Draw With Me

This is a blog dedicated to my work as a Computer Arts student at Abertay University.

[lindsay-duthie]

As I missed my presentation slot due to illness I have decided to post my presentation slides and bullet points for each module.

Visual Literacy:

Slide 1:

Artist’s Name: CaringWong. From: Republic of China. - Specializes in surreal environment art.

Reasons I chose her work: Although there is a fantasy element to her work, the structures are realistic - Could exist or be built.

Her use of colours are bright yet limited and harmonize giving her environments a bright yet peaceful feel.

Slide 2:

Taking inspiration from her more surreal works where environments were placed in trains or other objects, I went for rooms inside street lamps. - Each room is based on a different hobby of mine: Plant keeping, crafting/sewing and drawing.

The colour scheme I chose is similar to CaringWong’s piece, ‘Little Balcony’ with the palette limited to the complimentary colours of pink, green and orange with elements of blue and purple.

I feel I could have done better with the lighting as, in places, the scene looks too highly saturated.

I also feel that more objects could have been put in the environment to fill in large gaps in the environment and make it slightly more interesting.

[lindsay-duthie]

Art Practices: Balance: where elements in art are used to create a sense of equality withing a piece, making it pleasing to look at.

When we think of equality in art we normally think of symmetry (such as the Taj Mahal). Because everything is equally balanced on either side it is pleasing to look at. However, this does not mean that a piece has to be symmetrical to look pleasing. The chess piece photo, for example has one large chess piece on one side and 4 small pieces on the other, yet we still find it pleasing. Why? Because the smaller pieces level out the intensity of the larger chess piece. If the image were to have the Queen piece on her own, sitting in the same position, then there would be this uncomfortable gap to the right of the piece. This would also work vice versa. However, the chess pieces all together create an even weight within the picture so that there is plenty to look at yet now glaringly symmetrical or hard to look at.

[lindsay-duthie]

Art Practices: Unity+Harmony:

Unity: when all the elements within an art piece come together to create something that is pleasing to the eye.

Harmony: similar to unity but when the elements create an aesthetically pleasing composition.

[lindsay-duthie]

Art Practices: Size/Scale and Proportions: The terms give to the relationship of sizes of several subjects within a piece.

Seen as a very important practice, size and proportion can drastically change your work. It determines whether something is more realistic than fictional or exaggerated.

like the top piece size and proportion can help determine the distance of objects within a piece (e.g. If the woman was sitting closer to the house, it would be unrealistic to keep her at the large scale she is as the house would be nearer the foreground). Size and proportion can also be used as a form of emphasis like the 2 pieces below. Even though both main subject matters (the miniature figures and ruby slippers) are both proportionally correct in their own right, the size has been exaggerated to create a sense of fantasy.

[lindsay-duthie]

Art Practices: Rhythm: The term given to the repetition of art elements to create a sense of movement.

It could be repetition of subject matter (like the first 2 pieces) where they appear to suggest infinite movement or energy in the piece. OR The use technique to give the illusion of movement, like Vincent van Gogh’s ‘Starry Night’ where he uses the directions of his brush strokes creatively to give the sense that there is a wind blowing through the air and through the trees and fields. The use of his brush stokes around the stars and moon also suggests the intensity of their light and how it casts across the landscape.

[lindsay-duthie]

Art Practices: Contrast: Contracts is used as a way of emphasising a subject matter or meaning in art. Contrast can mean different things and be portrayed through different elements in art. 

Contrast through Colour: Where colours that are non-complimentary or clash are used to emphasis a part of an art piece (such as the use of warm and cool colours together OR un-harmonious colours, like green and red, are used in the same piece to create stark contrasts).

Contrast through Tone: Where black and White are used to create contrast. E.g. silhouettes.

Contrast through Chiaroscuro*: Where extreme darkness and lightness are used to highlight an object or scene within a piece

Contrast in Subject Matter: Where the subject matter in a piece is doing something out of context to emphasize a point (e.g. Banksy’s Rioter Throwing Flowers).

*Chiaroscuro is Italian for ‘Light-Dark’ and is the term used in art where extreme lights and darks are contrasted to emphasize the subject matter of a piece and its composition.

[lindsay-duthie]

Art Practices: Emphasis: Where a defined area or object is highlighted to attract attention to it, creating a focal point. There are many elements in the art practice you can use to emphasize a focal point. The main one is Colour - You can use colour (or lack of it) to draw the eye to a subject within a piece, such as the use of colour in the background with a desaturated focal point (like the bunny piece) or vice versa (the tree piece). You can also create objects on a minimalist background (like the swing painting) so there is nothing distracting in the background to draw attention away from the foreground. Emphasis can be used to describe the exaggeration of an object’s features, like caricatures, where a persons trademark features are exaggerated to draw more attention to them and create easy recognition of who the person in the portrait is.  

[lindsay-duthie]

Art Practices: Perspective: The term given to the way of portraying a 3 dimensional object,building,person etc. on a 2 dimensional plane (paper etc.) by suggesting depth and distance.

