gallery/ORIGAMI-SPOON-/86041

Most might already be familiar with this, but for those who aren’t, there was an amazing exhibit entitled “Bodies” that traveled around the US a few years ago. The exhibit hosted a wide variety of plasticated, real human bodies displayed in various positions that simulated everyday activities (playing soccer, running, etc). The show also incorporated several intricate displays of the inner parts, such as the circulatory system shown. While I have a hard time classifying bodies as “materials”, I do believe the human body is beautiful artwork that inspires alot of more traditional works. Therefore I consider the exhibit designers’ choice to re-use human remains as physical works of art is a huge creative risk that I can really appreciate.

I took this photo at the Saatchi gallery in December last year. It was part of an art collection featuring Middle Eastern artists. The room was filled with hollow tin foil statues bowed in prayer. Yet as people entered the room they were aware of keeping the noise level down: their voices were hushed and their footsteps were softened. From this worthless material, not only was the artist able to create a piece of art, but he was also able to create a sense of atmosphere and an intense respect for the figures and their vocation.

http://www.technologyreview.com/TR35/Profile.aspx?Cand=T&TRID=764

Basically, a biomedical engineer was working on microfluidics, where she makes tiny, liquid filled channels on a chip. The materials to make these cost over $100,000 so she thought she’d tried making a temporary one out of “Shrinky Dinks“. Turns out that they work great for most applications (the expensive silicon ones are still used for more precision) and only cost a few dollars.

Sometimes we put items in certain categories (i.e. shrinky dinks are toys, not tools) and we don’t see what could be useful for other applications. I LOVE the idea of “play” like the TED video talked about, because we can allow our minds to be more open toward new possibilities in regards to materials/objects/ideas.

http://www.ebsqart.com/ArtShows/cmd_125_Exhibition_Entries.htm

To me, the soft, organic arrangement of the pages makes me forget that they are in fact pages.  And, the fact that it doesn’t appear to have a pattern makes me prefer it over the other, more refined arrangements.

I guess I couldn’t really say that book pages have minimal worth, but the author of the article mentions that the creators of these wreaths used “mass market fiction or found materials,” which makes me think that they took materials that weren’t really valued as books.

Also, I discovered that I could project pictures of people’s faces onto mine for a fun melding effect.  This is Obama-me.  Projectors are such fun.

Finally, an example of material alchemy – melting words:

http://www.kotamabouabane.com/melting-words/melt/#

I really like it for a few reasons -  I like text in art, I think that ice is the perfect medium for expressing the sayings, I think that there’s an important and interesting disconnect between the ephemeral nature of ice and the permance of photography.

Cameron

Frame 1:

mum: Regina Riding Hood go and study! Enough with this fashion business, you will never make it as a model. Don’t stray from the beaten track!

Frame 2:

Wolf Magazine: This is Allan from Wolf Magazine calling to inform you that you will be on the cver of next month’s issue. You are going to be fabulous!

Frame 4:

Wolf Magazine: This is Wolf Magazine calling; I’m sorry, we need you to loose weight. 100 pounds is just too heavy.

Frame 5:

Mum: you need to eat! you are skin and bone.

Frame 6:

Wolf Magazine: This is Wolf Magazine, I am sorry we dont have any work for you at the moment. You are yesterday’s news.

Frame 7:

Regina Riding Hood: The Wolf has eaten me alive!

if you cant’ read it:

1st panel:

1: “Dude. Class was so boring today. Have you ever just undressed your professor with your eyes the whole time?”

2:”Totally!”

2nd panel:

2: “Don’t you only have Engin 9 on Tuesdays though?”

3rd:

2: “Please tell me you have a hot TA?”

4th:

“Dude.”

And here’s another. (I read too much xkcd for my own good.)

Here is my interpretation of the comic strip assignment. I didn’t want to do something typically cartoonish, or even comedic, since comedy is definitely not my forte. I was stuck until I remembered that a friend of mine has been asking if I would plleeeasse illustrate a short story he wrote for his Portuguese class. I don’t speak a word of Portuguese, but we sat down and went over a translation, talked about his vision for the story, and then he left me to my own devices. Afterward he looked over my drawings and chose extracts from the story to use as the captions in Portuguese. It was kind of an exciting collaboration, and my friend was really happy with how I had interpreted his vision. Enjoy!

p.s. sorry it is a bit hard to read at this size. I will bring the original and a printed version to class on Thursday!

