For extra credit, we were to take $5 and spend it on something frivolous, then take ONE photo to capture it all.

I think that pretty much sums it up.

: )

This was fun. We spent a day in class playing chess/checkers by drawing/erasing all of our pieces/moves with charcoal. I actually really liked the way these turned out. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, there is not a photo of the actual game that Danielle and I played…but there is proof that we were both there and playing.

This one isn’t actually ours…but you get the gist.

This was a cool experiment. In class one day we were split up into random groups and were given, I think, 5 small pieces of glass, and were told to choose a couple pieces of colored paper, cut out shapes, and arrange them in between the layers of glass.

I really liked what the other group did that made the fish pond – I had never thought of doing something like that – it was pretty awesome.

I was not in class the day that the 2D wood sculptures were done.

We actually got the first part of this assignment I think the 2nd week of the semester…but didn’t really do anything with the images until much later. The first part of the assignment was to choose one word/phrase and type it into a Google search engine, and then bring in 15 images from that search result. The word I chose was “mustaches,” and these are some of the images I chose:

Later on in the semester, we took on of our Diebenkorn-esque photos (I acutally borrowed one of Lucy’s) and a piece of mylar, and traced our Google images to fit the Diebenkorn.

I think if I had chosen a slightly less ridiculous image, this could have looked really cool – I think I may go back and try it with something else.

I wasn’t sure where this project was going to go. Originally, we were to take Diebenkorn-esque photos…I took photos that I thought I could get some larger structural blocks out of…but after seeing some of the others’ pictures, mine didn’t seem that great.

After taking the photos, we had to make 10 composition sketches:

We also did a partner project, using charcoal, to copy an actual Diebenkorn.

This was interesting to try to re-create. I never realized how much you could do with charcoal and an eraser…or how challenging it could be.

For this project we were instructed to choose any non-lyrical song (genre did not matter) and visually represent it through a 2-D drawing. Our material choices were charcoal, graphite, black ink wash, gesso, or collage – under the condition of using NO color. We could also not use any recognizable figures (anything illustrating/depicting anything in the real world or world of signs, symbols, language, etc.).

I was extremely excited about this project. I love music, and I thought that being able to visually express that would be an awesome task.

When we were first given the assignment, I instantly had an idea for what song I wanted to use. There are a couple different guitar solos that I really like from the “August Rush” soundtrack. The “Bari Improv” is the one that really stuck out in my mind the most…so that is the one I finally chose.

In my initial excitedness for the project, I had a lot of cool ideas floating around in my head as to how I would go about my drawing – and I think because I had so many ideas in my head, I thought it would be really easy to put those thoughts down onto paper. I found out through some trial and error that it was not going to be a simple task for me to bring all of my thoughts to reality.

Whenever I listen to the song, I find myself moving to the sounds and beats…so my original plan was to put some sort of utensil in my hand and just move to the music. The first time I tried this I was basically finger painting…and this is what I got:

This was my “rough draft” – I knew that this was not going to be the final version…I just thought I’d try some stuff out and see how it worked. I was not a huge fan of this one. It felt very chaotic/messy as well as sad/dark.

The song is very light and happy and full of movement, and I really wanted to be able to show that. So one night I really sat down and just took notes on the song, put down ideas for images for different sounds – really just trying to dissect it all. The movement and energy were the things that I wanted to stand out the most, and were also the things that I was struggling with the most.

I got a lot of my ideas for movement and energy from the “visualizer” thing on my itunes (the screensaver-esque thing that technically moves to the sound/rhythm of a song). I did not use any of the actual images from that, but I pulled ideas from it.

This is the finished product:

[insert here the song, "Bari Improv" - I'm going to figure out how to enable the song to play on here]
The whole piece is made of 3 different layers – incidentally the middle layer is the first one that I did, then the top, then the bottom. Essentially, the 3 layers were done independently of the others – I didn’t try to match them up to make sure I didn’t cover something up on the previous layer(s). The bottom is a piece of drawing paper; I wanted that to represent the “background” noises of the song. For that layer, I took a cup of water and dumped some gesso and some ink and mixed it up to make a very faint watery gray. With that I just brushed circles onto the paper. Once that dried I took a pencil and just made straight lines coming out from the center so that it looks like it’s either pulling in toward the middle or fanning outward – however you choose to see it. I also made little squiggles all over the place on that layer to kind of represent the vibration of each individual note. On that layer I also threw in some larger ink “waves” going from corner to corner of the page, for some added movement. The top 2 layers were done on mylar paper. The middle layer consists of charcoal and graphite. I started off just drawing all the little circles that make up the “starbursts.” The “starbursts” are supposed to really exemplify the reverberation of the strums on the guitar, especially that of the ones at the beginning of the song that really stand out. I wanted those to be full of motion. I debated for a while about whether from the center the circles should get smaller or bigger…I couldn’t decide because I thought both looked right, so I ended up using both.

