spatialdesignii

[spatialdesignii]

Final Iterations

Last night I finished all of my drawings ready for the hand in today, and this morning I gave myself time to read through all of my work to check for any mistakes or things that don't make sense. So now, I think I can say... I'm done!

I mostly made small changes. I made the figures more prominent in the contributions and conversations image and brought the cakes further to the back because I was mostly focussing on the people in the drawing at what they were doing, so the cakes were less important. And, in the other section, I did the opposite, where I made the cakes solid colours and brought them forward and let the figures fall to the back because the purpose of the drawing is to show that the cakes were on display.

Overall Reflection

This has been a bit of a crazy semester, but somewhat reminiscent of the end of last year! Hopefully, next year has a slightly different ending to it, so we're not in lockdown or online classes when it comes to saying goodbye.

I'm happy with my drawings, but of course, there is always room for improvement. Mostly, though, I think they depict what I wanted them to, and I don't think I would change a lot. Especially in regards to the use of colour, I think I finally figured out how to use colour to show the atmosphere without looking overly childish.

My goal this semester was to make sure I kept up with my blog and reflected as I worked, rather than just making sure everything is on the blog at the end. Using the blog as a tool rather than just another assessment I need to finish has been super helpful even just to collect my thoughts and to look back on everything I'd done so far to see if I'm still on the right track. In previous semesters I'd just used my blog to show process work, and I would just update it every week or so with all the images I'd taken/drawn and I'd explain them, but I wouldn't reflect a lot. So I'm happy I took a different approach this semester because I feel like this is the entire point of the blog in the first place.

Another small takeaway from this semester is that having full-time work and full-time Uni simultaneously is a terrible idea - which is obvious, because there's just not enough time in the day, but it seemed like a good idea at the time. However, from this point forward, I will be hibernating and only coming out of my cave when absolutely necessary.

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I tried a few different variations of the floor plan using the fondant printing technique but I don't really like them. and I don't like the print by itself either. I mean I like it, and I think printing is a really satisfying medium, but I think in terms of what I want my drawing to show, I would be better off leaving my drawing as is.

It looked okay as a drawing after some very heavy editing, but editing it that much took away the novelty of the print and it almost just reverted back to being more digital than my original drawing.

[spatialdesignii]

I tried the same printing technique with my floor plan by digitally printing the floor plan first, and then drawing on top of it to transfer the image to the fondant. Then I took the paper off and carved out some of the negative spaces so that there would be colour just where the black was originally. This got very confusing very quickly, and now is also when I realised that the image will be inverted when I press my paper on top of it and that I should have flipped the image originally... but anyway! I wanted to see how the image would come out, so I kept going and figured I could photoshop it later if I wanted.

(Detail of the food colouring on top of the fondant)

I think the reason that this works is because the fondant is slightly hydrophobic, so it doesn't soak up the colour like a wood stamp would. Judging by my experiments, fondant will soak up large amounts of food colouring fairly slowly, which allows you to make several prints. Well, either that or it just dries out eventually, I can't really tell.

These are the prints that my carving produced, in order of left, top right and then bottom right.

This worked in a very similar way to what lino printing does, which in hindsight makes sense. The only real difference between printing with fondant and lino is that fondant collects very subtle imprints, like the creases in your hands, that also can make their way into the final image.

I found it fascinating that printing with fondant conveys duration in the opposite way to what my event would. While my event gets messier and more colourful over time, the prints produced with fondant lose their colour the more you use them (assuming you don't reapply the food colouring). I also noticed that as I pressed paper into the fondant multiple times, even though I was being as gentle as possible, the prints would start losing their definition because the fondant carving would start losing its dimension.

I want to incorporate this technique into my final aerial view drawing instead of just the digitally drawn/photoshopped image because I think it's more interesting and explorative, and the materials are heavily related to cake decorating, which is of course a large theme of my event.

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Initial experiments using fondant and food colouring to print an image

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Prototype experimenting

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Progress

I've been working on making my drawings more colourful to better display the atmosphere of my event. I think I have improved them?

