Two Posts in One Day? What is Going On?!

Very brief post, mainly to show off my first completed design project. The project is known as the 'Black Square Problem' and apparently is a project all design majors will encounter. We were given 6 adjectives and required to create a picture that would convey that adjective or emotion by using only 4 black squares. I actually posted the initial designs on Facebook to gauge how accurate I was and only ended up changing one at the advice of my instructor.

I'll go ahead an post the image first if you would like to take a guess, but don't scroll to far because the adjectives and reasoning are listed below.

It's not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but I reworked one design, tweaked another and ended up having to completely redo three of them because they had glue spots on them. The adjective are shown left to right, top to bottom as follows:

Ordered
This one is relatively easy to convey. The first design was just four equal boxes forming a larger box shape. Then, I moved on to something that looked like the Purina logo. However, after reading a few of the synonyms for this word, I went with the design you see because it shows motion. It's almost as if they are coming off of an assembly line, all the same and orderly.

Increase
This one was the one the instructor suggested changing, mainly due to the other mostly black design that was the odd man out. The first design started with a small square in the bottom left hand corner. The other three became larger and larger as they moved up to the top right in an arc resembling a parabola. His words were that we were going to see a lot of similar designs and that I should try to use the negative space to show the word. I kind of cheated because I had no idea what to do. By cheating I mean that I googled the word 'increase' and looked at the image results. I saw a whole bunch of arrows and that is when the design you see now came to me.

Bold
This one gave me the most trouble. At first I wanted to use a large square next to a small one, but that didn't quite do it for me. This design was initially an idea for Increase, but when Josh said it made him think of 'adventure' I started thinking about it in a different way. Some people see it as tumbling or falling down a hill, but the bouncing motion created is supposed to convey boldly charging forward  and up the hill. The split responses I got on this one actually told me a bit about the person depending on which direction the squares were traveling to them... A lot more people on my Facebook are pessimists than I thought.

Congestion
Meh, I'm still not really pleased with this one. The synonyms made me think of crowding and tried to cram them into a small space. The angle was meant to make it feel more off kilter than if I had just put the square edges parallel to the frame edges. I don't know, could have been better.

Tension
This one gave me trouble at first, but as soon as I sketched this idea down, I knew it was the one. Tension can be seen a couple different ways. While many of my classmates were viewing it as the physical tension like you would see in a rope, I immediately went to the emotion behind the word. Tension is very negative and I associate many synonymous feelings with it like stress, anxiety, pressure, depression, etc. So, it's meant to be seen as the serene calm of the dark being cracked harshly causing a sort of sting that could be perceived as large or small..

Playful
I got a lot of really good synonyms on this one. Words like bouncy, floating, fun, and others were used by my friends on Facebook. These are all positive and upbeat feelings I wanted associated when looking at this design.

There you have it, finished design project numero uno. It gave me small fits of grief throughout the process, but over all it was pretty fun. Our next project is going to be about balance, but for now, I must study for our design quiz tomorrow. Thanks for checking in!

Week Two Under Way

Sooo, I should probably be doing homework, but I've only been awake for about an hour now. Week two has been off to a relatively good start. I'm still not entirely enjoying my metalworking class, but I think if I can just bring in a pair of ear plugs with me, I'll be okay. Nothing but hammers banging against steel for the first hour of class yesterday, it would be a very bad place to get a migraine.

Regardless of the alarmingly loud noises to be dealt with, the day went pretty smoothly. My Black Square project is not due until the beginning of class on Thursday, so I will be finishing that up tonight and posting it in here as soon as I can get a good picture of the finished work. Drawing is still by far my favorite class, though.

Last night we were working on the concept of mapping out a figure with lines and geometrical shapes before adding the fine and organic details. This is not a concept that I am unfamiliar with, but it was nice to get back to the roots and remind myself of the techniques that helped me to become better at drawing. So without further a due, here are the two pieces completed in class last night:

Don't worry, it's just pieces of a mannequin. The legs gave me a bit of trouble on the first one as you can see by the copious amounts of rubbed away charcoal (not included the intentional shading) and, a known problem I've had with figure drawing for years, her head was too large. I had more fun playing with geometric shapes and shadows on the second one. Of course, I bypassed drawing any toes per my own limitations at this time. No big fret, though, there are months left to hone my abilities and next semester I have Drawing II, so they'll only get better.

