People of colour have rights too!! #BlackLivesMatter
Oh wait. Not that type of colour?
So for this week’s lesson we were told to write down some of our positive attributes and hopes in 5 years time, and have our classmates contribute.
I thought the activity was a good opportunity to see yourself from the class’s perspective but I probably won’t be relying too much on it for project 3. Activities like this depend a lot on a person’s current mood and recent interactions with classmates, and I’ve always found it hard to do a quick yet accurate summary of my life.
To be honest I suck at colour theory/matching and it is one of the more urgent issues I want to address in ADM so I’ll have to watch a lot more tutorials. In the meanwhile here’s a cool online game you can play to help your colour matching http://color.method.ac
2 posters I find very useful for colour idiots like me (links only as the images are way too big for OSS)
So from my research on colour I learned that warm colours (like red) advance and cool colours (like blue) recede, and I see a lot of potential ideas stemming from this.
I am also very inspired by how this artist Magnus Voll Mathiassen uses different contrasting colours to create his pieces.
Some studies on colour
A photograph with strong contrasting colours by The Devious Moose
Analogous colour scheme
Triadic colour scheme
Reference artists:
Alex Brewer. I am very intrigued at Alex Brewer’s use of various colours in his compositions and am trying to study them to see what emotions/feelings they evoke.
Rhyme: pat-a-cake pat-a-cake, bake me a cake as fast as you can
Concept: to attempt to show how easily words can have different meanings, inspired by surrealist artists where I attempt to show how the lyrics in the rhyme ‘pat-a-cake’ can be used to symbolise cocaine, which was done in the hip hop song ‘grindin’ by the group Clipse.
I thought of this idea about a year back, where I wanted to design visuals based on hip-hop lyrics that society would never associate with such a frowned upon genre. It was also an attempt at a different interpretation of the lyrics where the artist used double entendres to convey stories about drugs etc.
Final design
In the first square I wanted to directly express the mood of a children’s nursery rhyme, thus the use of lollipops and candy floss etc. The dingbats are also arranged symmetrically as this nursery rhyme also involves coordinating claps with a partner, which usually is in sync for the first clap. The main shape of the composition also resembles the silhouette of two hands clapping, which is shown in my visual journal.
Next, the composition is a little less symmetrical as players of the nursery rhyme usually mistime their claps immediately after the first. The composition still contain similar childish elements like cakes and lollipops, and the smoke dingbat in between the pair of hands represents 2 things: 1) the fire used to ‘bake’ multiple cakes and 2) a cloud of powder which alludes to cocaine in the upcoming squares
This square expressed the same line as the first square, and is used in the hip-hop song to convey drug-dealers cooking cocaine to sell. In street lingo the word ‘cake’ means cocaine, and ‘bake’ represents the process where cocaine is ‘cooked’ down from its pure form and mixed with baking soda to be sold. After much research I realised that people who have tried cocaine agree on 3 things about the experience: 1) It makes you feel good about yourself or just general euphoria, 2) everyone experiences something different and 3) it is highly addictive. So here I decided to create a dada-inspired piece as people often react to pieces of dada art as they do to someone on cocaine: “what the hell?” The composition here shows the person standing confidently atop of either a pile of cocaine or a large mountain, thus expressing how good a cocaine user feels. The dingbats around the head and the stoned facial expression shows that no matter what a cocaine user feels, it is entirely in his/her head.
The last square aims to show the dark abyss that cocaine users often find themselves in, where the drug is so addictive that they will often resort to any means of acquiring more of it. The entirely dark composition is also a stark contrast to the first 2 squares, thus wholly transforming the rhyme’s original meaning.
Original dingbats
Visual journal/sketches
Transforming (more like distorting) classmate’s dingbats
Other screenshots of WIP
Rejected compositions
Inspiration
To research on visualisations of a cocaine high I stumbled upon the artist Bryan Lewis Saunders, who took 30 different drugs and drew 30 different portraits.
Yeeeaaaaahhhhhhhh see how I made the title rhyme? In case I flunk ADM I can always be a rapper.
Okay so previously I decided I wanted to use a hip hop song and create vastly different visuals, and now after learning that we had to use English nursery rhymes instead I began to research on possible rhymes.
I then realised that one of the rhymes ‘patty cake’ had the same lyrics in a hip hop song I knew, which used the nursery rhyme as a metaphor for cooking/selling cocaine.
So I ended up choosing the rhyme ‘patty cake’ and will be creating visuals that express both the original rhyme and the hip hop song.
Here are some pictures from my visual journal containing explorations of possible imagery for cocaine and the rhyme and general progress report.
As suggested by Joy, my work will have hints of surrealism, as I feel the very nature of that genre is similar to what I want to express in this assignment.
