Chaper 7 - Hierarchical

I tried to make a good heirarchical type with a phrase, but it was a little difficult to find a phrase. Earth Week ended up giving me an idea. In retrospect, I should have gotten my daughter's help to find a darker green for the phrase text between "dirt", but the idea is there at least.

Project 5c

This took me a bit longer than expected because I did a bit by hand and I had to work around their fickleness.

I know the assignment called for blocks of letters, but as soon as I read it, this image popped into my mind and I had to do it this way. I think it turned out well, except i wish I could have done better on the spice vial. My hand drawings are not what they used to be, and I couldn't seem to make GIMP do what I wanted, so I settled for this. The rest worked fairly well. I changed around the letters of "LIFE" to make it more interesting and have them fit into a woodsy, lifey theme. The butterfly and gecko are stickers I bought for my son for his schoolwork. I turned the "e" in hopes of implying a flower. The spice vial is an "as-is" thing, because I wanted that clear, but the handwritten label was reminiscent of old spice jars before people bought them at the store. I chose different typesets, colors, and case for the letters, rotated, and moved them to imply the sprinkling of the word 'variety" from the spice vial as if seasoning the "life" in the bowl. I think the "T" and "Y" colors may be a little too light, but I needed variety and felt that yellow and that other color worked at the time.

All in all, I'm fairly pleased with it, though I can see room for improvement. As always. :)

Project 5a: Contrast Studies

This first image I did as just a basic difference contrast. Some angled lines all going in one direction and then one going in the opposite direction draws your attention to the odd line out.

In this set I took my original premise and elaborated on it. I inverted the colors so the white lines stand out against a black background and then made the oppositely angled line red to make it stand out even more. I like the effect. I thought about making the others blue, but I thought this worked fine.

This was just something that popped in my mind as I read the directions for the assignment. This demonstrates the multiplication rule for positive and negative numbers. I expressed the contrast of posittive and negative with red and green. And I further elaborated by expressing the positive result of two negative by using a green minus in the middle of the cross, instead of making the plus sign all red as in the other "pure" positives. In retrospect, it may be even more efffective if I made that plus sign all green, to represent the two negatives making a positive.

Project 5b: Proportion Study

I tried to find enough pictures of seasons and such to do this project, but that became too stressful and time consuming, so I looked at it again and decided to take a different tack. The point of this, from my interpretation, was to get people to look at things in a certain order or pattern, using scale, color, and so on. I decided to use pictures of my youngest daughter, since i have many good ones, and I put them into a page. I put her name in large, fancy letters to draw attention and let people know what the point of this page is, and then placced the ,larger, busier image at the top all the way across to pull the eye upward. Then I used a smaller picture with bright colors to draw the viewer to the right, and a cute, but more muted tone image below it. The introductory words beside her name are less important, but including them gives a polished feel to it, for me.

Midterm images

My first image:


And my second image:

Season collage

I took a long time on this assignment, although my results may not seem so. I looked through many, many of my pictures to find some appropriate to any season, but most of my pictures are of my kids and events, not seasonal. I couldn't find enough of any one definite "season-specific" picture set that would work. Finally, I just took a load of pictures out and about and around my house and tinkered with them. The background of this collage is actually a portion of the tall tree picture I cropped slightly to include in the pictures. I included the snow-covered car because, let's face it, that is the epitomy of winter in Alaska. The shot of my kids' treehouse with the garage behind it was also a must - reminding us that even in the frigid months children still need to play. Finally, I included a couple shots of the bare trees, slumbering under the snow, waiting for Spring to come. The background, as I said, is cropped from one of the internal pictures. The pictures float in a wintry sky, framed by bare branches to emphasize the subject matter.

Shots - color, perspective, and shadow

These are both the exact same picture of my younest daughter. There isn't alot of bright color to this, but perspective is still affected by those colors that are around her. In the uncropped shot, it seems as if we are very far away and also at a very sharp angle above her, due in part to the large amount of dull colors closing in on her. In the cropped version, we are still above her, but the angle doesn't seem so great - it feels as if we are more on a level with her. It is much more personal since she does not have the overshadowing dark and neutral colors surrounding her. Also, the side of the wall is very bright and distracting in the uncropped photo, drawing out attention from the main subject - my daughter playing in the dirt.

I really like the way the colors pop out in this picture. The bright hues stand out against the dark green of the couch. Just about every color is present and bright, yet the contrast adds festivity to the image. The scattering of the items was an accident, but the placement makes a very vivid and mobile image to draw the eye to each element. There is even a kind of symmetry to it with the majority of the bag and items in the center and opposing items to the left and right sides.