To give them more movement, I rubbed some charcoal on my finger and made circles around the starbursts…giving them a sort of ripple/echo effect. Between the “spokes” of the starbursts, there are little dashed “hooks.” Those are representative of the 5-note phrase that occurs repeatedly in the song. The phrase sounded like it built up, and then fell, but didn’t come all the way back around – hence the “hook” as opposed to a “petal” shape. The third layer is just ink/ink wash. I used ink for the smallest dots so that they would stand out more (because they are so small). Those are supposed to represent the wavy sequence in the song (hard to explain in words). When I’m just listening to the song, my hand always does a back and forth movement between my thumb and pinkie at that point in the song. Within that sequence there is a variation in tone and volume (minimal, but it’s there) between individual notes…and so the dots are different sizes. The wash dots are there for more movement mainly…I didn’t want to fill up the page with just the small ink dots because they would lose the overall wave shape. The last thing I added to the top layer was the ink lines, again bringing out that reoccurring 5-note phrase. These are more sustained notes, which is why I chose to use a line instead of a dot. And, because it is a repeated phrase, I drew the same lines a couple different times on the page.

I really enjoyed this project (if you can’t tell)…and I feel like it’s probably the one that I am most proud of from the whole semester. I think a lot of that comes from the content and my appreciation for music. It also really challenged me to create something unique that would not only accompany someone else’s art, but also be appealing on its own.

I have thought about adding some color to it (now that it’s been critiqued in its black and white form) – I always find myself struggling with “letting a good thing be.” So… I don’t know…we’ll see.

For this project we were instructed to choose 5 books from the library, and for each of them we were to create an image the size of an index card to stick somewhere inside the book for the next person to find.

The book: Perfect From Now On: How Indie Rock Saved My Life – by John Sellers.

In the back of “Perfect From Now On” is a set of lists that the author compiled. One of the lists is his top 25 favorite albums. So I printed off tiny versions of those album covers, cut them out, numbered them accordingly, and pasted them onto the card in a “messily-organized” way.

This is the back side. I wanted the letters to look similar to the ones on the cover of the book.

The book: Mars on Trial – by Chester W. Obuchowski

Flipping through the book, I saw the chapter title “Winged Warriors.” I knew that it was about pilots, but I automatically thought of angel wings…so I decided to incorporate both on my card. The first part of the chapter talks about a particular French pilot named Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and his P38 Lightning plane – so I chose him as my subject. I wanted to show the pilot with angel wings sitting in the cockpit of his plane. So, the background is a picture of the sky with some clouds, then coming forward, the angel wings, a photo of Saint-Exupéry, and then a cut out of the shape of the top of the plane. It did not turn out as good as I had pictured it in my head…I imagined it to be a bit more elaborate. I think if I could have put it on something larger, I would have made the rest of the plane visible.

I decided to write out who/what the card was supposed to represent so that whoever might find this book had an idea.

The book: Written on Water – by Francis de Miomandre

For this one, I ripped up pieces of blue construction paper to look like wavy water. The blues kind of matched the cover of the book, and the texture of the torn paper matched that of the edges of the pages. I chose 2 quotes from the book (each chapter had a quote at the beginning) to “write on the water.”

The book: TV News Ethics – by Marilyn J. Matelski

I found a picture of an old TV set and used that as my model for this. On the screen, I wrote (sloppiness was intentional) “We only tell you what we want you to hear” over and over to fill up the screen. I wanted it to look kind of like a static-y channel. I layered the paper like the parts of a TV set, and cut out the speaker holes.

The book: The Shock of Men: Homosexual Hermeneutics in French Writing – by Lawrence R. Schehr

Originally, the main title (The Shock of Men) made me think of a guy sitting in an electric chair…I thought of it as being funny…but then I thought about it and didn’t want someone to think that the image was meant to say “this is what should be done to homosexuals.” So I decided to make an “electric bubble” around a man instead, hoping not to offend.

Candy…supposed to be a 2D project… photos of candy (not chocolate) w/o wrappers or anything.

Part 1: Visual Component

Each student will study any feature film of their choice and select an “extra” that they would like to share with the class. By definition, an extra is a performer in a film, tv show, or stage production who appears in a nonspeaking capacity, usually in the background.

Part 2: Writing Component

A short description of the extra must be presented to the class. This description should be based on observation and describe what the extra is doing, where he/she is composed in the space and how this person adds to the scene.

Why did you choose this extra?

Film choice: Ocean’s Twelve, Scene 17
Tracking: 1:03:30
Extra: “Creeper Moped Guy”

The extra in this particular scene is a caucasian male riding a moped. He is weaving in and out between cars on a crowded street in Rome. His bike is blue and black. He is wearing a silver and black helmet, a black pinstripe suit, a white shirt, black sunglasses, and black gloves. He comes from the back of the image into the foreground, and eventually stops right beside the car in which the character “Isabel” is sitting and talking. While he is riding up the street, the camera zooms in on him going in between the cars. When he pulls up beside Isabel’s car, he looks in, and then the camera focuses more on her. He is framed by her car window while he is stopped. Behind him is a sign advertising the famous Fabergé Egg. When he exits, the sign is revealed to Isabel. This is important, because during this scene, she is on the phone with her supervisor asking for some paperwork so that she can get extra police to help her capture some thieves after they steal “something important.” She knows that “something” is going to be stolen, but at that moment, she doesn’t know what that “something” is…that is until my extra steps out of the picture to reveal the sign behind him.
I chose this extra because of his small, but important role in the film. I also thought it was interesting how the director chose to follow this particular extra, so that it would catch the attention of the audience. It makes the viewer wonder what this person is up to, or what role they will eventually play in the story. I also remember when I first saw this movie, I thought that this person was actually one of the main characters coming up beside Isabel to spy on her – which is interesting, because he wasn’t a main character at all.