SKETCHES
The link above shows my sixteen images/options that I worked with throughout this project. I began this assignment with twelve original ideas created digitally. This was a very large variety of things that could be found in nature. I quickly found while working with the different images that I didn’t love how any of them were turning out for symmetric or asymmetric. I was fine with going back and doing research, because I knew I could find a better subject for this project. I went from twelve to fourteen ideas. At this point I thought I was confident with my choices and sketches, but I still felt like something was missing. I went back to researching, I knew I wanted to try birds because of their silhouettes, so I researched different kinds of birds. I finally found what I was looking for, and at this point I reached sixteen different images and options. At this point I was very confident with my options and I had a much clearer idea of where I wanted to take this project and what my intentions might be.
DEVELOPMENT & REASONING: PATTERN SELECTION
I knew for both of my patterns that I wanted a sense of contrast. I feel that contrast makes the image pop out, and become more visually interesting for the viewer. In my research process, I began to find interest in how the silhouette of a bird looked. I originally found one that I thought I liked, and did a lot of work with it. In the photo above, the process with my first bird option is shown. I kept getting the feeling that it still looked like a bird, and was too representational still. I wanted it to look more abstract. At this point I looked up photos of different birds and found one that looked different and stuck out to me. I wanted to make the bird more abstract looking than just changing the shapes, so I also flipped the bird upside down. This is shown next to my first bird option. In the second sketch which was proportion, I knew I wanted to work with that general idea. I kept the same shapes, except I made them all perfectly aligned and straightened. The outcome was as abstract as I imagined it to be. I had my symmetric vector figured out, and I just needed to find my asymmetric vector. For this I knew I wanted something that was more graceful and soft, where I could contrast it with the geometric shapes. I knew that jellyfish fit this criteria perfectly, so I decided to try out a jellyfish, and I was pleasantly surprised with how it turned out. Shown is how I worked with the jellyfish to turn it geometric.
DIGITAL CREATION & COLORIZATION
Like I said in the above section, I had an idea of what intent I wanted to be behind each of my designs. Starting with the jellyfish, I knew that whenever someone thinks of a jellyfish they think soft and flowy, with the colors being blues, purples and even whites. I knew right away that I wanted to stay away from that idea. Part of this is because I wanted these designs to come out as abstract as possible, and I knew it would be harder to figure out what it is if the colors don’t match its identity. This ended up being the case for both of my designs. When creating the jellyfish, (which is shown again for reference) I began with the more geometric box shapes, which all had at least four sides and were mostly static. My classmates and professors gave the advice to change my original idea and add an element of movement. I began playing with my design and looking back at our notes to reference movement and all that it entails. I wanted something that would move the viewers eye around while looking at it, so I went with the idea of making each of the extended pieces pointed at the ends. This allows the viewers eye to follow each point, as it resembles an arrow. I kept a middle piece like the one that is shown in the middle sketch above, but I made it slightly larger. This allows each of the “points” to meet at one point, but also allows the viewers eye to travel around this middle piece. The scale of each of the long pointed pieces was intentional to include variety of the lengths and thicknesses, to help contribute to the movement. As far as color, I knew that I wouldn’t make this the typical colors of a jellyfish. Since I contrasted with the shapes of the jellyfish, I wanted to also include contrast within the colors I chose. My inspiration of color came from a photo of a bright pink color in a field, with a darkening background behind it (shown above). I loved how the pink popped out of the green and also stood out from the background. While looking at what kind of color schemes I could do, I realized complementary colors would be perfect, because they contrast. I knew that green and red were directly across from each other, meaning they were complementary. From here, I chose pink because I knew it was a tint of red, which would also contrast against green. For the background, I did not want a color that was super bright like the colors of the jellyfish. I wanted a muted color so that the design would pop out, and not get lost in the background. My classmates suggested a subtle blue color, which I tried and loved with the combination of the other colors I chose.
For the Bird, I also wanted to contrast with the shapes. A bird is generally a very free, and graceful animal. Their wings have a slight curve to them, along with their bodies. When I was working with the sketches, more specifically the proportions sketch, I loved how it made the bird so abstract. The box shape of the body and trapezoid shape of the head creates a large feeling of abstractness and unfamiliarity. Along with the sharp edges of the wings that were perfectly aligned, I felt this was abstract enough to struggle to identify if this was a bird or not. For the color, I began looking at muted colors. This is because I felt that birds are very dynamic, they are always moving and being vocal, they stand out. This is why I chose to contrast the color and make the colors more muted than exciting. After group critiques, I chose to go with a monochromatic color scheme, which captured exactly what my intent was. This monochromatic color scheme also helped with the idea of my design being static, and not including movement. My inspiration of color came from a muted pink sky, the sky that usually comes after a beautiful sunset (shown above). For my background, I chose a color that was dark, mostly because my colors were all lighter. This made my design stand out rather than a muted color like the ones I chose for my design.
ITERATIONS
The first photo shown is my iterations with color choices for my bird design. The top two were my original ideas, where I had three completely different colors. After my small group critique, all of my classmates in my group suggested trying some monochromatic schemes if I really wanted to have a sense of my design being static. I started to pull one color from the original designs and make a monochromatic version based on that. I felt that the pink version (first) was the most successful as far as creating contrast against the bird. The color pink made me feel like the bird was softer now, and not as dynamic.
The second image shown is my iterations for my jellyfish. Like I said, I wanted to try and stray away from typical ocean colors, which was a slight struggle when using complementary/contrasting colors. The first option was based off of a sunset, and I also changed how the color was distributed. Instead of keeping the middle piece like the next two, I made it all filled in with no stroke, which came across as unsuccessful with my group critique. It was between the second two options for me, and I felt that the middle option was the most contrasting and visually interesting. I did like the third option, but I felt it was too muted and not as exciting to look at. The middle option felt the most dynamic to me. Adding the white stroke also seemed to tie the whole design together. I also took the time to brighten the colors in my final choice because my group suggested that it might make the contrast stronger.
FINAL DESIGN DEVELOPMENT
For my bird design, my repeatable pattern was the simpler of the two for me in a way. I knew that I wanted my pattern to be orderly, and straight across/up & down. This gave even more feelings of my design being static like I intended. The hardest part of my pattern was to get the tile I created to line up perfectly, and so there wouldn’t be spaces. For some reason on draft day, mine was one of the only prints to show these tiny spaces in between, so I went and fixed this by creating small boxes and shapes that were the same color as the background with no stroke, to simply hide these spaces.
For my Jellyfish design, my repeatable pattern was a bit tougher. Since it is asymmetric, it is harder to get perfect alignment. After I made my tile template for the final design, I had the same issues with the small spaces, and for some reason the tiles didn’t want to line up. So, I fixed this problem the same way, by making the same color boxes and hiding these spaces. At first, I had my final design set up just like my bird design, straight up and down. I took advice from my classmate and slightly turned the design, making the orientation more diagonal. This helped a lot with my intent of movement in my design and made it more visually interesting.
