Back at it!

Well, I'm back in school full-fledged this semester, and it feels good to finally be designing again! I'm taking 4 classes: Painting 1, Intro to Computer Science (nerd alert! 8) ), History of architecture and Interior design, and Brand Identity. Yes, Brand Identity, for the second time. Why would I be taking it again, you ask? To strengthen my portfolio is what it boils down to. I haven't been designing for the last six months or so, but am now able to re-focus and get my portfolio going again! It needs a lot of work, and I'm excited to see how it turns out.

Our first assignments...

Painting

Black and white self-portrait, referencing a mirror, with oil paint. It has been about five years since I've even touched oils, or paint in general, and i now wish I hadn't taken that big of a break from it. I absolutely love this class. It's a time for me to relax, throw color around, get my hands dirty, and paint however I want. There's a lot of freedom in painting, and a feeling of connection with the canvas. Sometimes, working on the computer all day with Graphic Design, it's impossible to feel the intimate experience that you get with "traditional art" (by this I mean NO electronics, just a brush/pen/charcoal/etc, and a blank piece of old-fashioned paper/canvas.) Here's the first painting:



...critique: The painting feels more like an emotion, than a real life depiction. It feels complete with the the background having texture. Some students left the canvas white behind their faces, but on most of them, that felt incomplete. Critique was really easy, being our first project (and in Painting 1)

Brand Identity

Abstraction assignment. Pick any animal and simplify it to it's greatest degree without losing the essence of the animal. I chose a... well, I'll let you guess. Here's the out-come:



...critique: The overall mark works great. It has the essence of (the animal-i won't spoil it for you!) and has a great closed gestault. One suggestion was to make the 3 "swirls" on top of it's head the same shape, but varied size. This would make it more unified but still have the variation I'm looking for. I'm going to try that.