Well, I suppose that is all for now. I must get ready for my interview at the library center, so wish me luck! Until next time.

No Pictures this Morning. Sorry!

It's early, too early to leave for class. I can't help it though, I'm wide awake. So, I decided to add a brief and, unfortunately, picture-less blog entry. I've noted a couple of things that tell me a degree in art is definitely the right choice for me. I'm sure they will continue to multiply as the semester goes on, but for now, here they are.


#1: I can't stop doing my homework!
Now, I should preface with the truth that I did put off doing my homework this weekend, but I also had to work. As previously mentioned, this current job has a tendency to drain creative energy. That being said, once I started the homework I kept saying to myself "Okay, that's all the homework I need to get done." However, I kept finding myself wandering back over to my desk to do more. It can't be stopped!

#2: I wake up without the aid of snooze button.
Most people who know me or have every lived with me know that I am the queen of the snooze button. I set at least two alarms every morning for about 30 to 45 minutes before I really need to wake up. So far, my second alarm isn't even getting the chance to chime. Obviously I hit snooze to turn the first alarm off, but after spending over 5 minutes fighting the excitement of another school day, I knew I wasn't going back to sleep and sprung out of bed to get ready.


The long and short of it is that I always hear people talk about the difference between a job and a career. A job is what you do to pay the bills. With a job you can't wait to clock out and go home at the end of the day. With a career, however, there never seem to be enough hours in the day. When you're doing what you love, it no longer feels like work. I think I've finally found the path I'm supposed to be on.

Phew, okay, I think I killed enough time blogging that I can go ahead and leave for class now. That's right, I used my blog to fill the space between waking up early and leaving the house. What of it?!

Fall Semester Week 1... And so it BEGINS!!

Week one of my new scholarly endeavors has already proven to be a blast. I'm taking a very interesting art history class on non-western art in Africa, Oceania and the Americas. I haven't learned a whole lot yet, but I've only had two class periods so far. After that, I have a quick trot over to Ellis Hall where I'm taking my Metalworking & Jewelry class. So far, this is proving to be one of the more tedious classes.

Don't get me wrong, I love to make jewelry (I've actually been doing it for almost a decade now) so it's very nice to learn about techniques and medium I have very little experience with. However, think about it as if you were independently wealthy and owned 4 high end sports cars. Sure, you don't really dislike any of them (otherwise you'd be an idiot for spending so much on them), but you have your favorites. Hence, one of those awesome cars is going to be at the bottom of the list.

Right now we're working on a small layered project with brass, copper and nickel. It's mainly been tedious because we have to take 10 different magazine clippings and do 4 design evolutions (each) on top of the simplified tracing of the image itself. If you add that up, it's 10 tracings and 40 drawings. I get the idea of practicing and trying a bunch of different things, but I've already picked the one I want to do, so it's been difficult making myself complete the other 20+ evolutions I have left. No biggy, I plan to make quick work of them tonight.

Once I've completed the first half of my day, I then have to trek back to the car and take a little trip downtown for my two studio classes. The third class of the day is Two Dimensional Design. To my understanding, we will only be working with abstract images (hence the word 'design' in the class name). For example: our first project is the classic 'Black Square Problem'. We were given a list of 6 adjectives and our job is to creatively use 4 black squares to convey the emotion the word evokes. I'm happy with 2 or 3 of my designs so far, but I need to pay that project some extra attention tonight and tomorrow as we are turning it in at the end of class Tuesday.

And finally, once I take a brief one hour break following 2D Design, there is what is already my favorite class. I took a drawing class or two in high school, but it has been so long that I forgot how much I enjoyed honing my talent. Drawing I one is the last class of the day for me and is by far the most enjoyable class. No homework. No Tests. No wordy BS assignments. We are just drawing from life. As my instructor put it, we are learning the art of 'seeing'.

