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Colour Theory

 

There are two types of colour mixing, Additive and Subtractive

In both cases there are three primary colours, three secondary colours (colours made from 2 of the three primary colours in equal amounts), and one tertiary colour made from all three primary colours.

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They both have different sets of primary colours.

(R)ed, (G)reen, (B)lue for Additive (C)yan, (M)agenta, (Y)ellow for Subtractive.

In Additive mixing, the combination of all the colours results in white. An example of mediums that use additive mixing would be lights and computer monitors

In Subtractive mixing, the combination results in Black, such as in paints or ink.

Colours come in various Hues and saturations. Hue is also known as “the colour of a colour”, in a pretty vague but comprehensible way.

Saturation, being the intensity of the colour.

I myself don’t fully understand how to use a colour wheel as of yet, but fortunately there are a variety of resources out there, such as the one below.

Colour theory

I also found this pretty cute tutorial on more practical use of colour theory!

http://trisketched.deviantart.com/art/HOW-TO-MAKE-YOUR-ART-LOOK-NICE-Color-Harmony-423507240

Check out his other tutorials, they’re pretty nice and funny~

ALSO check out  – Adobe Kuler – as a starter for colour palettes

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——–

– ASSIGNMENT EGO –

CLASS ACTIVITY

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I think this activity really helps a lot.

It helped me look at a lot of aspects about myself that I either didn’t really notice, pay attention to, or things that weren’t at the forefront of my mind.

Really appreciate all the cool insights~  (￣▽￣)ノ

I am pretty happy with my lil’ hut in 2020 on the Singapore-Boat too, hahahaha.

Moving forward into the EGO Project

With the inclusion of colour, comes a balance I haven’t been able to figure out.

I’ve not been very good with colour schemes in the past, hopefully through this project I can improve quite a lot.

REFERENCES

Since this project is an introspective one, an artist that sprang to mind was Kyle Thompson, a photographer, who’s work has a personal aspect.

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While this isn’t a photography project, one thing that I really liked about his photos, was the tone of the colours and I’m looking to possibly incorporate those sorts of colours.

I had a couple others in mind as well, but I can’t seem to recall them at the moment, so what I did was to look through my Tumblr account that I haven’t really touched in awhile, but I was pretty sure there’d be stuff in there that’d be relevant.

Found a couple of things that are stirring some vague ideas out, about colour, designs and concepts.

Might update once I find more!

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RHYMES

As mentioned previously I’ve decided to go with Jack and Jill for my rhyme due to it’s dark undertones.

It’s dark themes stem from an interpretation of Jack and Jill, which says that it was a portrayal of King Louis XIV and his wife Marie Antoinette. They were overthrown by the people, unhappy with their rule, stormed the castle and beheaded both of them. Hence, “Jack fell down and broke his crown, and Jill Came Tumbling after”

I set myself a rule of not using any wingdings out of what was already created for the Google Drive. Things still worked fine, even though there wasn’t a bucket, there was a grail/goblet, which fit in great with the Royal themes in my designs.

As you can see, I went with a very symmetrical look. I was afraid that people might, at first glance think the designs look too alike and skim over the details that I had included. Another issue I had, was adding elements often cluttered up the image. Finding a balance between interesting and clean was however, a fun challenge and I quite enjoyed making these from start to finish.

SQUARE 1 – JACK AND JILL WENT UP A HILL TO FETCH A PAIL OF WATER

I used clouds to represent the height at the top of a hill and the trees for the element of nature. The hands reaching out for the cup, as the end goal and patterns of the foot to represent the journey up the hill.

SQUARE 2 – JACK FELL DOWN

The downward oriented crown represents the fall of the crown – the fall of King Louis. Onto a sword, it’s hilt the scales of justice, the judgement of the people, their arms reaching out. The arms have wrists, to show that even though the king was doing things for personal gain secretly, the peasants could still see what they were up to. The negative space made from the arms form the disgruntled peasants. The tombstones foreshadowing the impending death.

SQUARE 3 – AND BROKE HIS CROWN

The tree bursting out of the kings head, to signify both, breaking his crown (head) and the beheading of the king, the roses and ring are a reminder of Marie Antoinette being an ever present participant of the events that transpired. Hence they were also in Sq. 2.

