Post Card Project

 When thinking about what I could choose for my set of six cards, I cycled through a few ideas, originally I wanted to play off the classical maximalist design tourism postcards have, where the colors are very saturated the background is lively, and each of the letters contain a different image.

This is exactly what came to mind, I was going to change the words to Pasco and have each letter represent some of the natural wildlife in my community. However I veered away from this idea when met with time and weather challenges, but at some point I'd like to revisit it.

My second idea was to capture some photos at my local hockey rink and to have each of the postcards have a fun little quirp for each of the images- I ended up just making a uniform set of layers to apply to the images after they were edited in Lightroom. 

Halfway through making said layers my version of photoshop was having difficulty and would not function properly, and I ended up having to scrap the first set of designs- but remade them a second time after restarting my computer and the app.

These post cards came  out okay, but there is definitively a few things that I could have spent more time on, primairly editing the photos and fixing up the font choice.

The demographic for my postcards was for people who attend the rink to send them to other rinks or people they know that skate, "From our rink to yours".

Lastly here is the back of the card.

Creativity Post 4

 While drawing I often find myself building off of previous art experiences and habits, which typically later on snowball into characteristics of my style. One of the main examples of this is using quick simple lines to add depth and texture.

For example:

 

Here is an unfinished sketch of two ranchhands having a discussion. In the detail of the hat there is simple one directional crosshatching and unique squiggles to block out divets that would be in the hat. Typically once I render and shade a piece these silly shapes actually act as a guide and mental note to me on how and where to shade. 

Here's an example of a rendered hat.

 

Using transparency locks and clipping layers I color the line art different shades to show that the lines are above the divets and are the peak of the hat.

Personally, I think texture and cross hatching are very important tools in artwork to know how to use or be aware of, even if your aren't focused in illustrations knowing how shading and depth will effect symbols or graphics can make a piece really pop out. Which is why for this week's exercise I wanted to go through and recreate graphics (using circles) that represent a few types of shading.

Cel shading:

Cel shading is cartoonish rendering style that is not realistic, it is used to make something look more hand drawn and has hard edges and flat colors.

Soft shading:

Soft shading appears more painterly, it utilizes blending colors and creating gradients between shades to make depth look more natural.

Cross hatch shading:

Cross hatching is the use of many lines overlapped to build a sense of shadow, started in one direction this builds the base, then layering in the opposite direction to build onto it, this can have a variety of pen weight to add more or less shadow.

My mockup of the three as an exercise:

Creativity post 3

 While browsing on Pinterest I came across a series of images that an artist used to challenge themselves, in the works they drew a few things from memory, and to further push the challenge they made a rule that the drawing could only contain one line (as in not picking up the pen off the page unless for wrist break). I thought this would make for a fun challenge and good creative exercise, so I gave it a try.

To make these designs, I used a 2659x2944 canvas on Ibis Paint, as its the default I set onto the app, and then I thought of what to draw. Horses are known in the art community as anatomical nightmares as they are quite hard to draw properly, while I agree with the difficulty, its always fun to draw animals and push their features into more stylized ones, so I decided a horse would be my first attempt- for my second attempt I wanted to draw another animal, so, taking inspiration from my cat, that's what I went with. Lastly I wanted to go with a bigger piece, so to make it a little easier I went with a hockey goalie, as that's more in my realm of art.

Designing Emotion

 When trying to decide what song I wanted to go for, I immediately went for something in the genre of country music, as many of the songs are very strong in emotion and often have a story telling aspect behind the lyrics. In 2019 the album "Pony" was released by Orville Peck, and is now the series of songs that rose him to fame, as they took on a very retro vibe to traditional country that carries strong emotion and feeling to the listener. One of my own personal favorites on Pony is "Dead of Night" a song about reminiscing over a persons absence- its very lonesome and aims to hit in the feelings.

While this assignment aims to avoid referencing the song directly, I still wanted to incorporate some of that night time feel, this song gives the impression that there is a feeling of regret lingering while the "story teller" recalls good times and the lack there of.

Starting on my canvas, 16x20 in, I tested out a few colors to push the emotion of loneliness and desperation, eventually I landed on a darker blue, falling closer to purple, afterwards I added a "grunge texture" effect on top and selected multiply to create a grainy background, the color I went with made it hard to see the texture so I reset the texture to overlay, and lightened up the background color (#7474a2), moving on, I looked up some free to use images of the night sky and quickly found a handful that I cycled in and out of the canvas, finally landing on a starry sky- I set this as an add layer and changed the opacity to 40% which gave me the exact effect I was looking for, at this point I was brainstorming as I went but when I set in this starry background it had an empty block in the center which immediately gave me the idea I wanted to use. For my idea, I wanted to add a sinking ship and blend it into the sky so it appeared as if the boat was sinking into the vast depths of space, so I went and found another free to use image and took the background out and used a low opacity airbrush eraser to help me blend and use an additional add layer. My main message now for this piece was; When caught up with the intensity of emotion, you can let yourself sink. I wanted the space to represent the emotion, as in the song the singer is feeling very alone, and space is quite empty. Moving on I added in a lighthouse to give a slight spotlight to the text I wanted to add into this piece "Just don't sink" to represent "coming to your senses". For the spot light I used the lasso tool to select my areas both on the "water" and slightly on the boat, here I cycled through a handful of layer options, but soft light suited it best with a 54% opacity.

The last things I added to this piece was the text, using a font I downloaded online called "Theboldfont-bold" added in the tagline and used a clipping layer on top to add more of the starry effect so the text was just hardly visible (sometimes the voice of reason can be hard to listen to) and then I went and added some black and white images of rodeo clipart to add into the background (set to multiply).

