Finals Week is Upon Us!!

I haven't really thought out what this post is about. I'm feeling... restless, I suppose. So a blog post seemed like the best option for getting it out. Finals are this week, and this is the first semester where studying is not the only preparation I have to do for the end of the semester. Sure, I have an Art History Essay exam on Thursday (which I only need to make a 78% on), but the list is pretty short after that.

All we're doing for Drawing I is showing up to pick up any drawings the instructor still has. I thought metalworking would be taking up most of my time, but as it turned out, my focus for this unit had been working on the only thing that is due next Thursday. Everything else was due last Thursday, so I spent 48 hours in a mad dash to get everything done. Now all that's left is for me to design and create a clasp for the chain due Thursday that's pretty much done already.

That all ended up working out really well, though, because Up until Friday, I hadn't really started on my final project for 2D Deign. Sure, I had the concept and had sort of designed the general layout using Photoshop, but the actually piece didn't get any attention until about 40-48 hours ago. The project is to create two images. One with characteristics of Decorative art and one Plastic. So, definitions:

Decorative: I'm paraphrasing, but basically it is a piece of artwork that makes no illusions about it's 2-Dimensional nature. It is flat and doesn't try to appear otherwise.

Plastic: These are the pieces of art that seem to expand backward into the frame. They appear to 3-Dimensional. Plastic space is created by using many techniques including shading, perspective, fuzzy detail for things further away and muting colors as they move back in the frame... And a whole bunch of other stuff I can't remember off the top of my head. Anyway...

Of course I made it more complicated than I needed to and chose to do three images instead of just two. The first is still decorative and the last is still plastic, but the middle one will have properties of both. Here's a picture of what I have done so far:

There is absolutely no third dimension in the binary code, as you can see. It's very decorative. I ended up printing the binary and tracing it with pen on green card stock. I then colored in the black with sharpie. The second one is the in between that has aspects of both decorative and plastic. Each techno-gadget has it's own shading and they are on top of each other as they move to the front. At first I was going to do this in papercraft, but aftre stuggling for over and hour to get the keyboard done, I though "eff this ish." So I got the line work lightly traced and did all the color free hand with Prismacolor markers.

Today I am working on the last one. The full plastic image is proving to be a pretty large and complex project. Currently all I have managed was to map out the perspective of the street and the people on it. Now I actually have to start drawing and designing all the details. I'm not sure what medium I'll be doing it in yet, but I think paint or marker are the leading contenders.

That's all for now, I suppose. I'll make sure to post a picture of it once it's complete... Assuming that I get it done by the Tuesday deadline. Until next time!