Square 4 – AND JILL CAME TUMBLING AFTER

Signifying the death of Marie Antoinette, a recurring visual of death all around. Skulls, wilted trees. The royal goblet, spilt over, emptying out, the end of an era. The ears represent the head of King Louis, split open. At the bottom, hellfire with the hands of the peasants reaching out to pull her to her judgement. The negative space at the bottom, forming a goats head, similar to those seen in pentagrams, another reference to the impending fires of hell.

P.S Apologies for the late post, didn’t realize I didn’t have this posted on OSS already.

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Previously I was deciding between ‘Jack and Jill’ and “It’s raining, it’s pouring…’

I’ve chosen to go with ‘Jack and Jill’ cause I feel like theres were more elements to the story, especially in subtext. The subtext being of the demise of King Louis XVI, and his Queen, Marie Antoinette.

Also, as mentioned in a previous blog post, I chose poems that had a darker aspect to them. Both for my initial poem, as well as this subsequent English Poem.

My choice of wingdings were to show visual aspects mentioned in the poem, and showcase certain aspects.

For Jack and Jill, I tried to work within the constraints of the wingdings my classmates had created as much as possible. Thus far, I have been able to do so, which though a little tough at times, has proven to be a fun challenge.

I gravitated unconsciously to symmetrical layouts. I was concerned that if all the squares were symmetrical, that people would have a tendency to gloss over after seeing the first few. A suggestion from my Lecturer, Joy, was to add a certain element that joins over to other squares when placed next to each other. I’ve also been wondering about other methods to gain/keep the viewers interest in checking out all the details. I’m also trying to vary up the shapes that appear in the symmetry.

I’m also not a fan of too dull/bare a background. Hence, i’ve resorted to using a dingbat as a texture in the background or experimenting with a black background.

I had feedback that certain elements felt like they were there for the sake of being there. I figured that it was because the elements didn’t appear to interact with other elements visually. This was another challenge for this project, being aware of the viewers perceptions, as to me, I’d understand my purpose for an element, but not necessarily the viewer.

Something that I kept finding myself having to be aware of too, is to play with scale. In previous design projects I’ve had the issue where I lose focus of varying up sizes. This project I’ve come to see first hand, how much more flavor messing with the scale helps. In helping my other classmates, I’ve seen this help immensely.

I’ve quite enjoyed this project thus far, though I sometimes feel like having a theme feels restrictive a times, it does help to add flow throughout the separate squares.

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RETRO-POSTER-v4

 

– DEFRAGMENT –

Myth: Orpheus and Eurydice

The myth, was about Orpheus, a talented musician who’s wife had died. He was overcome with grief and decides to travel to the underworld and bring her back. Those that stood in his way were moved by his mournful song. Hades let him take her back on the condition that he doesn’t look back at her till she is out into the light. However, at the entrance, he looks back too early and she is drawn back into the underworld.

Concept:

I distilled the myth into the element of ‘A person that needs to travel into another world to retrieve a part of himself’

Using that I made my story a about a man who get zapped into a virtual world but in the process his personality is fragmented. He has to retrieve these cubes that each hold a certain aspect of his personality.

Genre: 

Sci-fi + Drama

SYNOPSIS

JOHN, a depressive hermit working as a Janitor wakes to a notice of his weekend assignment at ‘Stux Industries’. The company, a fresh startup, unheard of with barely a mention anywhere. The posting, a long commute from his house barely incites a reaction. Stoic as usual, having grown cynical over the years, his thankless job didn’t help with that.

He starts off going about his mundane cleaning duties, but unlike most previous cleaning jobs, he is constantly in awe of the creations sitting around the place. Having been an electrical engineer previously, he feels his passion for electronics rekindle. Whilst going about his duties, he spots a cable sparking from a loose connection. He readjusts the cable and a thundery rumble fills the room. Suddenly arcs of electricity jolt out and John is knocked unconscious.

He awakens, seemingly unhurt. The environment however, is sparse, with only a grid stretching as far as the eye can see. Without so much as a thought, he begins to walk, and polygonal forms rise out of the ground in the distance. He hastens his pace and heads toward the newly formed structures, a desolate cityscape, resembling the neighbourhood he lives in. He finds his house and inside, on his bed he sees a small glowing cube. Upon picking it up, it dissipates into his hands and he a sense of peace and relaxation washes over him. The environment crumbles around him, the debris phases through him and fades away.