My biggest challenge in this was trying to convey the emotion in the song without directly referencing the lyrics or story- it was a bit difficult for me to get abstract with this, but it helped me learn a new style and how to achieve a less illicit meaning. Additionally I struggled at first finding images to tie into this, but quickly there was a few reddit forums that pointed me in the right direction.

 

Creativity post- 2

 For my creativity exercise this week, I did quick art challenge that requires you to try and think outside the box, or rather in this case, circle. Originally I saw this idea while browsing for things to try this week on https://www.ideo.com/journal/build-your-creative-confidence-30-circles-exercise . Ideo is a company that helps build up future designers through their blog, however primairly they offer their services in the world of design, creating mockups.

The idea of this challenge is to take a set of circles (I only did 12 for this case) and to create different designs inside of them within a short span of time. To keep myself from staying too long on one design I set a timer for 10 minutes max for the piece, though I'd recommend more time if needed. Originally I was going to keep the piece black and white with maybe some greyscale, but the chrome logo just needed that pop of color- and so using that color palette I went in and colored each circle. 

While this exercise doesn't produce anything mind boggling, it was a very helpful warm-up that gets you into thinking,  personally I can absolutely see myself going back and using this idea before getting started on projects.

(From left to right; Ornament, Chrome, Tire, Smile Logo, Two smiles having a conversation, a curled up cat, a warped globe, circle lettering, a moon, planet, and sun)

Design post 2

 For this week in reviewing design, I decided to pay closer attention to the advertisements that appeared on my recommended page on social media. Nowadays with technology being readably available to a consumer market of all different types, brands have poured tons of money shifting their marketing into digital spaces. Even in this class we reference Instagram layouts and must regard how our designs will be displayed on different browsers. 

Below I went into 2 brands that came up on my page and noted their styles, what they sold, price range, and what I'd like to implement into my own works.

Brixton

Brixton is a newer clothing brand that was founded around the time (2004) the internet first started making its appearance. They strive to create clothes that negate fast fashion and can remain trendy for years to come. Looking into their clothes, they make more western casual wear, and street wear.

The advertisement that caught my eye, was the company's newest collaboration with Coors beer, who has always had a very unique and notorious style of rodeo clothing. The clothes in this collection range in price, around $30-$100 for most the items, the series includes a few shirts, hoodies, a custom cowboy hat, and 2 winter flannels. In their photos, they include closeups of the product focusing on the name and main designs, while their editing uses a intresting reverse vignette.

Imaginary Authors

Imaginary Authors is a very unique body health brand, they primarily sell scents and soaps. The company was founded in 2012, and has the model of selling smells based off of books, but books that don't exist. A lot of their marketing is minimalistic and relies on the artwork of the product to carry the pallet of the rest of the image. They sell three different sizes ranging from $5-$110 in price.

Design Post- 1

 Recently in the world of sports, there was a huge announcement of an official professional women's hockey league, the PWHL, in their first year, a lot of it was messy marketing, no logos had been made, most the interaction on social media seemed rushed, over all was quite a wreck.

However, as assured they told the new following that real logos would be revealed 'next season', and that is exactly what they did. Below are the inaugural six logos for the new league.

Many people who had been following the newly founded league were beyond disappointed- many stating that the logos seemed flat and uninteresting. The hockey world collectively had been excited to see the new teams logos, myself included, and yet these designs feel very uninspired. I wanted to go in and break down the logos, and see why people disliked them.

Hockey is a sport that has been around for ages, with the NHL itself being founded in 1917, with over 30 teams that have had an extensive history of logos, logo fails, and some of the most memorable designs in sports history. The designers of these six logos have had many examples of how the people take in certain logos.

Lets take an older design from one of the original six teams- Montréal Canadians, or also known as, The HABS, truly have an uninteresting logo, its timeless for sure, and recognizable by any hockey fan- which is what I assume how these logos wanted to be treated- the only issue is that all of the teams in the league went the same route, leaving no character for mascots, or even unique styles, the Ottawa charge having been compared constantly to a nearby NHL team, the Calgary Flames.

Hopefully for future teams, or even logo redesigns (in sports its almost unavoidable) they can implement characteristics that involve the areas they play in, or even a mascot to give the team as a whole more character, as it would greatly improve the ability to follow and find interest in the team.

As for now, they look like copy and paste high-school sports teams, a shame for a highly anticipated reveal.  
   

   

Week 1 Creativity

 These last two weeks have been increasingly hectic for me, and while looking into creativity prompts I found a few that had related to my last creativity prompt. In the last prompt I explored different brushes and drew a variety of shapes and directions of lines to explore how they change with line weight. Unfortunately not my most branched out of the comfort zone idea, I wanted to go in and get into the nitty gritty of line weight.

When looking at older trucks, around the 90's and early 2000's a lot of them sported these complex yet minimalistic shapes and lines across the flank sides. Most popular in the Ford Ranger and the Toyota pickup truck- these designs sparked some inspiration in me, and I wanted to go in my art program and try to recreate them.

While doing research on how to breakdown these shapes, an important process when doing anything automotive, I realized that these patterns fell into a similar category and style as a newer genre of tattoo, called
- which like the trucks, goes for a complex yet minimalistic design using thin shapes and crescents.

  I wanted to replicate these kinds of designs onto a newer vehicle, preferably a truck as the shapes are a lot easier to follow. Using a clip from a friends instagram, I took the truck and used a basic pencil brush to go in and get the thin intricate lines. In some of the versions I included his tag line and brand name to try and get to look more like a racing livery, but in the end the plain, only shapes version, was my favorite. I'll include a few renditions.

Even if you have no interest in cars, trucks, or things of the sort, I highly recommend trying to replicate this style of image, as it helps train you to use a lighter hand when trying to get details, and helps you break down shapes in images or references. Personally this helped me with getting my pressure sensitivity into a more manual setting.