Month: September 2017

Color Theory- Down the Rabbit Hole

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Colors evoke a multitude of emotions, remind us of a certain memory, and even hold various symbols. In testing out color theory, I recreated an object from childhood to which I have an emotional attachment as a face mask, using the same color scheme. The reason is that the colors (chocolate brown and baby pink) are distinct to the object and thusly make me think of it almost instantly. However, I wanted to depict more than just the memory of the object (the rabbit) through the colors. I wanted to capture how my feelings have changed over time towards this old stuffed animal. In recent times, I associate the rabbit with melancholy purples and shades of gray, for it only reminds me of a blurry past that overall consisted of me being sick. On the other hand, during the time that I deeply treasured this toy for bringing me joy at my toughest times, I’d see warm tones of yellow and orange. But the gray would always remain because it was still an item I’d use to “absorb” all my pain.

Interpretive Self Portrait

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I was inspired by the marble and bronze sculpture of Nymph Drying her Hair by Louis Claude Vasse. This spoke intuitively to me due to the nymph’s calm and serene facial expression despite there being snakes at her feet. She looks with a sense of “knowing power” and rather than her looking at the viewer, she seems to be looking through them. In spite of her femininity and the cloth around her waist hardly covering her up, she still possesses control and dominance in her most natural self.
With this theme in mind, I chose to make a portrait of myself in the image of the nymph and recreate the overall “feel” that the sculpture instilled in me. I also included a celestial aspect to the right of the piece to depict my appreciation for pagan beliefs that gives me a different, possibly deeper perspective on the world and supports me in always holding a strong, positive mindset. Aside from the motifs in the image, I wanted to challenge myself by using a medium that I rarely worked with: colored pencil. So I experimented with various techniques, including the use of walnut oil and a sponge to give a “watercolor” effect rather than the chalky strokes that pencils leave.

 

Nymph drying her hair
Artist:
Louis Claude Vassé (French, Paris 1716–1772 Paris)
Date:
1761–63
Culture:
French, Paris
Medium:
Nymph: white marble: base, basin and console: gray-veined marble; serpents: bronze, with remains of gilding

A Tart to Logo Transformation

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The first day of classes, each student was paired with a partner who they would sketch as a tart (yes, the pastry kind). By interviewing them, you would have been able to get a sense of who they were and how you would represent them in your tart sketch. My partner, Isha, was strikingly similar to me in that we shared an interest in spirituality and the belief in a better future. Coming from a very restricted society, she sought her move to New York as a window of opportunity to better express who she is and live life to the fullest. She has a very sweet personality, like the tart itself, but a core that is bursting with enthusiasm ready to become open to the world. Thusly, I depicted a tart in a half-open wrapper on a billboard to symbolize just that. I made the setting in New York by the Manhattan bridge, for this is where her new life begins. Eventually, we had to take a section of the image that we drew that would serve as a good repeating pattern or logo. Thusly, I focused on capturing the part of the bridge that has jail-like bars to show confinement in Isha’s old life in India, and the windows in the building to demonstrate that window of opportunity. It took a few tries until I was finally satisfied with my design, depicted in the last image. I then overlaid the motif cutout over different types of colored paper that would best emulate Isha’s personality and her backstory. The combination of blues gives a sense of composure and serenity, but also describes the Isha’s tumultuous past; meanwhile the pop of bright green inserts some playfulness that I noticed in her.

Observing Self

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This first Time project entails recording a 24-hour day in life through pictures and critical thinking of how the concept of time may be represented. The first image shows the process of putting together a flip book of all these recorded moments in a day with captions that describe the scene.

This second photo depicts the process behind putting together the storyboard by selecting specific images from the 24-hour period to tell a particular story. Aspects like the spacing between the pictures and layout show the duration of a certain instance, the time gap between specific events, and so on.

 

Here are the final storyboard and flip book. In the storyboard, I manipulated time by rearranging the order of specific photos in which I took them to create a story that is different from what happened. I thought of making a story where I meet a “stranger” (the metal man-shaped object) and carry out a date with him that eventually stops (indicated by the red light). It ends with my departure home. On the other hand, the flip book accurately documents my 24-hour day with captions to describe each photo.

Finally, the third and last part of the project required students to make a time map of the events that occurred in the day based on how you memorize them. In my case, I chose to stick to one part of my day where I find a man-shaped object being thrown away and repurpose it for one of my future projects. The way I saw time and that particular memory was in terms of direction, for it happened along one street (going to the Hudson River and back). I separated the entirety of the memory by first indicating where my journey began (at my dorm building on the third floor level) and ended (the cafe by my dorm building). The reversal of the images taken at the cafe show that I was walking back toward my dorm on the opposite side of the street at which I began. The Hudson River acted as a separation point between the memories of my walk there and my walk back. The overlapping of bursted images is a “cinematic” approach to showing the elongated duration and the step-by-step process of something happening. In between the bursted image of me walking toward the Hudson, I included snippets of scenes that stood out along the way and would work in conjunction with my narrative. I overlapped 2 sets of images of windows where one is zoomed in to mimic the idea of “peaking inside” or taking a closer look at something. The narrative can be read via this link: Time- Final map narrative -p266do