These are the final pieces for my Que Sera Sera project.
FISHERMAN
I used the symbols of the boats to help contextualise the fact this is in fact, a fishing environment at night, and the water ripples help separate the water from the air. I used basic symbols for the fish without going into too much detail – the pattern of the lines on the net would help fill in the detail for this piece. The hook also serves a dual function as the moon – just to add a little quirkiness to the night scene.
ASTRONAUT
The G is the planet that rocket A is landing on – I followed the bright colours of some of my research photos to make the shapes stand out against the dark space background. Though not the same colour, they’re still under the category of warm colours and so I grouped them together that way. Texturing of the rocks showed the bumpy nature of asteroids and planetary shapes, while the rocket remained smooth and unmarked – manmade. I also made the texture of the background star-speckled, but blurry. I thought it would be nice to have motion in the background and give the impression of being ‘suspended’ in space in contrast with the moving planets and orbital nature of rocks, which I hear is often what space travel is like. I think the colours used and simple textures communicate a children’s book vibe, which is what I was going for.
ARCHITECT
Blueprint texturing is often a faint grid in the background, so I started out with that first. Then making the perspective more intense than my initial pencil sketch, I included faint perspective lines to make it look more ‘sketchy’, like an architect had just spent his time working and drawing over the print. I also used lighter sections to make the A and the G stand out agains the blue, and tried to make it look chalky and written – hence the notes and the different scribbles that I imagine an architect would make (from what I’ve seen from my research). The perspective here took a long time to get right, because sometimes my sizing and my angle for the two different letters would look odd together. I think the blue and the white work well together to communicate a blueprint as well as to make it look professional.
HERPETOLOGIST
Out of all my pieces, I feel like this is the most artistic and vintage-style. I started the watercolour painting and then scanned it into the computer. Using watercolour as a medium helped set the paper-texture that I was going for; I painted first with browns and yellows and then enhanced this texture using photos of papers and overlaying them over the painting. The snakes stand out with the use of colours like red and green – warm and bright agains the pale yellow to contrast the two. I also included scribbles and writing to make it look like a diagram of an actual species of snake.
Overall, this project was enjoyable for me to see what I could make out of symbols and textures and colour to communicate my initials, AG. What I found the hardest was visualising original ways to communicate the jobs I wanted to portray, which is why I went through so many thumbnails and ideas. I’ve never done typography before so it was a new challenge to tackle.