Crazy week. Just sent Freeman ninety more black and white images for the print sample book. I’ll share a few and make up for the lack of posts last week.
January 23, 2011
January 9, 2011
January 4, 2011
a previous web site design
This was actually just a portion of the front page of the web site I wanted a few years back. I was going to render it as combination stained glass and neon tubing. The other portion I may post tomorrow. It was a phrenological map of the head that was shattering (because of its premature totality) and the pieces were falling in the pattern of a cathedral’s rose window.
December 31, 2010
December 27, 2010
Fashioning a Fit Exterior
“My house is practical. I thank you, as I might thank Railway engineers, or the Telephone service. You have not touched my heart. But suppose that walls rise towards heaven in such a way that I am moved. I perceive your intentions … By the use of raw materials and starting from conditions more or less utilitarian, you have established certain relationships which have aroused my emotions. This is Architecture.”
— Le Corbusier quoted in The Philosophy of Interior Design by Stanley Abercrombie
December 8, 2010
Collage Coloring Page
“The deeper the influence of the formal, decorative element upon the method of representation, the more probable it becomes that formal elements attain an emotional value. An association between these two forms of art is established which leads, on the one hand to the conventionalization of representative design, on the other to the imputation of significance into formal elements. It is quite arbitrary to assume a one-sided development from the representative to the formal or vice versa, or even to speak of a gradual transformation of a representative form into a conventional one, because the artistic presentation itself can proceed only on the basis of the technically developed forms…”
— Franz Boas, “Representative Art,” pps. 82-83 Primitive Art (1927)
December 5, 2010
Mural Workshop: Composition & Pattern
I developed this exercise to demonstrate how complex pretty patterns can be built up out of simple shapes. I start talking about composition and mural design with simple ideas about pattern, repetition, positive and negative space, trying to get participants to see the graphic effect of what they are producing. I developed this exercise out of my love for kolam drawings. For the simple elements I went to my favorite drawing by a four year old. Below is a drawing by Nick (now probably 14) who was obsessed with King Arthur and Knights. I love that castle and horse. I think a t-shirt with that castle and horse on it would be great.
Besides the horse and the castle, Nick has pictured a knight with a sword and a feather in his helmet, and some other items I’m not sure what they are. A half eaten apple? An umbrella? A gift box? Actually I think the gift box is actually a sword in a scabbard. That scabbard image repeated in a radial pattern makes the star at the center of the drawing I produced. For the pattern demo I chose seven elements from Nick’s drawing, including the feather and a pocket in the knight’s armor that looks just like a comma. To those I added the larger organizing elements of concentric squares and circles.
Below is what I produced. About a third of it was freehand: it turned out it was speedier than Photoshop. But for things like Nick’s horse I had to share the original, so I cut and pasted. Participants were then given the organizing rings of circles and squares and asked to fill them in with the simple shapes like hearts, stars, diamonds, dollar signs etc., which were listed on the survey they took as designs people at the drop-in center would like to see in the mural.
November 28, 2010
style: visual identity & equivalence
I made this post card to send to James Kochalka when his daily comic AMERICAN ELF reached the ten year mark. My image is based on a photo of Kochalka and his kids and on a somewhat famous painting by someone else.
Here’re the same elements presented as a comparison, bits of multiply reproduced (degraded) GUERNICA and grid paper atop pages from Kochalka’s THE HORRIBLE TRUTH ABOUT COMICS. This is from a series of photographs I took: videotaped collages I made while I was designing a previous version of this web site (no longer extant.)
And here again a comparison involving the GUERNICA baby: this time posed against Minnie, Vinny and some Mayan Glyphs. I appreciate glyphs, especially with regard to their foreignness. I am always looking to achieve in my drawing and writing the formal quality I appreciate most readily in markings that are illegible to me.
And finally, GUERNICA baby and some grafitti I copied from a barrier on the side of southbound Route 17, around Allendale, NJ. (Graffiti no longer extant, except in the series of photos I took. I believe this tag says or originally said, “Messiah.”)