Project 2: Editorial Metaphor Cover

Project 2: Editorial Metaphor Cover

Philosopher chosen: Bell Hooks (Love as Practice)

Claim: Love may look like patience, but it is actually inherent

Theme: convenience vs. care

Concept: Contradiction (being nervous and having a good experience can coexist)

General Newspaper Inspiration: 

                         

                        

Artist Inspiration: Aubrey Beardsley: Beardsley worked primarily in black and white/grayscale, and that is the overall vibe I wanted to reach for. With the newspaper being set in the golden age, I figured it was important to fully encapsulate what the imagery should look like if it were in the same time period. Beardsley also used sort of elongated figures, as seen in examples, so perfect proportions weren't my main focus.

Rough Sketch (Analog):

Final Composition:

    For our second project, the prompt was to create a newspaper-style cover that contains a metaphor. For my philosopher and claim, I chose Bell Hooks' "Love as Practice." From this, I chose to portray my roommate Keira and me, and emphasize the love that takes place in our personal friendship. For the claim, I chose "Love may look like patience, but it is actually inherent," meaning that love formed from a friendship is everlasting and essential. I knew that I wanted to have my dominant image be a photo of the two of us, where you can see that we're happy with each other's presence. My inspiration was Golden Age newspaper cover pages, along with the artist Aubrey Beardsley. Beardsley worked primarily in grayscale, and going hand-in-hand with the vintage look of the newspaper pages I was looking at, I knew that was the route that I wanted to take. Using Adobe Illustrator, I imported my images and added levels to them, to give them that sort of cartoony, illustrated look while still maintaining the subjects in the images. Beardsley additionally had harsher lines throughout his work, so I decided to add a thick, white outline to the dominant image to further push my inspiration into my final artwork. A few principles of the piece that challenged me were the layout and text. Figuring out how to lay out the page adequately while still keeping the images the main focus was my goal, and I think it ended up being executed fairly well. With the first letters of the main text blocks being bold and script, I intended to lean more into the actual newspaper look, or sort of like an older story. Using all of the mentioned principles helped me be able to create a composition that was originally a bit out of my comfort zone, but with guidance from the references used.

Project 1- Material Strategies

 Project1- Material Strategies

Original Sketch (analog)

    From a memory of a vacation spot I visited as a child, a scene of a lighthouse with slow-moving water in the background is what I knew I wanted to recreate. I thought that the lighthouse should be the main focus, as it's what sticks out to me the most when I think back on the resort and how it looked when I was little.

                                                            Analog translated to digital

`After translating this, it was a lot easier to figure out what path I wanted to take when illustrating the scene. Originally, this was roughly sketched, but I decided to go with a flat illustration style for the final piece, as I felt as if it represented the nostalgic feeling of the scene well.

Final Piece

    For our first project, I decided to portray a scene from my childhood, the lighthouse resort that my family and I stayed at for one week every summer since I was little. It was right on the lake, making it something that stood out in my memories when brainstorming about what exactly I wanted to bring to life. After completing the analog (original sketch), I knew that from the choices presented to us, I wanted to make this composition a flat illustration. Through sharp line work, I created my piece on Adobe Illustrator. I went for sort of a muted but still life-filled color palette, and wanted to place emphasis on the lighthouse itself. There are other objects seen in the image, depicting what the dockside looked like from memory. The piece consists of an immense amount of greens and grays, as the main colors seen on the lighthouse were a deep, forest green. For most of the piece, I used the pen tool, which was extremely tedious but rewarding, as I could mess around with what I was making until I was fully happy with the result. Additionally, I used some of Adobe’s textures available for certain aspects of the artwork, such as the concrete picnic table and the trees in the background behind the lighthouse itself. By making this composition flat, I learned to be patient with both myself and the program I’m using, as it's a bit difficult initially, but once you get the hang of it, it is genuinely so fun to create. Through using the Adobe Programs, I’ve become most familiar with Illustrator. While the project was tedious to complete, it 100% helped me further develop my skills and helped me figure out what strategies would make completing the project most efficient.

Favorite 2D artwork

 

    My favorite Project that I have created came from 2D Materials & Concepts, as I created a triptych showcasing semiotics, using the theme of "friendship." By using icon, index, and symbol. The coffee cups at the top indicate index, the "pinky promise" showcases icon, and the friendship knot represents a symbol. This project was created with construction paper (for the backings and canvas part) and acrylic paint. This project tested my creative skills, and additionally pushed me to branch off into different mediums, as I wasn't particularly familiar with painting prior to taking 2D Materials & Concepts.