There is 7 main known ways of perspective:

Point: where there is one vanishing point on the horizon line that the object is tapered to, to create distance and depth.

Point: Where there is two vanishing points on the horizon line that the object is tapered to to create distance and depth. (both 1 and 2 point suggest depth and distance horizontally.)

Point: Where there is a 3rd vanishing point below the horizon line near the center to suggest distance of object to the ground. (used for birds-eye views). OR 3rd point can be above the horizon line to suggest how tall an object is from ground to sky (avatar/ first person view).

Point: Where there is 4 vanishing points, 2 on the horizon line, 1 above and 1 below. The image begins to look more warped (becoming more of a fish eye view) as the image depicts how the object would taper both horizontally and vertically.

Point: Where there is a 5th vanishing point placed in the center of the horizon line. Continuing the fish-eye effect of 4-point but also showing distance as well as depth.

Point: Where the Vanishing points are set at diagonals above and below the horizon line, like an inverted triangle where the 3 points are vanishing points and where the the center meets each of the 3 edges of the triangle are distance points. 

Point: Similar to 6-point but used side by side so when the image is ‘flattened’ it creates a panoramic view.

[lindsay-duthie]

Art Practices: Composition: The name given to a group of elements which make a piece pleasing to the eye.

Use of Geometry:

The Golden Ratio: Where the use composition is set on a ‘spiral path’ guiding the viewers eye around the painting.

The rule of 3rds: Where a grid is used to show how features of a painting are placed to emphasize certain subject matters within the piece. 

Framing: Using features within a piece to ‘frame’/emphasize the main subject matter.

*Photo for framing example by Mike Goren.

[lindsay-duthie]

Art Practices

Colour:

The 3 Principles of Colour:

Hue: Name given to the colour itself.

Intensity (aka. Saturation or Chroma): referes to the vividness of a colour.

Value: How dark or light a colour is.

The Colour Wheel:

Primary:  Red, Blue, Yellow. The only 3 colours which cannot be formed using other colours. All colours derive from these colours.

Secondary: Green, Orange, Purple. Colours Formed using Primary colours.

Tertiary: Colours formed using primary and secondary colours.

Colour Harmony:

Analogous: Colours side-by-side in the colour wheel

Complimentary: Any 2 colours directly opposite each other in the colour wheel.

Nature: Colour palettes based on colours in nature. 

Colour Context:

How colours behave in relation to other colours.

[lindsay-duthie]

Art Practices  My slides on ‘Light’.

[lindsay-duthie]

Close Up Pictures in the Environments 

From top:

Large flower bubble

Small Flower Bubble

Drawing Desk

Hat Stand

LightBulbs

Mannequin

Sewing Table

[lindsay-duthie]

So this is what the environment looked like in the end. I’m pretty pleased with how it turned out. The colours are vibrant and the glass features really make the ‘rooms’ pop. If i had the opportunity to go back and make changes, I would have worked longer on the lighting so it wasn't too bright in places and perhaps add a little more objects into the environment or altered the height of the lamps so there wasn’t so much blank space above the scenes. However, as i said earlier, it came out better than expected for a first attempt at creating a 3D environment in Maya and I really enjoyed creating it. Close up pictures to follow.

[lindsay-duthie]

Most of the textures could fit any model in the environment but there were some objects that needed specific textures. The drawings in the Drawing Room lamp needed pictures so I chose 6 pieces of artwork I had made and placed them on the UV template for the paper models, so it would look like my work was floating around the environment. The Sky as needed to give the environment a background otherwise it would have been black.

The striped textures were used for the spools of thread in the Sewing Room lamp. They were created in a similar way to the basic textures; a block colour with a brush overlay.

[lindsay-duthie]

As I had mentioned earlier, my textures were going to be quite simple.  In the end I used a block colour with a paintbrush texture overlay to give that traditional media look to my digital 3D environment.

[lindsay-duthie]

I tried to keep the environment as easy as possible to make. For every object, I used a basic Polygon shape and move and altered the vertexes and edges of each shape to create the desired objects I needed. I had hoped to have 5 lamp posts in the end but i couldn’t think of 5 hobbies on the spot worth showing and time was running out so i stuck with the 3 i had made so far: Drawing, Crafting/Sewing and Flower Keeping.

You will notice I have black objects in my scene, these objects were glass textured to add a little flare to my environments since the texturing would be quite basic.

[lindsay-duthie]

For textures, I started looking at different brushes i could possible use in Photoshop. CaringWong does her work digitally but her pictures seem to have a traditional media texture to them, like they have been done in vibrant water colours or on paper backgrounds. I started off looking at existing methods/brushes in Photoshop and Clip Paint Pro, such as pencil brushes and using scanned paper textures as overlays on bold, block colours. I then looked at free brush downloads for Photoshop from Brusheezy which replicated the look of paint brushes and sponges. I liked the look of an overlay and the texture of the water colour and dry brush sets i downloaded so i decided to use them for the final textures.