Concept & Theories:
For my final project, I had originally wanted to paint 3 panels as a triptych. I had planned on drawing inspiration from my Video and Sound Projects conceptually to depict a transition from calm to chaos. Of course, my approach would have to be different when using still imagery. However, I soon found that painting the vision I had in mind was extremely complicated and much too time consuming. I wasn’t happy with what I was making, so I then decided to switch to Adobe Illustrator. I applied the same vision I had in mind when I wanted to use acrylic paint as my medium to Illustrator. I wanted to use shapes, lines, color theory, Gestalt principles, and Deleuze’s theory as well as the Chion’s 3 modes of listening to help convey my concept.
Sketches and Inspiration:
I have always been a fan of painter Julie Mehretu’s work, and thought that looking to her pieces for inspiration would be very fitting for my concept as they evoke a lot of movement and sometimes chaos.
Some of Mehretu’s pieces:
My sketches:
Process & Rationale:
The first panel in my series depicts a very centered and symmetrical design, and looks like a compass. I chose to make the background blue and used bright complimentary colors together to tie together the piece neatly visually. I wanted to make sure it was centered so I set up a framework of lines to help serve as a guide:
For the second piece in the series, I wanted to show a definite shift towards more movement and energy. To do this, I used Gestalt principles and made the piece asymmetrical as opposed to the first piece. I also added in smaller shapes and tried to make the color palette more diverse. I hoped that using purple as the background would evoke creativity and an air of mysteriousness as the design begins to move away from calm and symmetry.
The third piece depicts a total devolvement into chaos. I used a red background to evoke a sense of urgency and high energy. The color palette I used here cannot even really be called a color palette, as I used all sorts of different colors in many shapes of all sizes jumbled together. I used Gestalt principles to show movement from the top of the piece to the bottom right.
My project relates to Deleuze’s theory especially in my third piece as my method of framing each part of the series is a little different. The last part serves as an equivalent to Deleuze’s affection image, as I used many of the shapes previously used in the 2 other parts of the series in different scales, making them unrecognizable from their original contexts. This also relates to Chion’s 3 Modes of Listening as I think my series could represent clear causal sound to reduced sound.
Completed Series:
