yan min's website – thinking and communicating visually

Final Assignment-Friend Portrait-DA2002

For art final, my partner is Amanda.

^ My thumbnail and draft.

Initially, my idea was doing a girly piece about her with her favourite colours. But after speaking to her more about what she liked and what are her hobbies, surprisingly, she is a huge gaming fan. She frequently plays this game called ‘Archeage’. It is a MMORPG (massive multiplayer online role playing game), and you can customise your avatar. You can also buy your own house in there.

She has told me she plays this game a lot and perpetually ‘lives in there’, especially during the school holidays. So I have decided to do my art piece about her in game house and avatar since it’s a large part of her life.

^ Amanda’s in game character and house. Her character is named ‘Hikayashi’ and her house is in a placed called ‘Macala’.

I have decided to adopt this method called ‘3d layered paper cutting’. Instead of using coloured paper, I have decided to (acrylic) paint my own colours and cut out the shapes from there. This way, besides having the exact colour I want, I also can have the paint brush strokes texture.

I think layered paper cutting and texture painting is good to represent a scene in a game because this is how they do it in games. In 3d games many stuff are modelled using basic shapes and planes (low polygon modelling, to prevent lag) and they put the detailed painted texture on them to make them look high resolution.

The character is a combination of her in real life and her in game avatar. I have combined some features of her and her in game character. I also thought that yellow was a very good colour for her dress especially for this piece because it is a bright colour and it stands out, creating good emphasis.

The background (sky and mountain) is done using acrylic paint. I did not want the background to stand out too much, thus I used less saturated colours as compared to those of the foreground. (For example, the green used for the mountains vs the green used for the grass.)

The house is a combination of coloured paper and lino printing. I have carved out the roof and the wooden texture on the lino and printed the pattern on the coloured paper.

^ My lino cuts for the roof and house (wooden) texture.

To make the grass look more 3d, I have cut out small pieces of grass and stuck them on the main piece of grass to give the grass more texture. I tried to create different shades of green while doing this grass, the top part (brighter) I added yellow to green and the bottom (darker) part I added blue. This gives it more depth and rhythm.

For the flowers, they are actually the leaves of the trees. I used pink because it was the colour of the leaves that she gave me in the reference picture of her house. But I made them look like flowers also because I wanted to incorporate my original idea that she is a girly person and she also likes pink. I have used different shades of pink for this flower to create a bit of rhythm and also for the illusion of the flowers having many layers.

^ WIP 1 & 2 (separated the sky layers)

During the composition of the piece I have tried to apply the rule of thirds. (Horizontal) The grass is in the bottom 1/3, the sky in the top 1/3 and everything else in the middle. (Vertical) The house is in the first 2/3 and the character is in the last 1/3.

I have also used balance in this piece. On the left side, the roof of the building sticks out of the canvas. Therefore, to prevent it from becoming too much of a distraction I balanced them out with the placement of the flowers. On the left side, there are lesser flowers, and on the right, there are more flowers, so the canvas does not feel like it is more heavy to the left.

Lastly, I recreated the dialogue box in photoshop and printed it out. After adding in the dialogue box, it really feels like a screenshot from the game. Apparently when I asked Amanda what she normally says in game, she types ‘Beedo’ a lot to disturb her in game friends.

Doing all of this feels reminiscent of the times I did 3D modelling and texturing (during poly), where I modelled and textured everything separately and joining them together. It is interesting to do this in traditional medium.

Final:

Assignment 5-Crayon Scratch-DA2002

We had a night lesson for assignment 5. The base was done using oil pastel and the black part was using black paint, and then scratched out from a back of a paintbrush.

I have taken some photos around ADM, chose a few and sketched out some thumbnails.

I have decided on this photograph as my reference because there was a nice composition [rule of thirds – the tree in the first 1/3 of the picture (vertical) and the sky taking up 2/3 and the building taking up 1/3 of the picture (horizontal)], with some dark areas that was good for this crayon scratch assignment.

Base – The base was done using oil pastels. The sky was challenging to do because blending using oil pastels was not as easy as a medium such as acrylic. I done the sky using several colours, mainly blue (dark and light), purple, beige, pink and white.

The grass was done with different shades of green (bluish green to lime green) and a bit of yellow for the highlights. For the building, I used blue, dark blue and a bit of violet for the non-lighted parts and yellow and gold for the lighted parts.

Final – I painted the shape of the trees, then scratched out the patterns of the leaves and tree bark. At first I was going with a more realistic look for the trees, but Keith has suggested a more stylised pattern. Then I painted a large portion of the building which was in darker shade, and painted out the lines for the other parts of the building. Because the sky was lighted, so there was no need to paint over it.

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Assignment 4-Colour Mixing-DA2002

Had a lesson on colour theory, and I chose the set up with the cloth, glasses and violin to paint. Below is the photo reference.

