leonkingsgraphicdesign-blog

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Term evaluation

From this last term I have learnt many new skills to help me through the course, this ranges from mac skills to compositional drawing.

One of the skills I have learnt is entopic graphomania which is line drawings based of the position of text on a book page or document, you use the lines to create a design and this can become a great piece of artwork, I found this task to be rather easy but my outcome could have been a bit better.

The next week we did dry point prints which is when you carve and cut lines out of a piece of lino, I found the process to work quite well even with some fiddly shapes, I enjoyed this task as it allowed me to progress through on just one piece of lino and create 5 different dry point designs.

The paper cutting task I found rather fun but cutting through paper was the easy part I found it so much harder to cut a nice design form the cardboard, we was tasked to create a 3d sculpture and our team created a hanging design with symbols from all of our logos, these came out quite well with everyone working together as a team, we could have done a nicer design if we thought about it a bit more.

I have done a large range of artist’s research in my sketchbook around my theme of war from chemical warfare to Ganesh the Hindu god, I have managed to fit my theme around the topic of mars quite well and I am enjoying the work I have been doing.

The next task we was set was to create 2 posters designed from 2 lines of song’s lyrics that we received, my posters was tweaked slightly by some of my tutors opinions which made a change for the best as they came out a lot nicer than the original thumbnail designs I had drew up, I have completed them both and they fit to my lyrics rather well I found this task to be exciting because I love using illustrator and Photoshop.

The task we did next was to create a flipbook from our themes, my theme being war I chose to create a scene of planes bombing a city from a downwards perspective and it came out rather well although I found this task to become quite tedious over time and if I was to put more time into it could create a far better flowing design.

On Fridays we now go to the ceramics room to create things out of clay for our projects, our tutors have set us tasks to create clay tiles and scenes for our projects which I created and you can see in my sketchbook, but what I really enjoyed doing was throwing on a wheel, this is where you spin clay on a wheel and create a pot, vase, bowl or anything of your choice, my pots came out nicely said the ceramics tutor and said I did well for my first few tries.

The task we did in the normal rooms was pattern repeat which allows you to create a pattern that can be joined from any of the sides to create a continuous design so you can use it for something like wallpaper of a tile flooring for example, this task was hard because you had to create such a flowing design and It has to connect well but I managed to create an okay design of which I thing works quite well for a funky wallpaper.

The last task we set out to do for this term was to create an animation using adobe after effects, from using other adobe programs I picked this up quite quick as our tutors walked us through all the necessary steps to making a decently flowing animation, I enjoyed this task and would love to do it again for another project.

In evaluation I believe this term has come to a good close and I have done some good work for my project and I cannot wait for the next term to roll on, finally I would like to say I am enjoying my course so far and would love to complete the 2 full years and work hard.

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Week Evaluation

For the first day we was in the print room doing 3d sculptures using different mediums such as paper, card and cardboard, my team sat down and began to research different design ideas and produced a mind map of ideas. Once we had our idea we set out to produce it, this was harder than we thought because the cardboard was much harder to cut than we had presumed but that did not hold us back. We had a 3d structure in the middle created by 3 side panels and 2d paper cut designs hanging from beneath, we also had a spiral from the centre to represent DNA. I believe our design looked better than the one we had designed before-hand and it worked very well but we could have produced something bigger.

The second day we was in the mac room doing something of which rob had wanted to do for a long time, to produce a video of artwork we had to create from the lyrics of the chosen song by bob Dylan, I had a few designs and I did some thumbnail drawings to show my ideas but I went with a military jacket with a medal attached, this related to the song and also my theme. I really enjoyed this task and I think my artwork came out quite well. I would say this week has been a very productive week and I have learnt a lot and I wish to progress with my mac work.

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weekly evaluation

This week we have done  many things, on the Thursday we was in the print room down stairs doing lino prints with liz, this is when you cut out areas of a piece of lino and score lines into it making it into some sort of pattern. Once you have done this you can then use inks to cover the entire lino tile, once you have done this you place a damp piece of paper over the top of it and wheel it through the compressor making the lino design transfer onto the paper, we did this a total of 6 times, after the 4th time we started using collage related to our theme giving a unique look to the rest.

The next day we had the morning in the main room doing entopic graphomania, this is when you use an article or book page to create a piece of art using dots and lines, you dot words beginning with a certain letter and create your design. Once we had done this we further developed them on the macs as graphics, we recreated them using illustrator and then created some designs from them, we added words or numbers to theme related to our theme and my theme being war I chose 1945.