A Cake Timeline

Looking at all of my drawings together like this, I might change the order slightly to put this cake timeline as the second drawing because I think it would tell the story better. Originally, I always had it near the beginning because I felt like it describes the whole event and is therefore a good introduction. I feel like, specifically in relation to the rest of the drawings and captions, the cake timeline would be better to come after the 'Contributions' drawing. I'm happy with the drawing itself though, but I want to edit the caption to be more descriptive of the stages of the event, and I need to edit for grammar mistakes.

Contributions

I like this drawing, and I think it displays my idea quite well. However, I might change the purpose of the drawing back to the original idea of illustrating how there would be conversation between students after the creation, because I feel like the below image would act more effectively to show the creation period because it shows more movement and atmosphere, and it feels much more 'in the midst' of the event than 'Contributions' does.

Untitled

Originally I made this drawing with the purpose of showing the first viewing of the gallery of cakes, where we would walk around and see how everyone else tackled the task, and also how our own cakes ended up looking. But upon reflection, I think this drawing would be way better suited to be showing the decorating portion of the day. I would just change the figures to better represent people actively working on the cakes and be moving around, rather than just standing there and looking.

The Opening

The purpose of this drawing was to show the gallery of cakes being opened to the public after they have all been decorated and the groups have all reconvened to discuss their work and eat some of their cake together. I think it conveys the information I need it too, but over all I'm not too happy with this drawing. I coloured the cakes with different coloured splatters to somewhat represent the atmosphere of the event and the haphazard way the one may decorate a cake under a time constraint, but it may be more effective for me to colour the cakes the same way I coloured the figures in my other section because it would look better and be more consistent.

End

I made this drawing by photoshopping the image of the basic floor plan on top of a piece of marbled fondant that I made, and then I made the tables and cakes out of small circles of fondant and photoshopped them in also. . I like this drawing and I think it clearly communicates what I need it to, but I want to try be a bit more creative. I've been thinking about carving something into the fondant and using it as a stamp, possibly with food colouring as the ink.

Overall

Over the next day or so, I mostly want to work on rewriting the captions I think need to be fixed, as well as rewriting the abstract, and then also making my drawings completely cohesive and... more readable? I like the sketchy style of drawing I've used, but I want to try use a more refined linework style just so it's clear what is really going on. I want to find a balance between sketchy/hand drawn and professional/clear.

[spatialdesignii]

I am yet to change the caption, but I redrew my cake timeline to better match the aesthetic of my aerial view, and just to create a more hand-drawn, analogue feel than the diagram-esq drawing. This also allows me to portray the atmosphere of the event way better than my previous cake timeline did, I think. Theres also more of a focus on just the cake and table rather than everything moving around it.

[spatialdesignii]

In need of some motivation, I dug a little deeper into google to find other designers who have tackled the colour vs professionalism challenge in ways that I think are effective or that I could draw from in my own project.

(above) Frederico Babina, If Artists Were Architects

A fairly pop-art take on colour, but I like it, and it definitely portrays vibrancy in my opinion.

(above) work by Maja Wronska

Obviously, this is just beautiful. I like how the foreground and background are different tones, but also how the focal point is very detailed and the further away building are more blob-like.

(above) Work by Anne Ma

This work uses colour mostly as a backdrop, to fill in the negative space. But I like the subtlety of it.

(above) Matharoo Associates, Net House

Included as a set of drawings in an architectural projects, 'Net House', these drawings are a floor plan and a section view, respectively. They're both colourful and fun, yet professional and accurate, which is everything I could aim to be with my drawings. I like the playing with negative space, but I feel like my work would have to do that in an opposite way to portray what I want.

This image is an effective use of colour as a spotlight to draw attention to a specific area/subject, and I like how the artist combines hand drawing techniques with digital collage.

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Yet another attempt to bring colour into the project! I'm actually really happy with this one!

Originally I wanted the floor plan to be in the beginning to show the 'blank canvas' that is the art gallery, but I thought it would be more effective to use the floor plan at the end to show the marks left from the event at the end. I thought it was an important factor and something I talk about a lot, but I couldn't show it as well in any other form.

I think the thing I like most about it is how the colour is very vibrant but still quite subtle.