Here’s a video my girlfriend and I made yesterday afternoon for my sister’s birthday using a white board and markers. I thought you guys might enjoy it.

Background: my sister jokingly demanded that my girlfriend and I procure Emma Watson’s autograph for her 23rd birthday. We failed to do so, and instead are making her an automatic cat feeder out of a ratty takeout cup. Inspired by my recent stop motion work, my girlfriend suggested that we make her a video explaining why we didn’t get her autograph.

Part of the joke is that I have a terrible memory for names and dates and such, and actually thought it was my sister’s 21st birthday until my girlfriend corrected me.

if that doesn’t work, try this:

https://wiki.brown.edu/confluence/display/mcm1700p/Copyrighted

The assignment was to create a radical poster and post them around Brown, seeing how many actually lasted throughout the week (most didn’t make it). If you want to see all of them, you can go to Wiki Brown –> search mcm 1700p –> scroll down and select “student work”.

is emotion, is design, etc., because how you define a word is completely arbitrary and useless to debate.  How you define a meaning, on the other hand, is worth discussing.

i think this was a commercial? made by the same people who created the video we watched in class on tuesday (the whiteboard-dry erase one), which was one of my favorites.

 This video was very interesting. It was cool to see how they took a video game and made it into a 3d movie.

This is cool using  post-it notes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qo1d6ttbAq8

^ I’m not allowed to embed it… sry

i also thought this video was pretty cool –

I used to be really into stop motion animation as a kid, and seeing “A Wolf Loves Pork” this summer made me want to try it again.  I came up with an idea for a story involving socks, but I only had time to do a brief proof of concept animation before school started.  I thought I’d share it with you guys, so here it is:

http://www.stopmotionworks.com/stratacut.htm

http://www.bentimagelab.com/video/clearasil.htm

Cameron

Even though I forgot a lot of the content (I only remembered that it was a lot to do with “to-do lists”) and had to watch it again, the form really stuck with me, which is cool.

I really like how he uses the stopmotion to transform the text into drawing when he transitions to a different “scene.”

Also, he seems to use the video to communicate himself and his life (even his “to-do lists”!), while still engaging a huge audience, which is really impressive to me.

Also, even though this one is more video than animation, it’s pretty mind-boggling.

PART 1:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39j7bypVxL8&feature=related

PART 2:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQSdZWgflAA&feature=related

My favorite Svankmajer short-film is also on YouTube.  It isn’t really stop-motion, but he incorporates it.  I highly recommend it if you have the time to watch the whole thing  (also in 2 parts).  It’s called “Byt”, which translates: “The Apartment” or “The Flat”.

PART 1:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqhAIFD9M3I&feature=related

PART 2:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEAXt44l7Ho&feature=related

I had seen this before, and thought it was cool. I’ve always liked stop motion that involved real people instead of clay or paper.

Shannon S

2 figures

by Pablo Picasso

I’m happy with how my interpretation came out, but I like it better when I don’t compare it directly with Picasso’s.  I tried to capture the leanness of the man and his face, but it fell short a little, I thought.  It was also difficult to capture the angularity of his face.  But I like my version as a piece in itself.

Oh, and here’s a story about Shepard Fairey being arrested and in trouble for copying the original picture of Obama:

http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSTRE51626R20090207

And here’s the story I was talking about in class, about the portrait of Obama in the White House:

http://hedcuts.blogspot.com/2009/10/jose-maria-cano-is-con-artist-he-uses.html

I found this section of the article to be really true of how I (and how I imagine other people) read art, magazine spreads, productions on stage, and films.  Films have the potential to direct what you look at, what you find (or are supposed to find) important in a scene.  In that way, you can more readily see foreshadowing and interpret the behaviors of the characters.  Like Benjamin says, it (the behavior) can be isolated, so the way the film represents itself is almost forced rather than open.  There are tricks painters and designers can use to draw your eyes along and around the page of a work of art, but it’s more like a nudge than the absolute control that I see in films.  I’m not sure what Benjamin means by “from more points of view,” though.  If he is trying to imply that film is a form of art that is more flexibly read than paintings, for example, then I don’t really agree with him.