He finds himself standing at the edge of a forest, a place of fear and foreboding from his childhood. John steps into the forest and disappears into the darkness. At a clearing, a rabid dog steps out of the bushes, he vaguely recalls a similar event from when he was a young boy. The two engage in a fight, and though unsure of the situation at first, John manages to emerge victorious. The dog fragments and leaves behind a cube, similar to the one John found on his bed. This time though, the cube incites an intense rush of fear and anxiety. As these feelings fade, so does the forest.

John starts to make sense of the environment and cubes as a sort of training ground involving fragments of his personality. He sets out through various scenarios, slowing gaining parts of himself back and reliving moments in his life. From his sense of humour with his friends at the bar, to anger when one of them played him out on a big job deal. The scenario now in sight was his old house, where he stayed with his ex-wife. Hesitant, he stepped in, straight into an argument with his wife, THE argument. He stood there, almost voyeuristically detached from the scene. After it was over, the cube sat in the middle of the now empty living room. He knew it was the moment where he began to become so cynical. He left the house and wrestled with picking it up, an unwanted aspect of himself. He felt an wave of all the emotions well up again. Leaving a part of him behind felt wrong, he stormed back in, picked it up, and felt himself emotionally harden up again.

Just then, he heard a voice echo from the sky. It identified itself as a scientist working in the lab. A brief exchange occurred between the two and John is soon brought back into the real world. A little relieved, a little sad, and feeling all his aches and pains that were absent in the other world return. With a smile, something he noticed hadn’t happened in a long time, John thanked the scientist, and they began a long discussion into the events that just transpired.

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The concept I went with for Assignment 1 – Lines, was Preconceptions

Though some form I wanted to either challenge the viewer’s and/or my own preconceptions.

I set them into two groups, with one side with more experimental methods, and the other with a more conventional line based approach.

Final Lines

Final Lines

 

Left

Left

  • Anxiety
    • I wanted to show the disruptive nature of anxiety in the lives of people who have anxiety disorders. I also wanted to show the constant battle between the two sides with a bit of ambiguity as to which side was considered the positive/negative space.
  • Ambiguous
    • I was hit by sudden inspiration to replicate (to some degree) the look of a Rorschach/Ink Blot test. Tried to keep a balance between the black lines and white lines and not make one obviously dominant over the other
  • Distracted
    • I have a tendency to jump between ideas and tasks easily and I wanted to convey this by stitching together snippets of the various ideas I had through this assignment
  • Psychotic
    • Wanted a very jagged aggressive look and wrote the word PSYCHO in a very angular manner, I also had a light spatter of paint on it. I also used the light splatter of paint in other lines as a recurring motif of frustration.
  • Systematic
    • My first thoughts were that systematic had to be rigid and very line-based, contrary to that, I’ve managed to get an organic yet systematic look from a surprising source, a cotton bud dipped in Chinese ink.
  • Aggressive
    • To get an aggressive look, I frayed the end of a chopstick and dipped it in ink, pretty much stabbed the paper a bunch of times after that. Slashed about (wanted to cut the paper up too, but didn’t) then I finished it off with a bit of the splatter motif.
  • Exhausted
    • There’s a very faint line that drops down at the start and lingers about the lower edge of the page with the occasional attempt to get back up again. With exhaustion comes dulled senses and feeling slightly broken. I tried to convey that with a hazy look as well as some fragments of crushed charcoal. There is also a little of the splatter motif, from the frustration of wanting to have energy again.
  • Embarrassed
    • When embarrassed, I’d want to hide away somewhere and so these are faint circles with a slightly darker central point to show the source of the embarrassment radiating out. They’re also spaced out wanting to isolate themselves and fade away.
  • Indecisive
    • Going with a little of the technique of automatism, I sort of let my hand “walk” and wander about unable to simply walk to the other end. I also twisted the medium to change it’s width and look to further incorporate the indecisive mood.
Right

