Artists around the world are always trying to find new ways to create art, whether using technology to create interactive art or using innovative materials to create art. Sometimes, artists find the simplest object and can create beautiful art out of that simple object. One of the things that I found that was interesting was something called 'pour art' where artist would continuously pour different colors of paint in order to create layers of art. I think it is really interesting to see the natural flow of the paint and the combinations of so many different colors create this psychedelic effect to the viewers eyes.
As you can see in the video, the artist has a solid white sculpture set up and she pours the paint onto the top most part of the sculpture. She allows the paint to travel down to the sculpture which creates a ripple effect pattern on the bottom of the sculpture. Another artist that I found has deals with rippling of the paint that was even more amazing was an artist who directly paint on top of water. Apparently, this is an old Turkish way of art. Here is an artist that I thought was really innovative in the way he dealt with paint and water. What was the most interesting part about using this technique is when he transfer the painting on water onto a sheet of paper. Along with the design that he drew on the water, the ripple from the water also translated onto the canvas itself!
There'll also seem to be a lot of artwork that deals with crayons. When we think of crayons, we think of being a kid because that is what kids used to draw and color because the medium is not messy and crayons are really cheap. People have been finding ways to make new ways of using crayons. And what I found a lot was people melting crayons. When you melt crayons, the crayons basically turn into paint but eventually, the crayons dry and hardens again which becomes really interesting because of the new texture. It is also interesting to see the contrast between crayons when drawn by itself which has this waxy, glossy texture and when it's melted, the texture becomes very smooth.
Since I haven't found a lot of inspiration for my Disney idea, I have been just doodling in my sketch book and from my last entry where I talked about typography, I have been drawing a lot on calligraphy. I think I have also revived my interest in drawing figures. So I have been going back to looking at my favorite figure drawing artist. This artist don't just draw any ordinary figures but figures in the fashion realm. Her name is Katie Rodgers and I guess you can considered her as a fashion illustrator. I really like her style of drawing and her combination of water color. I really like the fact that you can see her pencil sketches underneath her water color. I like the aesthetics of the drawings from fashion illustrator. When you look at fashion illustrators, the one thing that is common is slender and elongated quality of the women. Obviously, the women are models and models are meant to be thin and that is something that is looked at as beautiful in our society today.
I think maybe I can take all my ideas and somehow combine them together. However, I think that could be a bad idea because then I don't have a clear direction of what I want to do and no clear idea that I want to express. At least for now, I really do want to do something that involves drawing and illustration. Even though I am a design major, I want to go back to my drawing roots and perhaps I can add in some digital effects that I learn through Design class this semester which was dealing with digital aspect of design.
For the past week, I think I'm getting a little stuck on my idea with Disney. I still haven't quite figure out which direction to take with the Disney concept. So I decided to take a break on Disney and look at other stuff to see some inspiration.
Before I get into that, I wanted to blog about my experience during the studio tours that we did in thesis class last week. Last week, we went to three different design firms. Two of the studios were small and the other one was a medium size. The medium size studio is actually an In-House studio in the Whitney museum. I felt that I could relate more to the the Whitney In House studio because over the summer, I interned at the In House studio of Prudential. At that place, we worked with a lot of internal marketing but also worked with potential clients. It was really interesting to be exposed to two different kinds of business environment. On one hand, by working in a smaller studio, you get to see your result from start to finish. You also do a lot more consultation with the client and you are able to build a closer relation to the client. One the other hand, obviously you don't make a lot of money by working in a smaller company. In terms of working in a bigger company such as that of Whitney Museum or Prudential, you don't have a much creative power over your work as you do in a small design firm but there is that financial advantage in a bigger company. Overall, I do think it was a helpful trip in terms of actually seeing the different professional design environment.
Since we are working on html and css in design class, one thing that is very important when dealing with website design is typography. So recently, I have been drawn to stuff that has to do with typography. Typography when done right can look like an art piece itself. I found this image which I thought was really interesting, the combination of a bold typeface paired with the delicate woodblock drawing.
As a graphic designer, I really appreciate when designers are able to combine hand-drawn type or images with solid shapes. The Poster below also give the similar feeling. I like the movement in the type, it conveys the feeling of jazz which I think it's really interesting.
Recently I found an artist work on minimalism and one of them happened to be about Disney, I thought I would blog about it because it related to my original idea where I would strip Disney down to its most simplest term. Even though my idea has changed since then, I thought it was still interesting to look at this person's work. The artist's name is Juanca Yto and he is a graphic designer by also a typographer.
So as you can see, Yto took the most iconic characteristics about each Disney character and display them in a rectangular shape. In the first row, it's easy to tell that the characters are Mickey, Minnie, Donald Duck, Goofy and Pluto. In the second row, you can tell that the shapes are the characters to Winnie the Pooh. For the third set, it was a bit harder to figure it out but they are the characters from Lion King. If the third set of rectangular shapes were by itself, I think it would really hard to tell what they are. By looking at this person's work, I figured that minimalism Disney has been done before and that it really would be too safe to do something like this for thesis.