Also, I thought it was interesting what Benjamin had to say about painting as not being set up as something that can be presented for “simultaneous collective experience.”  I wonder if this limitation of painting and “unique” forms of art can explain the incentive for artists to desire (controlled) reproduction of their works.

Here is a picture of Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona chair:

I am interested in the point Benjamin makes that, paradoxically, the mediums that depict reality in its uncontaminated form–film, photography–are the ones that have required the most technological interference.  So, the question becomes, can mechanical modes of reproducing an image actually be true to that image?  Is the film or photograph really the same as what we see in reality, or is it a culturally specific idea of what reality is?

Also, even abstract artwork comes from what the artist has seen throughout his/her life, since vision is necessary for mental imagery (people born blind don’t understand sight). And it can attest to emotions, thoughts, or stretches of time and space that the camera can’t capture.

These question have been on my mind ever since I visited the Met over the summer and noticed that the only paintings, especially portraits, that look at all realistic are ones done recently (say, since the renaissance). I wondered if people before this time made the conscious decision to not represent the world realistically, or if I just have a culturally conditioned idea of what people and objects look like. If the latter is true, does the culturally relative representation of space extend to a culturally relative vision of it?

“Confronted with its manual reproduction, which was usually branded as a forgery, the original preserved all its authority; not so vis-a-vis tecnhical reproduction”.

The author goes on to explain that there are two reasons for this 1) process repodcution is more independent of the original than manual reproduction and 2) that technical reproduction can put the copy of the original into situations which would be out of reach for the original itself. In this sense, while I feel most art, whether an intential reproduction or a believed organic creation, to some extent draw on reproductions of visual and emotional experiences. However the intent of the artist and the historical context it lives within help to authenticate its uniqueness, regardless of its similarities to an “original”. The example given in class about the works of Titian and Reubens reinforce this; each painter had their own agenda and chose to emphasize or de-emphasize certain qualities they wanted to express. I do question some mass reproductions (eg some Urban Outfitters shirts), which create replications that I believe have more capitalistic motives than producing art for the sake of art.

—sorry, I think I just confused myself a lot, this may not have made any sense, but I attempted to put my vague theories and ponderings into words

And finally, who the hell cares about originality, anyways?

A quote from the reading that I found especially intriguing was,

“…the desire of contemporary masses to bring things ‘closer’ spatially and humanly, which is just as ardent as their bent toward overcoming the uniqueness of every reality by accepting its reproduction.”

Writing style aside, I generally agreed with his ideas.  I have had daydreams about what it would be like to live in a world where the few possessions to your name were created by you or someone you know, where a cup or a spoon would have a tangible history and value.  I get enormous satisfaction from creating useful objects through my own efforts, and I suspect that to some extent this is a species-wide inclination.  Stories like that of William Kamkwamba, the boy who built a windmill from scratch in Malawi, almost make me wish that more of our mass-produced technology were simple enough that hand-made versions could compete for practicality.  That is of course a selfish and silly thought, but I can’t deny its passing through my mind.  If I can’t make anything that’s actually useful, I turn my need for creation to art and make things that are beautiful or somehow satisfying to me in other ways.  Whereas a hand-made spoon, no matter how carefully made, would be of little use to me, a hand-made piece of art will always have some value.

http://www.artintheage.com/about-2/http://www.artintheage.com/about-2/

http://wiresmash.com/amazing/sculptures-made-from-photos/

All of the photographs are of the person the sculpture was made from.  I really like the work that I’ve seen because it takes a means of mechanical reproduction (photography) and uses is as the material for a very non-mechanical means of reproduction.  I think it highlights the fact that the photos are not the actual thing, but the representation of that thing like other forms of art.

Cameron

http://pedulum.com/2009/10/web-chair/

Ss

He makes the argument that different cultures have different ways of representing space, neither of them are true to life, and no method is better than another.  He also discusses the role of central perspective in the changing worldview of the west using the two “Last Supper” paintings that we discussed in class.