Right

  • Sloven
    • I decided to show sloven though the perspective of a messy person’s house, from the top-down view. The ends of the lines fading into unkept, crusty darkness and only a tiny bit of clear space right in the middle, for new trash to accumulate and get shoved aside.
  • Bizarre
    • Ran though a couple of concepts for bizarre, but nothing seemed to feel “bizarre” enough. Had a sudden idea of the eyes of the snake in The Jungle Book. His eyes would take on a repeating pattern of circles expanding in order to hypnotize anyone or anything. I thought that it seemed pretty bizarre, tried out a pattern for it, and quite liked it.
  • Turbulent
    • I was inspired by stylized “flat” explosions and representations of wind from a couple of games (Dustforce, Gigantic, Battleborn). Quite quickly found a nice mix of gusts of wind + leaves fluttering about.
  • Spontaneous
    • I tried to stylize fireworks, but I felt like the downward strokes felt a bit “off”. So I tried to keep them very upward with a light and bouncy feel to them. Didn’t want to crowd it up either, and so kept them quite spaced out. The squiggly links also helped convey a lively feel.
  • Fragile
    • I’m quite constantly aware of my mortality and how delicate life can be. This made me decide to convey fragile with the last moments of a beating heart.
  • Lyrical
    • I really like the shifting tones of the lead singer of Purity Ring. My approach for this line, was to listen to the song “Lofticries” and draw the line along as the song progressed. I also used various little quips to depict the layers and dynamics of the song.
  • Sensual
    • To be honest, sensual was rather difficult for me to do, as I didn’t want to show anything overtly body-like nor did I want to go to a slightly more sexual visual. First things that came to my mind were, lips, and other contours of the body and for the final piece I did a mash of the parts in an ambiguous manner, and it was up to the viewer to decide of the aspects.
  • Nonsensical
    • Went with squiggly lines on this one, except I gave myself a nonsensical rule (contrary to nonsense being thought of as without rules). Each line much loop at least once, but never intersect with another line.
  • Awkward
    • This was a quite a tough one. It felt like such a difficult aspect to convey, nothing seemed to fit the mood, which was rather ironic to some degree. I figured awkward has some element of being disruptive. I took that idea and used it to intersect a flowing pattern, thus cutting it at an ‘awkward’ point and disrupting the flow.

I also placed these lines in a particular order, I felt that there’s either a rhythm to the visual order or a story to tell. For example, from Aggressive to Embarrassed, I depicted my emotions when I get angry and it usually is in that order. As for the rhythms, it’s more of a subjective thing. I felt like each line had a certain ‘weight’ to them, and I wanted to have the viewer feel these shifts that range from slightly abrupt, to a smooth comedown. Sort of like how a well planned meal or song, have notes and moments that lift, and then sets you down to a nice finish.

The following images are some of the W.I.P pictures I took along the way

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VISUAL JOURNAL

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RESEARCH

Making a visual journal was a very new experience for me. I wasn’t sure to approach it from a “academic” point of view or more towards the concept of what I thought a visual journal would be (though, they could totally be one and the same, personal and presented academically). I tried to do both, but having a tendency to think more in vibes/feelings, phrasing some of my thoughts out comes in the form of sparse/sporadic words. Looking at my classmates rather systematic and seemingly analytical journals made me wonder and worry that I was on the wrong side of the fence. However, in seeing my self-critique, my lecturer, Joy, suggested “letting go” (more on this later).

223-franz-kline-011Prior to the assignment, we were asked to research on some artists. I chose Franz Kline as his artwork was the sort of Abstract art I grew up disliking cause I didn’t understand why it was so highly prized. For me, understanding the mindset and thoughts of the artist, helps me understand their artwork, and this was the perfect opportunity to do so.

Delving into his work, has really opened my eyes. I used to think that majority of abstract art (*koff koff* Jackson Pollock) was just a lot of faffing about but in learning about Franz Kline’s approach to his art, I’ve gained a whole new perspective of abstract art. He put a great deal of conceptualization into a piece before he put brush to canvas. I also learnt that the white sections were painted as well, helping shift the white spaces in to having as much importance as the black portions.

Similarly, I’ve felt the need for conceptualization before starting on my own abstract representations in this assignment. As to “letting go”, being overly picky of what I’ve drafted had the tendency to limit what comes out. In trying different methods, for example, the mind-map, suggested by Joy, helped me further conceptualize ideas by letting my mind roam about linked phrases or concepts.

“Letting go” was a way to stop being so heavy on the self-critique. It also helped me get into more free-form exploration in ways that I hadn’t tried before. I enjoyed the way ideas sprang from this approach. I did struggle at first though, with the technique feeling ‘out of my control’ at times, I sometimes felt like I hadn’t put enough effort into the final product and sometimes felt disconnected from the artwork. Thankfully, I think I managed to find a balance that felt natural to me and it carried on quite well from that point.

I felt that preface was necessary before looking into my visual journal as I’d hope it’ll help the viewer understand a bit of my mindset whilst doing this (like what I needed to understand abstract art), especially since my words are rather few and far between in there.