This merry-go-round horse head is cropped from a larger picture. I noticed that the sun's position caused the neck on the left to be bright and a slight shadow is present on the right and back side of the face. Both these elements encourage focus on the face of the horse, as do the bright color of the harness and darkly painted eyes. The shadows also emphasize the detail of the carved facial muscles, along with some shading in the paint.

Shots - lemonade dust, orientation

After I did the lemonade spill and poured it back into the container, I noticed the leftover dust on the paper. The lemonade was such a light yellow that even the small amount left made a very apparent design on the paper. So I took a picture, cropped it to the main design, and then flipped it around. As you can see, different orientations elicit different impressions as to what the dust pattern resembles. I see a tree in one direction, and waterfall in another, and more. What do you see?

Shots - Studies on lemonade

I took several shots of this lemonade container and spilled lemonade mix. I decided the container worked better by itself than on the silver bowl I also tried. Both images were synnetrical, but the silver distracted from the lemonade container. The two views below are of the spilled lemonade from the side and open end of the container. I cropped out the background as much as possible, trying to focus on the lemonade. I used purple construction paper to spill the light yellow lemonade on to take advantaqge of the natural contrast of these two opposing hues. It probably would have been even more effective with purple blocking off the background as well. The asymmetry of the container across from the spilled lemonade is plain.

Shots - color rainbow of cookies

I took some time thinking about the color ranges and the spectrum on this assignment. We picked up girl scout cookies this week to deliver and I was inspired to use the boxes to make my own spectrum. The Girl Scouts color code each cookie to a specific box. The only addition to the natural rainbow spectrum is the aquamarine color on the Dulce de Leche cookies this year. I stacked them, took a picture of the narrower ends, and then cropped it so that only the ends were visible. This emphasized the color of the boxes without distraction of background and box size differences. I like the way the stack on the left here looks best - the darker colors at the bottom seem to make it sink into depths even though the boxes are even to each other in the stack. It also reminds me of a sunrise. The right stack is more like a sunset, with the darker colors pressing down on the lighter ones. I'm not sure if these impressions are wholly due to brightness, or partially from temperature (warm/cool) differences in the colors.

Shots - movement

I cropped the picture below so that it would only show the hula hoop circling my daughter's waist. In both photos, the contrasting light shirt and dark hoop emphasize the presence of the hoop. The motion of the hoop is easily perceived by its central location and lack of obvious contact on her body. I think the cropped one above, showing just the hoop, really brings out the motion, since it is cut off at the side of the image and as I look at the image I am waiting for it to move back into the frame. If there weren't such a contrast between hoop and shirt, this would not be as effective. The lines in the hoop design also set it apart from the ground in the background, so it is not lost even when away from my daughter's body.

Poject 3a

I chose to do ladybugs. I first found several pictues on the internet from various angles, like the color one here, then changed them to grayscale.
I then did several tracings of different angles on some tracing paper. This was rather difficult for me for two reasons. First, due to my MS and compression of my spinal cord my hands are weak and difficult to control, especially when I use them for longer than fifteen minutes at a time. Also, I am legally blind, and it is difficult to see around my central blind spot to trace. I tried putting it on my CCTV reader to see my work larger, but it was impossible to see the image through the tracing paper sufficiently with the bright light of the reader shining on it. Ultimately, I enlarged the grayscale images and did my best. Here's the result. I stopped when my hands wouldn't work well enough anymore. That image is to the right of the photos above.
Finally I started reducing the images. I actually made a circular ladybug with head and leg details first, but it didn't look right to me. I made and oblong, which was more realistic, but I felt it was not simplified enough. Finally, I decided a circular shape was the way to go. I didn't include legs because they aren't major recognition factors for a ladybug. Also, in many photos the legs weren't visible at all. I shortened the thorax and head down to a black half-circle. This kept some pleasing symmetry, and again, in many pictures the thorax and head were barely visible under the shell. I did keep the white "v" at the edge of the shell where the head came out. I felt this gave a bit of simple detail that made the image just a touch more realistic and pleasing to the eye. I also noted in the pictures that ladybut spots can be many or few (even nonexistent in some cases) but they are always symmetrical. I chose a medium number of dots and did my best to make them symmetrical. I made two final versions: one with antennae and one without. The antennae were not visible on most photographs, but I think the reduced image is better with antennae than without.