[spatialdesignii]

Another conversation with Lucy!

In the final one on one, Lucy said that she was happy with how I'd improved my work based on the critiques I received earlier, and that from now on I should focus on narrowing down what's really important in my event and making sure that that is evident in each of my drawings. What am I trying to show? What is the most stand out feature of this drawing? Is that the thing that I want people to be paying the most attention too?

I also need to develop my utensils and prototype further, but that's more of something that I need to catch up on rather than an improvement I think, because I know I haven't done as much work on the as I want to have done.

I really like the idea of using drawing implements as cake decorating implements, or perhaps merging them together. Especially if, considering I'm bringing together our class of spatial students, I take inspiration from things that we use a lot. Things slightly more obscure than just pens or pencils, or more specific than just a ruler. We don't just use a plain old ruler anymore, we're always using a metal ruler for cutting, or a set square to draw, or even a scale ruler to draw in proportion. I could merge that with a baking implement, say a cake smoother, and create a tool for us to use that is both familiar and foreign. I mean, that's just me throwing my brain on a page, but I'm excited to explore the idea further.

I also need to work out the nitty gritty of how my event works - what are the signals of time? How do they understand the assignment? How do we know when the event is over?

This is very much still a work in progress...

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Yikes?

In an attempt to be more colourful... this happened. I didn't want to make the inside space too messy and colourful because I didn't want to take attention away from the activities happening inside the event (Probably the most important aspect of the drawing) but then again, the mess is kind of a big part too? This exploration didn't really answer any questions for me regarding my project, but I know that this is definitely not the direction I want to go. The colour combination reminds me of toxicity in the same way that bright green does, somehow, and the colourful blocking of the rest of the building just makes the absence of colour in the gallery more prominent. Basically, it's doing the opposite of what I want.

But, try and try again, I guess.

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This is where my drawing are at for the moment, after I have taken on my critiques from the presentation with Lucy and our guest critic Angus, and Joel as my pair respondent.

My main focus this week was creating cohesion between all of the drawings, because the two styles I had unintentionally worked with were very contradicting. I wanted all of my drawings to look like they were part of one series of drawings and from the same project. I think I achieved that, and I do like the look of my drawings, both individually and as a collection, but I think that in making them cohesive I lost the colour that was so important in the previous drawings. So to continue to develop my drawings further, I want to add vibrancy to them, mostly because it is key to the fun atmosphere of my event.

Alas, a continuous struggle I have had lately is to portray the colourful, carefree and messy atmosphere of my event in my drawings while still keeping them semi-professional, beautiful, and something I am proud of.

The other thing I focused on was my captions. At first I was just using captions to describe the scale and materials of the work, but based off of the feedback I thought it would be more effective to use the captions to describe the event as it is shown in the image, rather than just the image itself. This way, I can explain the event more through the drawing set and not just rely on the abstract, so the abstract can be more concise.

In addition to this, I was thinking about having my drawings get slighlty messier/colourful/busy as you progress through the drawing set, and therefore the event, to somewhat replicate how the gallery space would also get messier as the event goes on. But again, how do I do this without my drawings looking bad? I am yet to find out...

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Jamboard presentation Feedback

Yet another Jamboard! I really like using Jamboards for these digital presentations, it feels a lot easier and you can get feedback as you progress through the project rather than the more finalised project at the end. It also makes everyone's projects more accessible all the time - there's no one project that I haven't seen I don't think. Usually, I only see the projects of my friends and my peer review groups.

The feedback itself was helpful, however, I had my minor after lunch so I really only had about an hour to make all of the changes to my board before the deadline, so if I get similar comments I won't be to surprised. But I'm excited to get my feedback tomorrow from the guest critic so I can apply their feedback, and the peer feedback from Thursday, to my drawings to improve them.

I know the main thing I want to work on through my drawings is cohesion because there's a bit of a divide at the moment between the colour palettes of my work. Part of me wants to stick with the colourful and vibrant colours because it works with the fun theme and environment of my event, but I feel like the earthier tones look a bit more professional? I don't know... we'll see I guess!

