Missing Europe

Last summer, I was most fortunate enough to attend a two and a half week trip to London and Paris with two instructors from the Art Department and a (large) handful of us art kiddos. It was... awesome, amazing, beautiful, eye-opening, exhausting, wonderful, unforgettable... you get the idea.

I've been missing that trip lately. We returned June 31st of last summer, so about this time last year I was still high (metaphorically) from the trip.

Since I can't afford a $1500-something plane ticket, I will post some JMW Turner images instead. We got to see an entire gallery of his work. It was phenomenal. Even his "sketches" were better than anything I've ever painted.

(this is my desktop background)

Modern Rome: Campo Vaccino, 1839. JMW Turner

Ulysses deriding Polyphemus - Homer's Odyssey, 1829. JMW Turner

Regulus, 1828. JMW Turner

Alternative Media Project

The alternative media project has been the most enjoyable project, for me, thus far.

The assignment was to select/sketch a simple image/logo, then reproduce the image through non-traditional media.

My process started with brainstorming to generate ideas for the kinds of media I would use. I had a lot of ideas that I was excited about. Some of the ideas that I wanted to do didn't work out. I wanted to make my image out of Cheerios in a bowl of milk. The cereal kept moving and sticking to each other and made it impossible to create my image. So I figured I could edit the picture in photoshop, so I took a picture of the Cheerios the way that they were in the bowl. When I started editing the picture in photoshop, I ran into a couple problems. I think if I was more proficient in photoshop I would have been successful at editing the images. The first problem I had was cutting out the Cheerio. I should have taken the picture with just one Cheerio in the bowl. The problem was getting all of the unneccessary Cheerios out of the picture and then filling in that space with milk. The way the lighting was, the milk had a slight gradient effect, which I tried very hard to reproduce, but couldn't. I ended up not using the cereal picture at all, which I was a little upset about. I think towards the end of the semester when I am better at photoshop I will try the cereal image again.

The other photo I wanted to have was one where the image was cut out of grass. So the image would be really short grass and the other grass would be taller around it. This didn't really work out either, I think the grassy area I was using had too short of grass. That is how I ended up with the dandelion picture. I saw the dandelion in the grassy area I was in, and decided I could just create my image by reproducing dandelions. I was pretty pleased with the outcome of the dandelion photo, but I think, again, if I was better at photoshop, the photo would be more convinving.

The other photo that I edited in photoshop was the photo of the water on the pavement. The original photo (which is not on my picasa album) was actually my third attempt at making the image with the water. It was a lot harder than I was expecting! The water would spread out when it was soaking into the pavement making my image into a jumbled mess. The third attempt was the best looking of the three, and then I edited it a little in photoshop. I just used the lasso tool to copy so of the pavement in the picture and put the pavement over some areas that were wet that I didn't want to be. I also used this process to clean up some of the edges and to tighten up the image some. I was pretty pleased with how it turned out.

I really enjoyed this project. I think I could probably do this project again using the same image and still have 10 new photos done. Once my brain got going, I just kept thinking of ideas.

Check out my album:
http://picasaweb.google.com/JordanBeckerDesign/AlternativeMedia?authkey=Gv1sRgCOPK2sjZ8o-6PQ&feat=directlink

Developing Graphical Images

For some people, like myself, it is very hard for me to eliminate the details and just leave the important information. I feel like everything is important! So there are some things to keep in mind when you are having trouble simplifying images to make them less like a picture and more like a graphic image:

1. try to make things as geometric as you can... boxes, circles, squares, etc. Even if you go back and make the shape more complex, simplifying the image with just geometric shapes can really help you identify what is truly an important part of the shape.

2. try to make things solid. Solid shapes are much easier to read, especially from far away. And sometimes, when you are trying to a figure out how to make the image have the information it needs and still make it a solid object, it will help you eliminate unnecessary details.

Gestalt psychology

Gestalt psychology basically says this: people are smart. They like to figure things out. They don't want things to be laid out so plain and simple that there is no challenge. So, when you apply this to art, this means people like to figure out what the piece means, or is supposed to be, etc. There are several parts to Gestalt psychology:

Emergence: we can form entire images when just a small part of the image is shown and the rest is implied
Reification: we can form shapes with implied and imaginary lines
Multistability: when an image can pop back and forth between two different images/objects
Invariance: we can recognize geometric shapes even when they are rotated or morphed
Pragnanz: we like to order things

• law of closure: if you draw something with a broken line, we will just visually close the line
• law of similarity: our mind groups things with similarities
• law of proximity: our mind groups things according to distance
• law of symmetry: things that are symmetrical are groups regardless of distance or location
• law of continuity: our mind will continue with already formed patterns
  

• law of common fate: our mind groups things that are moving in the same general direction

These rules and theories are very important to keep in mind when making art because we don't want our viewer to think that we, as the artist, think the viewer is dumb. We want to give the viewer the satisfaction of "figuring it out" after looking at our work. And, sometimes, leaving things out or making things harder to figure out make the piece more interesting and unique.

My Academic Future

This semester I am enrolled in:

ART 2610 - Intro to Graphic Design & Illustration
GRAP 3160 - Residential Architectural Drawing
HONR 3000 - Honors Colloquium - Technology & Creativity
ART 3330 - Restaurant & Store Planning
CMGT 3330 - Building Codes & Code Administration
ART 3340 - Interior Detailing & Furniture Design

Next semester I plan on enrolling in:

ART 4340 - Corporate & Institutional Design
ART 4860 - Contemporary Art & Design
ART 4020 - Studio Seminar
ART 3320 - Professional Practice
ICAP 4221 - Artists in Contemporary Society

*I also have to do my Honors Project at some point.. and I'm not exactly sure where that will fit into (I need to have a meeting with the Honors College) so there is a good possibility that I will have to take an extra semester.. In which case.. I would probably enroll in any combination of the following:

ART 3420 - Sculpture II
GRAP 4162 - Commercial Architectural Drawing
GRAP 2160 - Structural Drafting
CMGT 1300 - Intro to Construction Management