Also — check out this artist.  It’s as if she creates and destroys worlds in seconds with her fingertips.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOhf3OvRXKg&feature=fvw

Today I went to List and printed my tshirt! I was very nervous and spent like half an hour looking up techniques and how-to videos so I wouldn’t mess up. It went fine overall, though. I don’t know if anyone else has printed theirs, or if anyone still intends to, but here are some pointers:

*The white part of the paper WILL transfer, leaving a white area anywhere it’s not inked. Do cut out your shapes a bit to avoid a square outline, and keep in mind that the outline will be vaguely visible.

*Because the white part transfers, make sure to sufficiently iron ALL of the edges. I missed an edge or two because I thought they didn’t have any pigment to transfer. If you do, you can carefully realign the paper and iron it again – the residual pigment will transfer.

*They say not to move the iron at all. While this is generally good advice, once you’ve ironed a spot or two for at least twenty seconds, the paper becomes pretty well stuck to your shirt. At this point, it may be a good idea to gently slide the iron around a little bit to ensure that you get even heat on the areas that the iron has holes.

*When you iron, make sure to be pressing down as hard as you can to make it transfer solidly – but be careful, the iron is a bit slipper on the back of the sheet.

I’m really happy with my final product, big thanks to Ian for getting us all such cool materials and giving me the opportunity to make my own shirt!

“Jonah Fabricant ’10: A retreat from pedantry” – http://www.browndailyherald.com/jonah-fabricant-10-a-retreat-from-pedantry-1.1907467

and “Anthony Badami ’11: A retreat from anti-intellectualism” — http://www.browndailyherald.com/anthony-badami-11-a-retreat-from-anti-intellectualism-1.1934234

Fabricant gives hegemony, dialectical, and heteronormative as examples of words that Brown students “sprinkle… about indiscriminately.”

I was interested to see the very personal reactions two Brown students had to the vocabulary used here (and how GQ’s article on our “douchey” campus did or didn’t affect their opinions).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmkLlVzUBn4

I was so inspired by this video over the summer that I wanted to experiment with stop motion myself.  I planned out a storyline about socks, but all I had time to do was a quick proof-of-concept video of an animated sock before school started.  I hope to make the actual one over a break or something if time permits.

COMBO a collaborative animation by Blu and David Ellis (2 times loop) from blu on Vimeo.

Anyway, it’s been awhile since I’ve seen it.  Here’s the link if you want to check it out:  http://www.kentuckknob.com/

source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/18697966@N00/2982281565/sizes/o/

-kim

The website is here: click

I found the picture of the hand, browsing on google.  What I would love to do is write words associated with interracial marriage/love in general onto a hand and photograph it.  I’m thinking this could be the workings of a real t-shirt.

thank you!

This is my tentative final design for my tshirt, provided I don’t compulsively tweak it some more later on tonight.  The concept is a play on the “Alien vs Predator” theme.  Alien is up against cthulhu, who makes very short work of him.  ”Cthulhu fhtagn” means something along the lines of “Cthulhu dreams” or “Cthulhu waits dreaming”, and will go on the back of the shirt.

I got the wings, tentacles, and alien parts (all of the cool looking parts, I know) from pictures online which I used as templates to make simpler shapes with the pen/magic wand tool.  The rest of it was done freeform with the pen tool.  There isn’t much detailed description of cthulhu’s appearance in Lovecraft’s works, so this is kind of my interpretation.  It’s taken me a lot of work, but I have to say – drawing cthulhu in photoshop was the best homework assignment ever.

Cameron

]]> http://fallfoundations.wordpress.com/2009/09/24/caroline-webb-tshirt-design-2/feed/ 1 fallfoundations ribcage http://fallfoundations.wordpress.com/2009/09/24/isabel-tshirt-design/ http://fallfoundations.wordpress.com/2009/09/24/isabel-tshirt-design/#comments Thu, 24 Sep 2009 04:57:24 +0000 fallfoundations http://fallfoundations.wordpress.com/?p=638 ]]>

I was intrigued by dimension and levels. In this picture the real birds are captured in 2D form, while the real birds exist outside the frame, hanging on telegraph wires. Yet the reality of these are put into question by their juxtaposition with ‘created’ birds. As such, each level captures a different reality which is in turn challenged by the subsequent layer.