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Diagram

I wanted to find a way to describe the programming of my event in a visual way, through diagrams or progressive drawings. I thought that the best way to do that would be to focus on the cakes, so I designed a cake timeline, of a cake changing slightly per group of students.

(above) cake timeline

I feel like this shows the progression of a cake being decorated well enough, but that's kind of it. It feels very static, and it doesn't show anything else about the event. I wanted something similar to Sarah Wigglesworth's Dining Disorder, so I tried again.

(above) another cake timeline

I really like how this came out, and i feel like it shows more of a progression of the whole event rather than just the cake. I like how it includes the movement of utensils and such, and how the 'in progress' image of the cake being decorate seems somewhat chaotic and frantic in the way I imagine we'd be acting with only half an hour to create something. I also imaged there couldn't possibly be such chaos without accidents, so I wanted to show things falling off the table.

To better explain the event as a whole, I made a fairly simple diagram, more about the scheduling of everything and how the event would play out.

This shows the time of each group and how many people each group would contain, as well as paint splatters which represent their general paths of direction. I do like this drawing, but I'm not sure how affective it is in communicating what I want it to so I am looking for ward to getting some constructive feedback on it.

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Painting on Icing

After some thinking about food-related art supplies, I decided to try using food colouring as paint. I found it acted almost identically to ink or very pigmented watercolours, and it didn't feel very experimentative. So, to add another layer of interest for myself, I bought some ready-to-roll fondant icing, similar to what would be covering the cakes at the beginning of my event.

(above) a few food colouring on fondant experiments and a close-up

I rolled out some fondant and painted on top of it with some food colouring. I found it really interesting that upon first application the food colouring would act similarly to ink on top of shiny/smooth paper. It didn't really soak in and the colouring stayed as a liquid sitting on top of a surface. But after I left it for a bit it would somewhat stain the fondant, and with enough layers, I could get a clear image.

The texture of the fondant is created by the texture of my hands being pressed into it over and over again, and the food colouring really brings out the subtle wrinkles and surface of skin. It actually reminded me quite a lot of Matthew Brandts 'Taste Test' projects, especially in the bottom left corner of the above close up.

,(above) Matthew Brandts Taste Test, screen printing with gummy bears

I also played around with sculpting and marbling with fondant, in a similar way to clay, but I didn't find it as effective. I enjoyed seeing what else you could do with the fondant though although I definitely feel like I can be more creative with my original method of painting on top of the fondant.

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Collage

I previously liked exploring the use of collage as a medium, but I was using it in quite abstract ways where the image was cool but not completely readable

(above) Previous collage experiments

For some of my final drawings I want to continue experimenting with collage, but take a more measured approach to it. So I made a 3D scale model of the site on Rhino and cut through it using the clipping plane tool so I could get an accurate drawing. I then printed this out and collaged on top.

(above) Rhino model, short section, long section, analog collage

I liked the look of the collage, but I knew I would have to run them through photoshop to make them more legible as the drawings I want them to be. I want more contrast between the different layers, and I want to add silhouettes in to give some form of visual scale.

(above) an edited longitudinal collage

I preferred using a slightly different sectional cut for this section, and I think it displays the event better because it cuts only through the gallery and not the whole building, which makes it less confusing.

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Exploration: Embroidery/Beads

I wanted to keep exploring the use of embroidery to create a floor plan, but I didn't have a lot of thread and if I ordered some it wouldn't come in time. So following inspiration from Eden Lequire, I wanted to try use beads as well as thread. But I didn't really like how this turned out!

(above) Floor plan ready to be embroidered

(above) Floor plan with beads and buttons

With further reflection, I realised that embroidery was disconnected from my current project, and was just lingering from my previous idea of having doughnuts hanging. So, in regards to this project, I don't think using embroidery really makes sense anymore, as it doesn't relate in any way to my adapted ideas or any of the making processes of cakes - although I will still continue with it outside of class, just because it's fun!

To cover the requirement of a new method, I feel like I should use food in someway to create art. Like painting with coffee, which would be new to me - But not coffee, because that's not relative. Something cakelike, like using sugar or icing.