I think I did quite well at this task and we all managed to create some sort of piece of art from our entopic graphmanias.

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Week evaluation

This week I have learnt a lot of new skills involving typography and illustration, the first task we did was to choose a topic word for our project, my world was war because I think that can tie in with maths, art, religion and science very well.

Once we had chosen our topic word we had to create a mind map for the MARS project using the key word so for example for art I talked about the propaganda used during the time of World War 1 and 2.

Our next task was for us to create a A3 page of our word written in different fonts to show how the type face can create a completely different emotion, for war I used very blocky styles because even though it’s a short word it is a very strong one and can easily shock an entire country or even the world.

The next page was to create a negative space using our word, we had to choose a letter from our word of which I choose W I choose this because it has some interesting shapes allowing me to implement illustration into the typefaces. The outcome was to have the letter written in negative space by having loads of words writing around the form of the letter.

Finally our last task was to create 6 compositional drawings using our words as the structure of the design, we would later create positive and negative designs.

I think this week’s work has been very productive and I did quite well overall I am open to the ideas for each piece of work and believe I am progressing.

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what have i learnt this week?

this week i have learnt many different ways of sourcing my work from using the harvard referencing system and this will help me progress through my sketchbook, we also went on a trip to london to see 3 museums the V and A the natural history museum and the science museum. 

what has influenced my decisions?

i have done a lot of artist research and this has influenced my work for this week a lot from sketching animals to looking at different science things on the internet and in the museum. 

response? 

i have responded to sources by making it very clear what i have used from where and what i have used, i have linked all my sources with my work and i will be doing this for all my sketchbook work from now on.

what was successful?

i believe the trip was very successful as i got many sketches from each museum and also i have used sourcing to link all my work, i have redone my work if i didnt like it and shown the progress and development of my work.

problems?

i have discovered a few problems whilst going along such as finding the source link for my work but i over came this by re researching the artist or movement i was looking at.

im going to take my book forward and carry on with the science research and also with the religion research once this is all done i will have finished the mars project checklist. 

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Project Evaluation

What I learnt this week

This week I have learnt a lot of key techniques of which I have been able to use across the whole project, my tutors have done a very well in showing us many different ways to go about creating art and producing my work. In the past week we have been working in groups of 6 to create work as part of a business, my team was called gd6. The work we created was to be judged together by the client, the 2 projects we did as our clients work was the create a 3d piece of work such like a sculpture, the team communicated very well as a group and we managed to produce our piece of work neatly and in the way we viewed it. The next project we was set was to create our logos for our team, the team worked well at this task and managed to come up with 6 unique designs of which were very different. We then had to have a meeting with the client to discuss the right logo from each of us and we progressed each of our designs on the computer we then settled on using one of the designs for our business of which we all developed on the macs.

Influences and development

We had influences from many different artists but on the last day we was taken to an open house of which we was able to look around the many different pieces of art work placed around the house, this was a very eye opening experience for each one of us and helped us to see that art can be an open book and should be made yours with whatever feeling and desires you have at the time. Furthermore we used these influences to create some of the work we have done in our sketchbooks, we even went to an art museum which displayed some very large and unique pieces of art and it inspired me. We have used different mediums to recreate our art work as a piece of art is never finished.

What was successful?

Our artwork was successful at sometimes but as I had not done these tasks before I found it hard with some tasks to create the work needed, for example when drawing the Canterbury cathedral I wasn’t very good at doing quick sketches because the building is so delicate and defined.

Overcoming problems

I overcame problems by using repetition, by doing the work over and over again I have progressed with how good I am at it. I believe that if you fail at something or you don’t like the outcome you should just do it again and again until you eventually get what you was hoping for and if that doesn’t work you could simply recreate the work in a different medium of which you are good at such as pencil or paints.

Developing ideas

I have developed ideas by using different mediums to create the same piece of work just in a different perspective, when you redo a idea it can be completely different from your initial design. You can even change some of the design so if you was to not like an area of your design you could develop it to create a better piece of work that you are proud of. Furthermore a piece of artwork is never finished so you could recreate the design 100 times and it will still be unique in its own way being colours, shapes, materials and so on.