I've also found these photographs by Alicia Jeremias, I thought they were really compelling and really touching at the same time. Basically, it's a set of photographs of a little girl dressed up in Disney princess outfits. I think these photographs really capture the idea of innocence which Disney promotes through the princess movies but at the same time, the photographs show a sense of struggle for the young child. A struggle that such a young child at that age should not experience. And that struggle seem to take away her innocence. When we look at the bigger picture, Disney princesses promote this sense of innocence and fairy tale where princesses are beautiful, they live in castles and fall in love with princes. As these little girls get older, they find out that a lot these fantasies don't come true. Real life is full of struggles and disappointments. Through these experiences, we lose a lot of our innocent qualities.
For last week's thesis critique, I've come to a more focused direction of where my thesis project should go. I wanted to do something on the subject of Disney empire, Disney culture and Disney corporation. The problem is to find exactly what I wanted to say about Disney in my works. The legacy of Disney on our society is ever-lasting. Children grow up watching Disney movies and cartoons and parents take them to Disneyland to immerse themselves in this fantasy. When these children grow up, they take their own children to experience the same thing they did as a child. Disney is suppose to represent the innocence of childhood. And the two words that it stresses a lot is magic and imagination. Disney allow people to transfer into a storybook fantasy world. The characters of Disney are iconic and people all over the world recognize them. Disney is not just an icon but it's a conglomerate that has its hands on every kind of consumer merchandise. From movies, to television to theme parks to toys and everything in between. Disney is not all just fun and games, it has also gotten a lot of criticisms throughout decades. One of the biggest criticism is that people have found Antisemitism and racism in Disney films. The particular claim that Disney is anti-semetic has been well known in that Family Guy has also brought up this issue in one of the episodes. In is particular clip, Family Guy is drawn in Disney styles, and there are various subtle features that show that Disney is not as pure as it's played out to be in the public.
I have also researched on other unknown parts about Disney. A lot of the things that came up was about the Disneyland theme parks. There is a rumor that no one has ever died at a Disney park because Disney has paid
officials to refrain from declaring injured or ill people dead until
they hit a hospital outside of Disney property. But there are reports that there have been several accidents that happened on the rides that had resulted in death. Since Disney is such a huge corporation that they can easily cover up these accidents without them being a big deal.
Another interesting thing I found about Disney is the concept of subculture Disney. Subculture Disney is basically made up of Disney enthusiasts. These so-called "Disney Freaks" visits Disney weekly or even daily. they tweet about their Disney experiences for several hours each day,
sharing photos and insights with fellow Disney fans through Twitter and
Disney World blogs. One Disney enthusiast that I've came across would be a guy name George Reiger who has over 2,000 Disney tattoos. Reiger claimed that "Disney practically raised him when he was a child and he wanted to have
Mickey and the entire Magical Kingdom with him everywhere he went." He lives in a Disney-themed house, full of over 24,000 Disney collector’s items. The fact that people can basically devote his entire life to Disney shows just how much of an impact Disney can have. People have become obsessive with these fantasy worlds and fantastical characters. It's a way to for them to escape from a real life. There was an article that I read about Disney fanatics and this particular quote was a bit unnerving to me. "Wives come and go, kids come and go, but Disney is always going to be there for me."
On one point of view, Disney has become a place for people to escape to. In another point of view, Disney has found new audience and I'm not talking about those that come to Disney to meet Mickey. In a news article in LA Times in 1997, it was reported that "Teenagers in Mohawks, dog collars and anarchy patches crowding Tomorrowland. Groups of ghoulishly dressed youths in the parking lots of Disneyland and nearby businesses, some drinking or smoking joints and sending tourists walking the other way." The goth gang went by the name "Disneyland Arcane Crew (D.A.C.)" It is ironic that a place that claims to be all about innocence and virtue, is actually a place full of secrets where people go to do drugs. Perhaps it's the fact that it's taboo and it goes against everything that Disney stands for is the reason why these things happen. And the fact that people intensely watch all the Disney movies to see the supposedly sexual innuendos that were purposely put into the children movies.
I have also looked up some graphics that are not made by Disney but I thought they were really interesting.
Currently in my Design 3A class, we are learning about data visualization and coding data visually. What we've done so far in this class is something that I've never done before. I think this class takes graphic design to the next level because we are taking all the stuf that we learned about graphic design and adding time and motion to graphic design. The first project that we did in class was to make a AfterEffects video about a haiku. This projects deals a lot with typography and the challenge for me was to set type in motion. I had to think about how the text flow into the screen and think about how it transition from one set to another. From doing this project, I've looked up a lot of videos for inspiration and tutorial; I came across one artist that I really like whose name Bjorn Amundsen. I think his typographic videos are quite simple and has minimal effects which makes me appreciate the way he set up his type in the video more.