A side note: the best part of this assignment was that as I was working on my ladybug drawings, my son ( age five ) and daughter (age three) both decided to make their own ladybug drawings. I think theirs may even be better than mine. :)

Project 2a - the right one

Ha, ha! I finally figured out some of the stuff on Gimp, and thanks to Ann's post I discovered that I just have to save it as a JPEG file to successfully upload it here. I have to flatten it first, but then it will save as JPEG. Woot!

Stodgy is self explanatory - proper, square letters that are difficult to change and a little puffed up.

Crush was a different tack - I thought of a crush like a crush on a person, valenine's day, etc.

Ornate was a bit fancy, but more elegant and extreme in its decoration.

And sludge is just kind of grimy and sloppy with splatters around it and trailing off without neat ends.

The picture is for sludge, mostly because I don't have enough mastery over Gimp yet to do what I want with the others, and I didn't have time, due to my doing the wrong assignment, to work on something by hand. But I think it turned out okay.

ARGH!

So I go through every typeface I have. I give thoughtful reasons for my choices. I fight with the stupid blog, computer, and everything else to get my image up. AND IT WAS THE WRONG ASSIGNMENT.

Maybe I'm wrong, but "a" should refer to the first of the Projects at the end of the chapter, right? I looked back at the assignment list after viewing other students' assignment posts and found the titles of mine and the assigned one didn't match. NOW I have to figure out how to do this and post AGAIN.

Grrr.

Project 2a

Yet again, the scans and computer documents would not upload. This is rather frustrating. So I made the fonts super big and took a photo of them printed off. My explanations of my choices are as follows:


stoic
I chose Mekanik LET for this word. To me, the word “stoic” brings images of stiffness, lack of emotion, consistency, and uniformity. This font elicits this with its slightly narrow and seemingly tall letters. Also, the unchanging width of the line strokes shows uniformity and steadiness of emotion.
organic
The word “organic” conjures images of nature and natural things, especially fruits and vegetables. Simplicity and comforting curves in this Century Gothic font remind us of how we first learned to write our letters, without extra flourishes to distract from the purity of the word. It easily can be imagined to hold a tomato or turnip in its circular letters like the “o” and “g”, which would be quite useful when using it for graphics centered on gardening and natural foods. This is why I chose this font. Another one I found applicable, due to its simplicity and familiar all caps format, was Copperplate Gothic Bold: organic.


fancy
When I first started looking at fonts for this word, I was thinking of a cursive, italicized font. There are MANY cursive italicized fonts that fit the bill, but as I considered what the word means, I realized that fancy did not necessarily mean elegance, which most of those fonts also imply. Fancy brings images of curlicues, finery, and the like. The Gigi font I found is a perfect example of the prettiness we think of as fancy, but without the distracting addition of elegance from a more formal cursive font. There was a curlicue type font that was more a print type, but I felt that this cursive curlicue fit the word better.

old-world
Sometimes the common types are the best. For this, I chose Monotype Corsiva because its curves and calligraphic elegance elicit the old-style feel of the hand-written tomes of old.

casual
I chose Comic Sans MS for “casual”. It is different from normal fonts used for communication but still very readable and easy on the eyes. Its softer, less formal curves and rounded ends give me the impression of my favorite worn-in jeans – the ultimate in casual and comfort.

Project 2a Troubles

I did the assignment. Thoroughly. I have been through EVERY font I have. Unfortunately this blog will not put those fonts on here. I tried uploading the document, but it wouldn't take the word document. Then I scanned and managed to save it as a .bmp image, which would actually upload, except the letters are too small to see in the image in the blog.

Anybody have any suggestions?

Project 1 and thoughts on class.

Here is my Project 1-1 exercise. I gave up on scanning and uploading and finally just took a picture of it with my camera (which is why it is slightly lopsided).

I enjoyed this exercise. It was a bit of a challenge for me to do the lines by hand, since with my vision issues I have trouble seeing what I'm doing, and my hand control and strength makes it difficult to do any type of writing or drawing for too long. But I took a few days to get the designs done - not great, but okay - and then just used scissors to cut out the squares from a template I held on the paper. I do have a cutting tool, but again, since it is difficult to put it on my reader and all I can't line up for precise measurements. Since this was for us to try out the lines and all, I figured this was close enough for now.

If I were to do this again I would do the lines and designs in Gimp and print out each one, rather than draw by hand. It would get more universal lines. And maybe if I had time I would just cut a section of each separate line design and paste it into a new document and align them to mke the square. I may play with that, though maybe not just using lines.