Don’t want to reveal too much before the actual critique so stay tuned!
The year is 2020, and in this world Christmas is celebrated a little differently, where Santa Claus delivers presents to kids throughout December, and they can only be opened on Christmas day. Santa Claus is also transported around by a reindeer called Rudolph, where they make many trips from the various toy stores to houses.
For quite some time Rudolph has felt a little neglected and thinks that the public is only appreciative of Santa, and ignores Rudolph’s efforts. Rudolph faces a slight existential crisis, but brushed it away at the thought of the children waiting for their presents. In early December as Santa and Rudolph are beginning their rounds, a quirky scientist is seen on the news as finalizing the technology for delivery drones to be used all around the world. A few days later while waiting on the roof for Santa, Rudolph spots a few drones flying suspiciously around some houses and tries to tell Santa, only to be brushed off.
Soon after the scientist announces that the technology is complete, and begins deploying the drones for more efficient deliveries. That night Santa and Rudolph discover that the drones have taken over their job, delivering presents at a much faster pace. Feeling obsolete, Santa leaves town and encourages Rudolph to do the same as the children no longer needs them. Rudolph decides to hang around for awhile more to see if the children are aware of this change and is dismayed when nobody notices anything. Technology has indeed taken over.
Right before leaving, Rudolph spots something amiss with the presents given by the drones, and realizes that they are unusually heavy. Rudolph confronts one of the drones to find out more, but is left empty. Enlisting the help of Santa, the pair manages to trace the drones back to a house high up on the mountains. Santa and Rudolph end up getting caught and locked up by the scientist, where he reveals his plan to destroy the town. After a scuffle, Rudolph and Santa stops all drone activity and proceed to swap all the bombs with actual presents.
With a few hours left to Christmas, Rudolph and Santa are left with a few houses, and encounter the scientist trying to plant a bomb. The final scuffle ends with the scientist getting tied up, and Rudolph throwing the bomb up into the air, which explodes right when the clock strikes 12 and the children open their presents. At the sound of the blast the children look out their window, only to see that the once-forgotten Rudolph had saved the everyone. Rudolph is now well loved by the people, who look forward to the traditional way of getting their presents delivered every Christmas. Rudolph also finds his identity as that of a hero which brings happiness to the town.
Why I chose this story/character
I chose to tell the story from Rudolph’s perspective because that character was quite popular when I was young, but seldom seen in the media in recent years, and decided to revive it and give life to Rudolph.
Also, Rudolph to me represents the unsung heroes in everyday society that we often overlook, but work just as hard as those that are celebrated/glorified. I also wanted to highlight the existential crisis faced by Rudolph, which I feel is very relevant in this age of social media where people are continuously glamourizing their lives. This also changes the conventional description of events where instead of seeing Santa going into houses, we get a picture of Rudolph patiently waiting and thinking.
A cultural function of telling the story in this manner is to highlight to people that technology has its undersides, such as the erosion of traditions like Santa personally delivering the presents, and to be aware of it in order for our lives to remain meaningful. This message is also hopefully conveyed to children, who are getting really engrossed on smart devices, thus missing out on certain pleasure of life like playing catching for example. Due to my message of preserving traditions, I could update the myth to a certain extent without being contradictory.
I feel that this poster sufficiently captures the main conflict in this movie, of Rudolph against technology, which is enticing as it shows Rudolph in another light but yet doesn’t reveal too much about the plot. The angle was inspired by Wally Wood’s 22 panels, and the contrast really conveys a sense of conflict. I chose to show a silhouette of Rudolph’s antlers because I think everybody is familiar with it, and to express the movie’s focus on Rudolph’s perspective.
(in a bid to keep an already lengthy post short the images are kept small, but please do click on them to get a more detailed look. or not)
I was really excited when briefed on project 1 as I thought it was a pretty open one with lots of room for free expression. (little did I know jeng jeng jeng…..)
And so I began working on it, where I scribbled random ideas picked up from research in class.
Those are some of my initial ideas/creative ‘sparks’ I got in class and quickly took them down. I also got exposed to 2 new artists that I really appreciate (whom you should all be familiar with by now ahem): Julie Mehretu and Cai GuoQiang. I really loved how Julie created her pieces using a wide array of lines, forms, random scribbles and colours and I can definitely see myself drawing lots of inspiration from her in my future work. The video shown in class of Mr Cai was really riveting, especially the part where he attached a pen to the end of a broomstick to draw on large pieces of paper. I thought that was really smart of him, and his use of such an uncanny material like gunpowder to create art had a big impact on my final piece.
If you look really closely at the picture of my notes above you might see that I denote important (or more like overly ambitious and highly unfeasible) ideas with a badly drawn star.
