Category: Art 144

Project 5: Photomontage

January 22, 2020 / Allison / 0 Comments

Book Cover and Flyer Designs

I was intrigued by this assignment’s artist influences as well as the prospect of recreating covers for my favorite books. Hannah Hoch’s DaDa style of collages is grotesque but intriguing, and Raoul Hausmann’s is continuously surreal. I decided to use one or both of these artists as influences. I struggled to choose between two books, though: I’ll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson, and Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut.

I first found several pictures that applied to each book and experimented with the positions and cropping of different parts of the image. I found that Hannah Hoch’s inherently strange style was great for I’ll Give You the Sun, so I played around with the design of the twins that are in the novel. These twins tell two halves of the same story, so I wanted to combine them in a twisting way in the style of Hoch.

I was enjoying this process, but after reviewing the different artists, I decided that Slaughterhouse-Five had themes that were more in line with the time period of the Photomontage movement. The collages of Raoul Hausmann would fit very well with the disassociated state that is so present in the novel. So, I started over with images pertaining to Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut.

This design came very naturally. Raoul Hausmann’s photomontage images repeatedly focus on the mind, subconscious, and invention as does the novel. Taking place in World War II, Billy Pilgrim witnesses the destruction caused at the bombing of Dresden. The entire book is told out of chronological order due to Billy’s ability to “fall out of time”.

All of this is, I find very appropriate and suited for the style of Raoul Hausmann. I then went on to create the flyer for the book event as pictured below.

This flyer includes Kurt Vonnegut’s signature: a small self-portrait.

The second book cover focused more on the psychological aspect of the book and still includes images from the bombing of Dresden. It follows the same black and white scheme, and originally, it was all black and white, but I changed the title to yellow. This was a change made on the part of my class’s critiques. A white banned that was behind the title was a bit distracting, so I got rid of the white and made it yellow.

Below is the book poster that I used the original book design for because of the way it stood out.

Here are my finished covers in full:

I really enjoyed this project; it gave me the opportunity to try a style that I have never tried before and that I’m very new to. It also gave me the opportunity to revisit the books that I have enjoyed reading so much.

Project 4: Bezold Effect

January 22, 2020 / Allison

The Bezold Effect uses subtle changes within patterns using color theory to use the same shapes in design, but it completely alters the effect just by changing very few elements. It is the conjunction of the two different elements that makes the effect so mesmerizing.

I began by making a hexagonal pattern using triangles and diamonds, but I was having a hard time incorporating my color bridge project. After some suggestions from my teacher, I decided to take individual pieces from my color bridge to fill in the shapes in the new design.

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For ease of Photoshop to process my images, I decided to just use one section (triangle) of the new design. I still used elements of the different images in the color bridge, but I focused on the texture and color of the man-made textiles and organic elements. I used many different colors to reflect the color bridge’s intense hues. I then mirrored my arrangement to create consistency in the pattern.

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Because my pattern was made from pieces of images and not from solid colors, in order to create the Bezold Effect, I drew a shape around the pattern acting as a frame for the pattern itself. In pattern A, the shape was made pink, with a white background, and in pattern B, the shape was made white with a pink background as shown below:

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is Bezold1-1024x512.png — Bezold Pattern A and Pattern B

Patterns are the foundation of the Bezold Effect, so here I have 2×2, 4×4, and 8×8 versions of Pattern A and Pattern B:

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Lastly, for the final Bezold Effect, I placed all 8 designs from both pattern A and pattern B next to each other and reflected pattern B’s orientation so that the viewer can very clearly see the effector of the multiple patterns against each other.

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Project 3: Color Bridge

January 22, 2020 / Allison

The goal of the color bridge is to create a path for the viewer to travel down using color theory, all surrounding a theme. In my first trial of the cold bridge, I used my favorite elements of several copyright-free images. I selected and cut these pieces using the lasso tool as well as the polygonal lasso. This created both raw, sharp edges and organic, smooth edges. I arranged these according to their color, but, at first, I didn’t have an initial theme. I was just focusing on exploring color and texture. Unfortunately, not having a designated theme caused me to lose sight of the prompt, so I had to try again with a focus and emphasis on the bridge aspect.

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is COLORBRIDGE-791x1024.jpg — My first attempt at the color bridge

I chose a lot of natural images animals, plants, and canyon rocks, but in contrast to nature, I also had man-made textiles. They were equally brilliant in color, and at times it was difficult to tell if the clipping was a man-made textile or a natural element. I found this realization quite fascinating, so I separated the element of the textiles from nature. Instead of having both of these elements completely separated, I chose to use their comparison to nature to flow into one another, but still keep them divided. All man-made elements are cut with harsh, sharp, straight edges, and when comparing these lines to the organic shapes of the natural elements, it created division. To further exemplify their differences, I made a rectangular shape using the textiles, but it can only be seen with the principle of closure.