The assignment was to mix 3 colours, red, blue, yellow, and white to achieve all the colours in this painting. At first it seemed like it was not really possible to do so, but I have learnt that it is indeed possible to get almost all colours by just using these colours. For example, brown is achieved by mixing all three colours (lots of yellow, some red and a bit of blue) and to get the grey is lots of yellow, some blue, a bit of red and white.

To get the transparent effect of the glass, I first painted the base colour (colour behind the glass) then used diluted white paint to paint over the base.

The most challenging part was to get the form of the cloth right, had to observe the cloth patterns and paint carefully. Thanks Keith for guiding with the cloth painting. Another challenge was to get back the colours we have mixed before, but sometimes we can accidentally get nice colours, and that’s part of the assignment that I have learnt a lot from, that a little of each red, blue and yellow makes a big difference of what the final colour that turns out will be.

Assignment 3-Paper Cutting-DA2002

These are the studies done in class, we converted and simplified scenes from black and white films and done thumbnails.

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For the assignment, I’ve used the black and white film, the Bicycle Thieves (1948) as my reference film.

I screenshot some scenes in the film and done some thumbnails. I have picked an orange-pink colour as my midtone colour for this assignment.

These are the thumbnails based on the screenshots.

1- Wide shot
This is a wide shot. In their house, the main character is passing a bucket of water to his wife.

Framing: The figures are being framed by the door.

Rule of thirds: (Vertical) The man is standing slightly off centre and the lady is standing roughly in the first third of the image. (Horizontal) The figures are standing in the lower two-thirds of the image.

Emphasis and contrast: The white area at the door contrasts with the figures to make them more noticeable and also draws the viewers’ eyes to the figures.
2- Medium close-up
This is a medium close-up shot of the main character’s wife at the pawn shop talking to the attendant through a window.

Framing: The lady is being framed by the window.

Line of sight: Even though there are no eyes depicted in this cut-out, the lady is facing the attendant and the attendant is facing her.

Lines: There are 2 lines between the attendant and the window. So it leads the viewers’ eyes between these 2 subjects. They also create rhythm so all the lines are not just vertical and horizontal lines.

Contrast: The main subject’s head is placed in a black background so it stands out more than the rest of the heads (in pink background).

3- Very wide shot
This is a very wide shot of the workers cycling to work in the morning.

Rule of odds: There are five cyclists in this scene. The viewer might look at the first pair of cyclists first, the next pair, and the last single cyclist, then look back at the previous pair.

Lines: The lines of the road lead the viewers’ eyes to view the image from left to right to look at the cyclists and the buildings in the background.

Rhythm: The lower half of the image are composed of more ‘plain-looking’ horizontal curves. The trees and buildings add vertical lines and more interest to the overall image.

4- Medium shot
This is a medium shot of the main character walking down a flight of stairs to an underground area.

Framing: The subject is being framed by the arch.

Balance: Since there are many details on the right side of the image, I attempted to balance out the image by adding more black on the left so it does not feel too heavy to the right.

Rule of thirds: The man’s shadow is on the first one third of the picture. The overall scene takes place on the left 2/3rds of the picture.

Lines, rhythm: The lines of the handles of the staircase point towards the man. The lines of the staircase also create rhythm to the otherwise smooth curved and straight lines of the image.

5-Medium shot
This is a medium shot of the main character and his son walking up a flight of stairs.

Rhythm: Most of the lines in this scene are more vertical. The horizontal lines of the stair case contrasts with the vertical lines and create rhythm.

Contrast: The silhouettes are placed in white background so that it stands out more. Also, since the horizontal lines of the staircase contrast with the mostly vertical lines in the image, it stands out and adds more focus to the man who is standing there.

Lines: The lines on the left look almost like a spot light pointing to the boy, so that the viewers’ eyes will be lead to him. The diagonal line of the right side of the wall also somewhat points towards the man.

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Assignment 2-Group Work-DA2002

Group story on the principles of design, Fish and Sock.

Our story is a simple one. A fisherman goes fishing and his sock drops into the ocean. A group of fish are swimming in the ocean below. As the sock sinks into the ocean, one of the fish are attracted to the sock and leaves its group and swims towards the sock. The fish approaches the socks and ends up being stuck in the sock.

This is our planning:

Final pieces:

1- Balance
Fisherman is fishing and drops his sock into the water.
2- Movement
Sock sinks into the ocean.
3- Rhythm
School of fish are swimming in the ocean.
4- Emphasis
A fish notices the sock and swims towards it.
5- Emphasis
The fish gets stuck in the sock.

Assignment 2-Individual Piece-DA2002

For my group, our story is fish and a sock.

I was tasked with ’emphasis’, one of the principles of design, for my part of the story. We have decided to put the emphasis on the sock, because it was the part where the fish noticed the sock as the sock sinks down into the ocean.

The ocean at the top is lighter with blue-green hues to make the top part stand out more because the sock is there. (And also because it is nearer to the surface, with light shining down.) The diagonal strokes that are supposed to lead the viewer’s eye such that it follows the lines on the sock. The sock is the brightest object, to catch the eye of the viewer since it is the main emphasis. The sock is also drawn in greater detail compared to the fish.