I have been trying out Gimp and am finding lots of neat effects. My problem is not necessarily editing, but knowing what the icons mean and how to implement them. I'm very glad we have two weeks between assignments to figure things out before we turn them in. : )

I also really like that it is focused on creativity rather than skill level. I am creative, but not quite there as to being fluent with the software yet. I may end up drawing much by hand or taking pictures and then playing with them in Gimp.

Hope you all are doing well too. I'm off to work on my programming homework.

Project 1 upload difficulty

I have done project 1-1, and scanned it into my computer. Problem is, it won't upload into Blogger. Grr.

Maybe I can upload it to my other blog and use the URL to poat it. I'll try some more later. I've already tried changing the type several times, and that hasn't worked. *sigh*

Chapter 1

Finished going through chapter 1. It was very interesting. Much what an art class probably is about, I expect. I've never taken one so I don't know for sure but it has lots of artsy type speech in it.

Problem is, I am a sciency type. To paraphrase, "It was all Greek to me."

See, I like to draw, sketch, doodle, and generally dink around. As far as terminology in art, well, it doesn't really stick.

But i think I got some of the basics, even if the definitions aren't totally straightforward. I got the feel of them. Now to answer the questions.

I think I'll try the first project, too, at least. It looks fun. i don't have the specific materials they ask for, but I think I can get the gist of it going. If I can get it done tomorrow I'll post a scan of my efforts on here.

Orientation Quiz and answers

CIOS 108 Orientation Quiz

A. What is something that is going well in your life?
I am taking classes through DVR and they are getting me the technology to get around my blindness. I should be getting my own CCTV and an Amigo portable CCTV very soon.

B. What are your specific goals for this class?
I want to learn how to tweak and play with drawings and pictures, learn to use graphics software for designing and art and modifying photos if I choose. I would like to be able to apply this knowledge to website design and other uses.

C. What was your first experience with design, computers, and imaging technology?
I enjoy art and drawing, and have done it for many years on my own. I use a digital camera and have fixed redeye in pictures, cropped and resized them, etc. Other than basic drawing in the Office e Paint and Drawing features, I have not done a whole lot of technology based artwork or design. I did take some drafting classes several years ago, however.

D. Do you usually work on a Mac or a PC and why?
I use a PC because that is what I have.

E. What is your experience level with any of the other image editing programs available?
I have no experience with any image editing programs.

F. What is something you liked about your day today?
Teaching my younger children about fire safety.

G. How do you plan to use what you learn in this class?
I plan to use this knowledge in my future computer classes and in web site design for myself and others as I gain more experience. I also plan to teach my other children what I learn so they can try it out and play with the concepts and software themselves.

H. What would make this class go very well for you?
Communication and good explanation and step by step instructions for performing tasks, at least initially, so that I can see what works. Trial and error methods forcing me to try many unsuccessful techniques before finding the one that works is not a good method for my learning.

I. How do you plan to make this class go very well for you?
Work on projects and assignments as early as possible so that I do not have a time crunch and can accomplish goals with minimal pressure. Communicating any difficulties and getting help when needed.

J. What do you do for creativity on an on-going basis?
I like to draw and sketch, write, play music, and take pictures (mostly of my kids).

K. Who is Milton Glaser? Paul Bass?
No idea. Artists or designers, I think. I know there was a Saul Bass that designed logos and posters and such commercially.

L. Do you own or have access to a color image scanner?
Yes. I have an all-in-one color printer/scanner.

M. What software application will you be using for this course?
I have downloaded Gimp for this course. I cannot use the VPN client because there are issues with it and my Vista-based computer. I am considering downloading and installing the GimpShop software that makes it appear more like PhotoShop is set up, but since I have never used either, this doesn’t seem to me to make a huge difference.

Opening Post

New blog. I set this up for my CIOS 108 course, but I intend to actually continue it after the class is over, so I set it up with my usual pseudonym and a related title.

For history, Darillian is the name of one of my old D&D characters that I love. Yes, I am a long-time gamer. Not doing much RPG's anymore, but I AM addicted to WoW. I reward myself with it when I have finished important tasks, like homework.

I hope to learn lots of neat artistic things to do with pictures and such on the computer in this class. I also hope it won't be so complicated or have difficult software to obtain and use. I'll post more (and I think I'm supposed to answer the intro quiz questions here) later.