This is kind of an epiphany I had today, so I decided to make a t-shirt of it.  The picture is  simple, but it fit what I wanted to say really well, so I only tweaked it a little.

So this might be a silly twist on words, but I thought it would be interesting to play with the idea of a “palette” of loose leaf teas, which are colorful (but not this much in reality — i messed with the hue and vibrancy quite a bit!).

I’m still not happy with the “steam” coming out of the teapot — if anyone knows of an effect that would do it better, please let me know! Overall though i like where this is going..

And this one is a play on the Patagonia logo, in case that’s not clear. Hiking company.. trekking out to Perkins..

I like how the way this t shirt design worked out. I’m from Hong Kong so I decided to use this view of Hong Kong side. I drew the star and then I scanned it to my laptop. I don’t really have a reason why I put the star in. I just thought the t shirt looked more complete with it.

I made this as a t-shirt design, but it could also be a banner.  It’s a french phrase meaning “live off love and fresh water” but it has the connotation of “living a carefree life”.  I think post-it notes are really light and insubstantial and go with the phrase.

Cameron

I was quite pleased with the way this T-shirt design turned out, although I’m not sure about the color and style of the font.  I think this design is a lot more interesting and engaging than the other one I came up with.  In terms of interaction with the wearer, I think this is a pretty fun design that also advertises something cool (the Ivy Film Festival).  The main message of the text is clear on first glance, but I think the image of the projector is what really captures the viewers attention and makes them take a second look.

I like t-shirts that are neat to look at, but don’t really say anything.  In other words, they give you something new to see, but don’t tell you how to see the world.  This is also how I think about art more broadly.  (I’m probably in the minority on this one).

I don’t know if this is a good thing… but I can almost picture the t-shirts in the Gap…

blue

red

purple

b&w

This is a play on that shirt where you’re supposed to say the color the word is written in rather than reading the word. Good luck.

My first and still favorite design

Here is another one of my T-shirt designs.  Conceptually, I was thinking along the same lines as the last design I posted, but I like that this one is clean and more visually pleasing.  I was also more consciously trying to incorporate Gestalt Principles into this design.

So I DJ at WBRU, and this is just an idea I had. I want to play with this more. I’m having fun just with typing and such right now.

If a girl wore this next design the O’s would hopefully be on her.. chest. I wouldn’t wear this shirt, but some would.

In terms of tee-shirts that I liked, here are a few:

For the wolf one, I like how the image of the wolf interacts with the person wearing the shirt. For the gulls one, I like that the drawing is detailed and relatively small and encourages the viewer to look closely. I would not have printed it so high on the tee though..

I also like this one.

I wanted to take a well note piece of art and show different interpretations of it with different media, and at first I tried blending them together into one image, but I think it shows more just leaving them as is.  I thought the thinker (rodin) was a good piece to use, because of how art relates to all the different ways of thinking and interpreting things.

My banner design for the class blog.

I’m really enjoying photoshop.  I’ve been intimidated by its perceived complexity for a long time, but it’s a pleasure to be able to have an idea like this and actually create a satisfactory product using just a tiny fraction of this application’s might.   I’m grateful to this course for showing me the ropes and making photoshop accessible!

Here’s a version with a slightly different color scheme.

This is a preliminary mock-up of one of my earlier T-Shirt designs.  It is pretty rough because this idea has been tabled for the time being.  I may revisit it eventually, though!

This is a work-in-progress, but I wanted to design a shirt promoting the non-profit poetry press I interned for this summer. The Chinese character for poetry is their trademark, so i used calligraphy I could find for the character and typed out excerpts for the background. Still having issues with how to manage layers in photoshop…

I like this so far but would like to go much further with it especially with the shapes and contrast.  I still have not really mastered photoshop and it takes me a very long time to accomplish anything.  Also here is a cool tee-shirt I purchased this weekend.  

