Drawing and Imaging Reflection

What idea were you exploring in your Identity Collage Assignment? How did this influence the way you approached other assignments in class and/or your experience at Parsons? (post images)

In my Identity Collage project I was mainly exploring the idea of transitioning from one major point in life to another. That point was the shift from High School to College, where a lot of things change.  I chose a lot of imagery that was personal to me, images representing my home, the city, Greek sculpture because of my heritage and appreciation for art history, famous art that I love, and neon signs that added some expressions. A lot of it was about feeling so sad about the end of my High School life, and being so scared of how so much has changed. I stayed home for college, but it’s so much emitter now. My close friends went away to school, my boyfriend went away to school, I don’t even get to see the friends that stayed because of how busy everyone is. Home became very lonely and I used that in making my collages. Even though I was upset about that part of my life ending and so much changing, a lot of the imagery was about moving forward and transitioning into life in the city and at college. The dynamic for me, as a commuter, was different than it would be for kids forming, it’s harder to make close friends that way. But knowing that I have to move forward and make a new life for myself here, I made sure to be friendly and open up conversations to make the best of my experience at Parsons. Making these collages helped me work out what I was feeling at the beginning of the year and really make sense of it all. it also opened up a lot of ideas that I wanted to make more art with. A lot of the themes I touched upon with these collages, I applied to my other work. The two projects that are most c connected with this one are my mark making project and the final.

What concepts did you learn that helped you with observational drawing? How did this impact your work? (post images)

With observational drawing, I learned how to look at the figure and first try and see it’s skeleton so I can map out the figure and see where the weight is. After that would be building up the basic shapes. This helped my work because I learned to lay everything out before I got into detail, thus avoiding any proportional issues. When building up the basic shapes, you can see whether the figure is wonky or not, or a limb is too long, or the head is too big or small. Seeing these problems before there are details allows you to erase and adjust without sacrificing any hard work or making the drawing too messy. Once you have the basics down you are able to get more into detail, build up the volume more, add value, and make a more lifelike image.

 

What was your most significant creative challenge in the class? How did you address it? (post images)

My most creative challenge was probably with the mark making assignment. I started the project wanting to draw a single image of a place that’s important to me. the way I saw it, this place held meaning to me, I could draw it with a lot of visual texture, and it would make a lovely ink drawing. I even began mapping it out and scaling the image onto my drawing paper. However, after discussing with the professor, I did realize that it lacked creativity and although it held meaning to me, there were other ways I could portray that meaning. My challenge was tapping into my creativity and getting out of my creative block. I addressed this by going through my sketchbook and looking for inspiration. I did a lot of sketches about things I was feeling, and also had my identity collages in my book, that inspired me. I ended up making a source image collage of space with planets and two figures on a hammock. This idea was a manifestation of my identity collages. I was no longer in that strange, uncomfortable, sad transitional space that I was at the beginning of the year. I was more adjusted to the way life is in the city and balancing it with keeping ties to my old life and my old friends. That is what the hammock represents. Swinging back and forth between going forward but still holding onto what I still have from the past and finding a balance. This balance includes opening up to new people and the new things the New School has to offer, while also visiting my friends and boyfriend that went away, and working harder to see the friends that stayed. The figure on the hammock look out into space. Space represents the unknown future, but some planets are discovered. The planets you can see show places significant to me. One small star has the bridge by my neighborhood on it, one planet’s rings are made up of windows from my high school, one planet has the city circulating around it, etc. I think I addressed the issue of lack of creativity really well, I made a project I am very happy with and also began creating more creative things in future projects.

What did you learn from a project in which you worked in both analog and digital formats? Choose one example and describe how the media involved influenced how you worked. What were the benefits and drawbacks of working in analog vs. digital media?

I learned a lot from the digital self portrait and the paper self portrait, these projects taught me a lot. We began with the digital self portrait. While doing this project I became a lot more familiar with the technology used. Prior to this, I had never used Adobe Illustrator before. Having the image to trace over and use as reference helped me learn the program while still creating an accurate piece. If the project was not conducted in this way and we were made to learn illustrator while merely looking at a reference photo, the project probably would not have looked that great. it also thought me about looking at the face in planes. learning how to break up the face and see how the light hits different points was beneficial to this project, the following one, and every time I will draw faces in the future. It really helps with thinking about volume and how the face curves. The planer head was also helpful here because it is a basic, average example of where most faces curve. This was a great predecessor of the next project, where we created an analog paper self portrait. I chose these projects for this question because, although they are two separate projects, I do believe they go hand in hand. Drawing over my face in illustrator, I got much more comfortable with my face shape, the planes of my own face, and how lighting hits it. This made cutting out pieces of paper to create my portrait much easier. I worked with rounder shapes in my analog portrait, but the same style of how I built up lighting and shadow was still there. It was much easier to do that after playing with shapes and color digitally. The benefits of working digitally was having that source image right underneath and being able to see it clearly and trace right over it, making the most accurate piece possible. the drawbacks were being unfamiliar with the technology, but that ended up being a good thing because I became much more comfortable in a new media and on a new program. The benefits of working analog was actually getting to use my hands. I love how much control you have and how you can create whatever you want just as you intended it. The drawback was not having the clear source image directly under that you can keep referring back to. As you work, the drawing you made gets permanently covered up. However, that does help in improving skill and I appreciate that.

 

What was the most important skill, concept, or breakthrough that you gained from taking this Drawing/Imaging class? How do you think it will influence your work in the future?

I think the most important breakthrough I got from this class was expanding my creativity in my projects. From high school, I was so used to being told exactly what to do for a project. That is not a bad thing. I learned so much in high school about skill and technique and that made me the artist I am today. Coming into Parsons, I was asked to do a lot more creative and conceptual work, which was a little uncomfortable in the beginning. This class, however, really allowed me to have a lot of creative breakthroughs. It started small with the identity collages then expanded into the mark making project and finally the final. I feel as if my concepts are so much stronger now and that will 100 percent influence my work in the future. In the future, not only will I be creating carefully crafted projects, but those projects will also hold a lot of meaning and have a lot of conceptual symbolism.

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