The path begins in the downward sloping yellow fur textile and flows into the canyon rocks. Note how the straight edge of the yellow textile clipping contrasts to the wavy shape that it analogously flows into. The top and bottom thirds of the project are represented using the natural elements, but nonetheless, they flow into the man-made fabric. The path diverges for the satisfaction of the textile use. The colors of the textiles did not necessarily mix well, but they did blend into the natural elements. This was exactly what I wanted to achieve in this piece, the differences in natural vs. man-made objects, but how they also reflect each other through color and saturation. And, although the path splits and intertwines, the viewer is still guided back and forth from textile to nature, and back to textile.

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is COLORBRIDGE-final-psd.png — My final Color Bridge

Project 2: GESTALT Principles

October 23, 2019 / Allison

The Gestalt principles can be described as visually perceptive qualities in a work of art. Using these principles, and especially combining them, we are able to make engaging and interesting pieces and compositions. I really enjoyed this project, especially when pushing one design to be visually stronger (you can see this in several of my process drawings).

Symmetry

In this principle, I mostly focused on berries for my design. Strawberries have an interesting design considering their seeds are on the outside. It also gave me the opportunity to create the illusion of a 3D form. Adding black to the background also created closure within the surrounding strawberries.

Closure

I wanted to experiment with the peeled orange and how the white skins that cling to the orange could be used to represent the orange as a whole. The third image was most directly representing that idea, but it gave too much context to strongly represent closure. Placing the orange at an angle made it much more engaging. I also like the idea of using dragon fruit, but because it needed more context to be fully understood, I decided to keep the orange as my final design.

Similarity

I immediately gravitated to using pomegranate for similarity. All of the little seeds are nearly identical, and there are so many of them. However, I tried other fruit concepts including the principle of an anomaly with the peach design and even a tomato which represented similarity trough the repetition of the slices.

Proximity

I used bananas in several of my trial designs because I wanted to accent the closeness of the banana bunch and the distance of the single separated banana. I tried the same thing with several fruits in the same image, but I decided to keep it to just one fruit to keep the theme consistent. I also experimented with the distance created by a bunch of grapes that have been mostly eaten, but later found that I wanted to use the graped for continuation.

Figure Ground

This principle came as more of a challenge when trying to make ideas for figure-ground reversal, however, I soon realized that the theme would stay consistent if I simply reversed the background are foreground. I also experimented with the pineapple design, but I was much more fond of the papaya and all of its egg-like seeds.

Continuation

As I mentioned in “Proximity”, I wanted to use grapes for continuation, particularly accenting the continuity through the line of the stem, but also through the cascading orientation of the grapes themselves. Again, I experimented with other fruit, but I already had a biased towards the concept of the grapes.

Project 1: Shape Integration

October 1, 2019 / Allison / 0 Comments

To explore negative shapes, spaces and Photoshop itself, our first project of Art 144 was to choose a letter, font, and crop it on at least three sides. From there we were to create equivocal and unequivocal images from these shapes. Here, I started with a ‘g’ and made separate layers for each of the negative spaces.

I began by moving the shapes around more than transforming them, and after experimenting a bit, I found a sort of landscape. After manipulating the opacity, I had begun to create a sky out of the negative space.

The previous piece had a small protagonist in the lower right. I really liked the idea of creating a narrative for this character, so I played with the value around the ‘g’ and selected a particular space to create the glowing eye of a monster focused on the protagonist.

Continuing the narrative theme, I realized the outside shape of the ‘g’ could look a bit like water. I used a lot of the transformation tool, and especially the stretching tool to move the water and create a boat. I then edited the sky and wave to have a gradient, then the wave and sail with opacity.

Here, the same protagonist triangle explores a dark cavern. The gradient and opacity tools were useful when creating the illusion of a glowing lantern and the stalagmites that the character passes as they journey. I had some difficulty with the quality of the triangle after expanding it so much. I decided to leave it as is because it added some variety to the very clean, sharp shapes.

I had some difficulty with this piece, I was unsatisfied for a while. Eventually, I found a configuration with the warping tool and made it look like a genie.

I liked the glowing effect from the second piece, so I experimented with it more by selecting several areas and filling the spaces with different tints and shades. Then filling the white spaces with corresponding tints and shades. I found another tool to make the edges of the ‘g’ foggy.

For the next four equivocal and unequivocal pieces, I used the letter ‘R’ and once again cropped and rotated it. Then used each sectioned area to transform for the project.

Modified in rotation, opacity, and color, this piece is simple, but I’m quite satisfied with how it turned out. It gives the effect of a logo being shone up in the sky.

I really just wanted to see how far I could manipulate the ‘R’ using the warping tool. I also think that the change in the eye of the letter draws the viewer to focus on the space around the ‘R’ more than the letter itself.

I hadn’t focused so much on opacity in the other pieces. Without transforming each shape too drastically from the original, I moved them around for a more balanced image and made sure that the overlap of opacity was visible.

Using tints, shades and the gradient was essential to creating an illusion of a glowing piece illuminating other unidentified shapes. Again, I selected an area to create the light ray but considered the proximity of the objects when changing their value.