What now

I believe I will be developing my work as part of my team to create work for the client, the work will be perfected and tweaked by all 6 of us to show we can work well as part of a team, furthermore we can use our team skills to make more work together and please our client.

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Primary & Secondary sources

A primary source is when you have used data that you have created such as taking a photograph or doing a quick sketch, A secondary source is when you might draw up a detailed drawing from that photo you took or even doing a drawing from someone else’s work.

In the project we have been doing in college we have used many different sources and many of them are primary and secondary. From the photos I have listed below you can see that the the photos I took of my room are primary source because they are my photographs, you can then see after I have recreated these photos using tracing paper and coloured pens this is the secondary source part of my work. We have used this technique many times through-out our project this gives us a good reference for each piece of work.

One of the other photos is of a mood board which is a collection of photos to show what the work piece will be about, all the photos are my own that I took of Canterbury Cathedral meaning they are all primary source but furthermore once I had created this mood board we traced key details and implemented them into a composition, we used this composition to create a secondary piece of art work.

I believe that using primary and secondary sources is a great use for experimenting with different types of art work and it really helped me to learn how to create my own unique work, there are examples of primary and secondary sources all around us such a flower in a field or a poster.

(photos wouldn’t post)

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Materials Characteristics

When doing my course work I have used a number of different materials to create my art work this is because I like to be diverse with using different mediums. Through the different activities we have used different processes which also enabled us to use different mediums for our work.

 A list of the materials I have used: pencils, fine liners, Indian ink, paper, card, felt tip, acrylic paints, ball point pen, tracing paper, Photoshop, illustrator, InDesign, photographs, cardboard, gouache paints, newspaper print, water colours, wire and finally string.

 My favourite medium to use from hand is defiantly pencil I like how the lines flow with every curve when you touch the paper, there are any things you can do after would such as outline it with a black fine liner or you could colour it in with coloured pens or felt tip. To add to that you could further that piece of art work by scanning it into a computer and using Photoshop or Illustrator to create a digital image of your artwork. My next favourite medium to use is photography, you can do many things with photography you can take 100 photos of the same object and they each be different if you change one of the many aspects such as position or lighting.

 I believe that by using multiple mediums to either create work or progress work further is a very good way to display your work, by doing so you show you’re not stuck in a box of one piece of creative mind you show that a piece of work is never finished. I think my work does and fill show that in the time that I am a graphic designer and in everyday tasks.

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This week we used an object to produce images with simplistic features so I used a cassette tape because it has some very distinct features, once we had drawn out these sections of the object we then used positive and negative to create more simplistic shapes and designs I liked how mine turned out as they were a good contrast for the sections that I had drawn. We had also had a catch up lesson for our books to make sure everything was annotated and furthermore up to date. The next day we was in the main room doing knolling this is when a group of objects are in a certain order to create a well-balanced layout furthermore knolling can be used to create a nice display work with the correct amount of negative and positive space. Once we had finished this we had moved onto using collage, we did this by creating shapes and object from our objects and placing them onto paper of different colours which we cut out, we created collages with these shapes and stuck them down, once we had finished this we recreated our collages using gouache paints which took a long time as we had to be quite accurate with our brushes, then we went onto doing the same designs using water colour.

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This week we have been experimenting with using positive and negative space to create a composition of shapes. First we was in the print room making compilations using only black pens and pencils leaving the white space as the negative areas, the create a few different designs I used different line thicknesses and changed the position of the lines and shapes. We had moved onto using opposite colors for our compositions such as doing the design 2 times but coloring in the opposite sections white and black to show the negative and positive areas. Once we had an idea of what we was doing we was instructed to use a piece of lino and some tools to create the same designs, we did this by cutting out lines or small sections to create depth and directional lines. We printed these lino patterns by rolling ink onto them and putting them thorough a very old press, we did this 4 times once in yellow, once in blue, once with layered blue and yellow and finally once on a group piece of work to show a compilation of our work from the day.

On the second day we was with rob in the mac rooms, we first did some writing and research into different of processes we will have to do as graphic designers some including Balance, Rhythm, closure, proportion and also DPS which means double page spread. We then lead onto using illustrator to create pieces of work using shapes such that we had created before known as code, we was only allowed to use red, black and grey in our work I believe my work from this week was quite successful and came out looking nice, if I was to do it again I would consider practicing with the lino tools first and also creating more designs using illustrator for a larger range of results.

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alexander calder