My name is Carolyn Olaguivel and I am currently an undergraduate student majoring in Communication Design at the Parsons School of Design. I was born on May 3rd, 1998, in Germany but I was raised in Bolivia. My family moved back to Germany when I was 6 years old in order for me to start my education. During my junior year of highschool, I left Germany to complete my education at a small private school in Santa Cruz, California. That’s where I discovered my passion for art and design and my teachers were the ones who encouraged me to apply to Parsons.
In my first semester I took Drawing and Imaging where I learned how to do accurate drawings, but more importantly I acquired the skill of arranging shapes and using color in impactful ways. This had a great influence on one of my projects in my elective, Dynamic Drawing. The assignment was to make 4-6 abstract images that have a soothing effect on the viewer. Because of the skills I gained from Drawing and Imaging, I was able to make a series of works that are well done and have a therapeutic effect on the viewer. (images: 2 of 6 drawings)
In Integrative Studio 1, I discovered that one of my greatest passions is to illustrate political as well as societal issues in the form of books. This is a working method that has been emerging in several courses. The first book I made was for Integrative Studio 1, where I had to portray a governmental issue from the Hunger Games. I did this by making a japanese stab-bound book from the perspective of the Capitol, particularly the perspective of President Snow addressing the inhabitants of the Capitol.
Most of the pages were inspired by propaganda posters from previous wars. I tried to use typical war slogans as the messages and depict Katniss as a monstrous enemy of the government.
Since then I’ve been making books whenever I get the chance to. For my Drawing and Imaging final I made a rather abstract accordion book about who I am and where I am from.
The book that I am most proud of is a book I made for my first project of my second semester Time class. The task for this project was to show a progress of time through 20 photographs and present them in a creative way. I chose to show the process of smoking because I think it can be very beautiful how it looks, especially on photographs. I decided to make a simple but impactful book, where the photographs could speak for themselves.
For my Integrative Studio 2 final, I am working on a magazine that shows my process of the entire class. It’s not just the binding that I enjoy about making books, I enjoy creating the layout, a skill I’m excited to continue working on next year.
Drawing is a skill that is present in most of my projects. In Drawing and Imaging, my drawing skills improved due to the many nude figures we had to draw. I learned how to draw people, with correct proportions and how to shade those drawings in order for them to look realistic.
This skill helped me to make better drawings for my Integrative Studio 1 final, where I made a small zine about my process of working. The last two pages include portray drawings that were influenced by what I learned in Drawing and Imaging.
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For my Time class, I had to make a graphic novel. I decided to make a novel about Alice in Wonderland with hand drawn images. Again, the skills I acquired from Drawing and Imaging helped me make a novel with drawings that I can be proud of.
Two projects I would consider as highlights are 4 magazine covers that I made for Dynamic Drawing, and an animation I made for Time.
I see the magazine covers as a highlight because it’s something I want to pursue in my major. I started this project with researching magazine covers, sketching out the ones I liked and how the use of font and images affected the cover.
From this research, I started sketching out ideas for the covers.
After that, I started making magazine covers, using different layouts, different fonts, and different images.
Finally, after having made this, I came up with my final idea for the layout of the magazine covers.
This project was a highlight for me because it was the first project that goes towards my major and it made me really excited to start my major next year. In this project, I was able to use the skills of arranging shapes and colors that I acquired in Drawing and Imaging. It also reflects my color palette that I use for most of my projects: black, white, and red. Overall, I think that this is a project that reflects my aesthetic of simplicity and I am excited to keep working on layout and editorial design.
My second highlight is an animation I am currently working on for Time. In this class, I learned about how layout and sequences can impact a work of art, like a graphic novel, video, or sound art. The animation is a highlight for me because I feel like it combines everything I learned in this class to make one last project. I also think that this is the most time consuming project that I have made so far.
I started my project with looking at older drawings that I was working on during high school. I noticed that there were two main themes in those pieces: flowers and surrealism. I decided to combine those two topics to make an animation that starts out with ordinary people who are playing flowers and that then gradually becomes more and more surreal. After having a clear idea, I began making the drawings.
Again, in this project the drawing skill I acquired from Drawing and Imaging helped make drawings that look realistic and have accurate proportions.
After having made some drawings, I started editing them using photoshop, and making sequences using premiere.
Unfortunately, I am still working on the animation and don’t have a final video yet. However, I already see this work as a highlight because it combines a lot of the skill I acquired during my first year at Parsons, making it a very strong project. I think the most successful about this project are my drawings, because I spent a lot of time on them and they look better than any drawings I made before. This project is a lot of work but it’s going to be worth it.
In the future, I’m hoping to keep drawing, both realistic and abstract, but I also can’t wait to start learning about editorial design and typography. By pursuing Communication Design as my major, I want to combine my drawings with digital art to create visual representations in the context of fashion. However, I also want to address societal as well as political issues involving beauty images and sustainability.