I really love the watercolor strokes used in this design.  There aren’t very many harsh lines, which I think adds to the freedom and motion of the girl.  The way in which the girl’s dress blends in with the watercolor blot in the center reminds the viewer that everything is interconnected; it also reminds me of an escape into an alternate reality in which defined lines do not exist.  Instead, colors and textures seep into one another but still maintain their own shapes.

For my blog header, I wanted a simple concept that illustrates how and why art is important to life.  I’m not entirely satisfied with this quotation because I don’t think it works terribly well with the picture, but I couldn’t find a concise quote about art that talked about light, enlightenment, or illumination, which is the concept I was going for.  I do like the picture, though, and I think it’s interesting with the quote in some ways because it’s a photograph of a twisted piece of glowing wire.  The wire itself is part of a crude reality, but in taking a photograph of it, the artist has elevated it to what some may think of as art.

I’m trying to show how when you talk to someone you never really know which version of of them you’re gonna get (depending on their mood)  and that there could be so much they are feeling and not telling you.  Obviously, it needs to be edited a lot.

The building pictured is our own dear List Art Center. My thinking was that graffiti provides an interesting and somewhat controversial standpoint from which to discuss the eternal question of “what is art?”

This is a picture I took on campus, and then played with the text and filter tools.

There is a romantic quality in art that i wanted to capture through changing the phrase ‘follow your heart’, into ‘follow your art’. Also, the notion of a blog suggested hanging something for display and i tried to incorporated that through the allusion of a clothing line. The back drop is somewhat arbitrary, but i have always had a fascination with fairy lights as they draw to mind the idea of little bursts of creative energy.

To me this class is about finding out what art means to us, where we can find it, and how better to make it ourselves.  I wanted to show how art can be found in unexpected places if you know how to look, so I took an old picture of autumn leaves I shot last year and manipulated them around in photoshop to make their shadows spell ‘ART’.  As a bonus pun, the picture itself can just represent fall, thus completing the title of the blog at the bottom right.  The original picture is below for those of you who are curious.

I was inspired to do this banner by an application called amaztype.  The application itself wasn’t working, but the concept is that you can search books on Amazon through the search engine, and it displays books relevant to the search in the shape of your keyword.

So, I searched “art” in Amazon under books, and I got a lot of textbooks on art/art history and a lot of copies of The Art of War by Sun Tzu.  I decided to stick with art textbooks and put them together to form the word “art”.  From there I played around with some layers and made it a little neater.  Placing the images, scaling them, and rotating them all made the process easier.

Cameron

Take these designs for example.

I find the disparity between form and content in these designs very unsettling, which perhaps is the goal.  Being painfully paradoxical and/or incongruent seems to be in style these days.  Perhaps the lack of consistent logo is intended to make people reflect on the relationship between what is depicted and the band itself, or between visual art and music in general.
What does a possum or a car crash have to do with Rilo Kiley?  It beats me.  That’s like asking how a clothed cat relates to OK Go.

Perhaps it’s not about what they are, but what they want people to think; they don’t want to represent their band’s image, but rather to create it (either that or this is a very obscure and contrived reference to the song “The Love Cats,” which I highly doubt).

I wanted to share these because they’ve made me realize how prevalent advertising is even when it’s given another name.  In a way analogous to associating clothes with sex or perfume with love, it seems to me that these merchandise (along with brand name clothes; Abercrombie was the big name when I was young enough to care) use art to associate their names with cuddliness (above), beauty, or magic (below).  Similar to the “fake it til you make it” philosophy, repeatedly seeing an image next to a band’s logo gradually seems less weird and arbitrary because it becomes part of the group’s identity.

So now the question is: is self-expression about who you are or who you want to be?  What type of identity do you want to project and, by doing so, cultivate?

Basically, I want a dark colored shirt for this to be on. (But I can reverse it if I only find white t-shirts.) Also, for everyone who hasn’t taken organic  chemistry II (probably don’t want to, but I’d recommend it), this is an NMR (Nuclear Magnetic Resonance) spectrum of ethanol, otherwise known as alcohol.

-Ss

PS. Sorry everything is so science-related, I just doodle A LOT during my chem classes…

I’m having fun playing with photoshop.

-Ss