In the last class, my professor spoke about data visualization where we take a whole bunch of data and try to creatively express it in an interesting manner. I think that for sure when you're doing a project on data visualization or any sort of info graphics, you need some sort of system so that things will be organized in the end. There was a video that was shown in class about how an artist came up with a system of where things are painted on the wall, that particular artist did not actually end up painting but had other people follow his instructions and painted the walls. I was looking at Behance.com and I came across this artist whose work is similar to the artist that my professor showed in class. Obviously, when we look at the title, we know what the artist is trying to convey which is the city. But if we didn't know the title, I think the system of different combinations of circles make a very interesting pattern, there's a certain rhythm to each of the piece and the selection of color makes the eyes dance around the piece. I feel that the artist probably used some sort of system in order to make the piece, I don't think that the artist just randomly place different size circles next to each other, it was done in a conscious manner. I think that is what data visualization is about sometimes. Instead of just looking at a bunch of numbers and data, by applying a system to it, it becomes really interesting. It becomes more than just a bunch of numbers and data.
This entry is to talk about and analyze the artists that I'm currently interested in. One particular artist that I have been raving about is Glenn Jones. I came across his works when I signed up an account on Coroflot.com where artists can post their portfolios online for the public to view. Glenn Jones is definitely a hit on Coroflot, his works get a lot of views and a lot comments and it's no surprise that he has this much views on his portfolio because he is that good. Glenn Jones is a graphic designer and illustrator based in New Zealand. He draws everything on screen, meaning he does all his illustrations with his mouse on Illustrator. I really admire his ability to do that because I know most illustrations are done on paper first and then scanned in so edits and renderings can be done. Most of the works he does has something to do with pop culture. He takes iconic characters from pop culture but puts an original spin to it. I guess in a sense, he reminds me of Andy Warhol and the concept of pop art but instead of portraying mass produced commodities, he protrays things from mass media enterntainment.
"Marching Penguins", Glenn Jones Illustration, 2009
As you can see in the illustration above, Jones has a very clean and simple style which is the result of using Illustrator where his shapes are created in vector forms. I think his concepts for his works are very clever. Like the one shown above, if you've seen the movie "The March of the Penguins", you would understand the idea of this illustration. The penguin is literally dressed in a marching band outfit which I think it's a clever, yet funny way to combine the two idea.
"Forever Plowing", Glenn Jones Illustration, 2011
Obviously not all of his works have to deal with pop culture, the illustration above is shows that. Again, I think his idea is of putting a snow truck in a snow globe is quite humorous. I think I am really interested in the way he comes up with his concepts, the way he looks at things, like a snow globe and questions what if a snow truck was in there. The snow truck would be plowing the snow forever because there's no where for the fake snow to go. And he takes this concept and make a piece of art out of it. I feel that there is no abstraction in his work, it's very literal and anyone can get it just by looking at it. Glenn Jones is also a kind of artist that likes to share his design process, he posted lots of videos on Vimeo.com in which he shows the process of making one of these illustration.
"Dental Care" Glenn Jones Illustration, 2011
"Counselling" Glenn Jones Illustration, 2011
Seeing his works makes me think of a series of prints that I did when I took Print IA during the fall of my Junior year. I call this series of prints as "Mickey in Disguise" where I silkscreened silhouettes of Mickey Mouse's head and have him put on different outfits. In another words, take Minnie Mouse's iconic red bow tie and place it on Mickey's head or take Donald Duck's signature sailor hat and place that on Mickey's head. The reason why this reminded me of Glenn Jones is that I took something simple yet iconic and put a spin on it so that viewers have to think twice about. I also like the way how clean the work came out to be because it was silkscreen. When I showed this series of prints at the critique, I had several comments about the size of the work. I silkscreened these on a relatively small scale, perhaps a little bit larger than postcard size. I agree with my peers and my teacher in trying to make a new set in a much larger scale. I think it would give off a different feel to it, perhaps more of an impact to the piece.
I would like to pursue more in this direction and try to write down what I see every day and to think of ways to put a spin on it. Most recently, I was thinking about the commercials on television where a nonprofit organization tells the viewers to donate to foundation to help children in a Third World Country and other organizations that helps impoverished countries resolve some of the issues that they are facing such as dirty water, civil wars, malaria, etc. Of course, us living in America should feel thankful that we're living in a country like this yet we take that for granted every day. And so many of us, including me, complain about the problems that we have which is probably not comparable to what others have to face. I was thinking about working with this idea, and how I can illustrate this idea in a different way...perhaps incorporating some of Glenn Jones ideas into illustrating my ideas about 'First World Problems'.