In case you didn’t get it (excuse the horrendous English btw)
Yeah you’re probably wondering the same thing I did as I wrote that down: “Wah! Sure not?! Where got time bro!”
‘Reuben, you’re right. Our eyes are bigger than our stomachs.’- George Clooney, Ocean’s Eleven.
So on I went to do some research and began sketching the individual lines. (I was still under the impression at that time that we could just interpret the 18 emotions however we liked, without having a big concept)
Not going to show any individual pictures because you probably also have them in your computer. Now on to the sketches.
And then I crashed head first into the wall right at creative-block street.
Which was when I realised that I didn’t exactly know the definitions of the 18 emotions, and went to look all of them up in the dictionary.
In hindsight, that didn’t help much, except now I actually knew what ‘sloven’ meant and how much it described me.
On 29th August during lesson I went down to the library, browsed through some books on lines, some of which are shown below. They really helped in generating ideas for certain emotions.
So there he was, ambitious Andrew with a head full of sensual lines, head slightly tilted upwards as he thought about the extremely productive time spent at the library flipping through pictures of someone else’s sensual lines. The painfully slow pace at which the handicapped lift carried him up was a little more bearable today, and managed to survive the entire trip from basement to second floor without swearing. Not even a little “tsk!”. Strolling into class for consultation, Andrew stifled a grin.
“So what’s your concept?”
Andrew wasn’t grinning when he got off the chair.
So long story short I didn’t know an overarching concept was required to link all the lines together. I took the handicapped lift down, cursed a few times, bought a latte from the cafe, reminded myself for the 67th time not to buy that shit again as it is way overpriced, drank it in 3 gulps, and headed back to the library to churn out a concept.
So as you can see above, I labelled and grouped the emotions into good (G) and bad (B), and had 3 concepts. The first was growing up and the emotions that defined each stage (spontaneous as a kid etc), secondly I thought about grouping the lines based on what time of the day I usually felt those emotions, and finally I settled on the concept of ‘My Creative Process’
The concept was to group the emotions into a cycle that reflected my typical creative process, which would be expressed mainly through drawing. I thought about using different mediums/tools to further express the various stages, like drawing the earlier emotions on a foolscap paper as that is where I tend to jot down my ideas. Pencils/pens/markers could also be used to express development of initial sketches to final drawings.
Over the weekend I grappled with my idea above as certain emotions/lines were best expressed with certain mediums, thus I had to find a more cohesive concept to show this development of ideas into final pieces. And that was when it hit me. I had forgotten about the big picture.
*cue simpsons intro song*
For some reason I’ve always thought this intro music perfectly captured the ‘a-ha!’ moments people get when blessed with a good idea but anyway back to the story I began to conceptualise.
Some ideas were of a light bulb, the ADM logo, the ADM building, and even ADM’s old logo for VisCom which was
Eventually I settled on the ADM building.
Next I researched on the creative process
And jotted down any phrases that I found could be expanded on
And from this long list of possible ideas I began experimenting.
So you made it to the end.
In case you’re wondering why I chunked all my research/visual journal into one long post, I felt that everything contributed in some way or another to the final outcome. Be it simple research on artists, sketches in visual journal or my untidy idea generation notes, they were all part of my creative process that ultimately led to the finished piece. Considering that my idea for the 18 lines was to guide you through ‘the ADM creative process’, I thought it would be apt and interesting (I hope so) to show you ‘my creative process’, and boy is it long.
Pardon my language, slightly satirical style of writing and arguably inappropriate use of memes but this is a heavily censored and diluted version of what goes on in my head when I’m ‘in the zone’.
Thoughts after: I may have sacrificed the individual aesthetics of each line in order to create the ‘big picture’ of the ADM building and the techniques used were a little repetitive. I completely agree, and after going down this abstract route for assignment 1 I could perhaps focus more on how my piece looks to the general viewer for the next assignment. I really enjoyed this assignment and can proudly say that this is the first piece of art I created, and am really proud of it.
Challenges faced: Definitely the biggest challenge was trying to come up with ways of expressing the particular emotion with objects found in ADM. Some emotions that I had difficulty with were ‘bizarre’, ’embarrassed’ and ‘lyrical’. I thought of their solutions while taking a walk, which I learned from my research about the creative process, and it really helped clear my mind for ideas to flow.
Even though my visual journal contains way too many words for an arts student and isn’t as appealing as that of my fellow class mates (some of which are really pretty and I would totally pay money for) it is an honest window into my head and thought process. Might be a little too systematic for you but like a slave, it works for me. Okay bad joke.
I hope you look forward to another really long post for assignment 2.