I'll admit I got really annoyed about half way through the blind draw (where you only look at the subject and not at what you are drawing), but that's because I like feedback that comes from looking at what I have done. Not too big of a deal, though, since we only did that for 30 minutes and the class is 2.5 hours long. After that, we were pretty much given free reign to draw anything we wanted in the room. I started by drawing my shoe:

Now, for anyone who might aspire to do still life work, I highly suggest that if your subject is an article of clothing make sure that it is not currently on your body. I had my leg stretched out at this angle for at least one hour before I couldn't take it anymore. My entire ass had fallen asleep and my lower back kind of felt like it was burning.

However, even with the numb butt, I was pretty proud of the improvement you see from one drawing to the other. The shoe on the left was the first attempt. With this one I sort of haphazardly started drawing. Of course I was becoming annoyed with the inaccurate proportions I could see and it is very difficult to effectively remove charcoal from newsprint. So, I started again and did quite a bit more planning before adding detail. Gently sketching out the prominent shapes I saw first allowed for a better skeleton for which to add the shoe details on later.

That's one hour I spent on drawing my foot, but what did I do with the last hour of class? Well, the instructor had set up a still life for the blind draw that consisted of a couple plants, animal skulls and a tussled table cloth. I decided to have some fun with the table cloth:

Now, he only wanted us to do line work, but I, again, was getting bored so I disregarded such instructions and let loose with some shading. I haven't used charcoal in so long that I had forgotten how dynamic the lines and shading can be. Sure, you can't keep a charcoal pencil as needle sharp as a graphite pencil, but when use effectively, charcoal can do what graphite cannot.

To wrap this up I will go ahead and say that I can tell this is going to be an amazing semester. I know this because I have only had two days of class and I'm already chomping at the bit to get back on Tuesday. I guess that means that I might be addicted to art...

That's right, I'm addicted to art. Say what you will, but I need it and there's nothing you can do to keep us apart. Now, hand me a tourniquet so I can shoot up with creativity, 'kay?

... What is this? A blog? Aren't blogs regularly updated?Hmm...

So, super long hiatus from the right brain retrain blog. I've had some ideas but no will to work on them. "But, Lindsay," you might ask,"Whatever could have caused you to lose the will to draw?" That is a very good question, it's called work. Not that it's a horrible job, but it drains the life and creative energy out of me.

Never fear, though, with school starting next week, the 2 week notice has been given and my focus it turning back to school. Hooray! Sure, I have yet to pick up my parking pass, and no I don't entirely remember how to get to the building where I'm taking my studio classes, but I'll figure it all out on Tuesday.

With all the excitement building about returning to school, and this time I'll be pursuing a major that I enjoy, you might expect a bubbly, happy and energetic picture, right? Unfortunately, no, this picture was not inspired by a child's joy, but the darker side of the inner child. With that, I present you with 'Please Appease the Id'.

That is the Freudian 'id', the one that rhymes with kid. I'm by no stretch of the imagination a psychology genius. I'm not even a psych student, but as much flack as Freud is given for his concepts, I believe there is quite a bit of truth to his structural model of the psyche (the one about the id, ego and super ego).

I won't go into the the major details of what I know about it, but to put it simply, the id is considered the drive to live and create while concurrently acting as the drive to die and destroy. When the id gets to be free on the playground, it can have fun and create (note: the id motivates a lot of our sexual intentions). But, when the id does not get to have fun or no longer has access to an outlet to appease it's drive to create new things, it turns to destruction. It's the idea of annual forest fires caused by mother nature to burn away the old and make way for new growth.

To put it simply, this picture was done as a metaphor for the balancing act of allowing the inner child to have just enough fun and be appeased without destroying necessary structure in life. The picture came to me during an introspective discussion about some negative behaviors I have displayed in the past and how some of them still linger. Of course, every aspect of life is about finding a healthy compromise.

If it were left up to kids, they would never go to school, never clean their room and never share their toys. They would just play and be goofy little hyper-dweebs all day. However, without learning valuable lessons in responsibility and finding the balance between work and play, those children would never grown up to be complete and functioning adults.

So, while I carry around an id that sometimes becomes overwhelming and makes impulsive decisions, I have learned to actually communicate with that id. It can be challenging, but I find out what it really wants from the situation so that I can give it just enough of what it needs. This is important because if you don't indulge the id occasionally, they throw a fit and wreck your shit... And by shit I mean your brain and you need your brain... At least I do... Mostly.

Until next time!