The fish ‘fades’ into the background so that it does not stand out too much and compete with the sock as the focus. However, since the fish is also a subject of this scene, a bit of highlights are added so that it does not completely disappear into the background and get unnoticed.

It was interesting to learn that to make the blue appear darker, we add red instead of black. Adding red instead of black gives the painting more depth and makes the colours look less flat.

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Assignment 1-DA2002

I have chosen two pictures that I have taken when I was in a tour trip to the northern part of China during May this year.

1. Organic shape

Thumbnails:
1- Radiating sun and fluffy clouds idea.
2- Thinking if I could use some add circles that are decreasing in size to show radiating sun. Experimented with the clouds shape, instead of round, drawing clouds that appear more like cirrus clouds.
3- Tried drawing the sun with entirely circles, and experimented with different shapes for trees.
4- Tried another way of drawing radiating sun.

Final:
The main focus is the sun – I wanted to convey the sun radiating its sunlight to the entire scene. There are a combination of thick, thin and broken lines using pen, and also ‘rays’ done using water colour. The combination of medium gives both the strong and soft feeling that the sun rays give off. The lines get thinner/shorter/faded to show energy being dissipated as the sun rays travel.

The mountains below are made up of a dense amount of trees. They are orderly and always stand up tall no matter the weather above. So I drew thick lines (to represent their stillness and strongness) of different heights and width (to show variety of trees and creating rhythm).

The clouds on the contrary are floating, and carefree. I drew them in a bunch of circles with bubbles in mind – round, sort of fluffy, and flying upwards. I decided with the ‘circle’ clouds in the end to contrast with the sun and trees’ shapes. I used water colours because it gives a softer feel.

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2.Geometric shape

Thumbnails:

1- Original idea of the buildings looking like bar charts. Circle shapes to represent the trees.
2- Wanted to convey that each unit is different, so I tried different sizes of squares.
3- Idea 2 seemed to messy and does not look orderly, so went with a mesh like idea. Also experimented with the trees shapes.
4- Decided that rounder looking trees are better to contrast with the buildings, and drew the units as actual individual square units. Shaded them different to show ‘each unit is different’.

Final:
The series of buildings are like a set of rectangles, standing tall in a straight horizon. They look like a set of bar charts, straight and orderly. The buildings are drawn in small and even squares representing the units in the buildings. The buildings that are further are drawn lighter and smaller compared to the main building in front to give focus. Furthermore, some of the squares are not shaded, symbolising that for the people living inside every unit, they are unique in their own ways.

I want the trees below to contrast with the buildings above, so I drew circles of different shades and sizes to show how ‘organic’ the trees are as compared to the buildings above. (round and inorganised vs straight, blocky and orderly).

I also gave the sky a gradient from dark to light to the middle of the picture so that the building in centre would be more in contrast with the brighter background and thus stand out more.

For both final pieces, I have used pencil, pen, and watercolour as my medium.

Week 1 class activity-DA2002

The first class was about elements of design.
We used lines, dots and shapes to express certain feelings for our first class activity.

For the second part of the class activity, we listened to a sound track and portrayed how we feel through lines, dots and shapes.

The main focus of my drawing was the zig-zag line which resembles an ECG wave, because the heart beat sounds were very prominent to me. There were some beats in the sound track that keeps repeating and looping, and thus I have done the spirals. Beneath the stronger beats in the sound there was the calming music and thus I drew the smooth flowy lines.

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Art final: ‘Walking home while using the phone’

Title: Walking home while using the phone

I’m depicting a scene that is extremely common right now, which is using the phone while walking. But I’ve named the title ‘Walking home while using the phone’ instead of ‘Using the phone while walking home’ to make it seem that the ‘walking home’ is the ‘secondary’ action and ‘using the phone’ is the main action. Nowadays people use their phone wherever they walk or go, and it has become a ‘threat’ to human lives when they use their phone while doing activities like taking the stairs or crossing the road, (esp after work or school), and failed to reach home safely.

This is a one point perspective drawing, the staircase and the buildings converge to a vanishing point.

Foreground: Hands and the phone, the large piece of grass, front of the stairs.
Middle ground: trees, plants, part of the staircase and building.
Background: The blurry buildings and trees at the end.

I’ve used marksmaking to create the texture of the grass and the leaves of the trees. The subjects at the foreground I’ve used bolder lines and they are drawn with more detail and clarity, in contrast with the faraway buildings, which only the silhouette could be seen (atmospheric persp). I’ve drawn the background behind the hands darker to make the subject pop out.

Horizontal lines: Stairs, building. Vertical lines: Building and trees (curved).
My eyes look at the subject (hands) and then it follows the stairs up to the sky (because of the perspective.) Then the eyes look at the tree and building following the vertical lines then to the big piece of foreground grass, then the subject again.

Sketch 1: Experimenting with perspective
The trees in real life are straighter instead of curved. I tried to make them curve to lead the viewer’s eye around and make the composition more interesting.

Sketch 2: Hand holding phone studies