Skool and promotional piece

In photo manipulation we had explore our style and what our influences were with simple word listing and through a montage of 3-5 works from our portfolio.

I saw this as an opportunity for a quick promotional piece.  When I first laid out the images I had both of the heavy purple pieces on the bottom, which made things kind of top heavy, as the other images are a little darker in theme and imagery (obviously not color).  So I shuffled them into the configuration you see above, thus creating a cross hierarchy of color and subject matter.  Too tie in all the pieces together and hide any obvious border I superimposed the "circle 3" from my business card.  This not only tied the images together better, but turned this into the promotional piece I was looking for.
What I also like about this is that it illustrates my current transition from overly dark themes into more cuter light hearted one.  Also a partial preview of my summer campaign which will culminate hopefully into a show before fall term begins at school.

(un)Commisioned

Here is a pen and ink illustration I did for my friends. 

I like illustrating extreme angles as it presents more of a challenge to me spacial wise, but I also see the inherent challenge of making a portrait interesting enough for someone to want to stare at it longer than the average peson stares at a piece of art.  This was done in a traditional style of pen and ink, with a pencil sketch and ink laid on top of that.
Then I made a color version for their respective phones. 

I did simple coloring in photoshop leaving some of the space white as not to distract from the colored shapes that I wanted to accentuate the most, namely the hearts.  I think the background coloring helped emphasize the three dimensional pose and made the hands come forward even more.

photo-a-day 30/30:

I like street art, and awhile back with my point and click I took this.  I chose a dead on shot as the door's molding framed the piece well enough and the message below would have been lost if I meessed around too much with the angles or anything else.  The best part of this photo is eventually I met the artist through a mutual love of musics.

photo-a-day 29/30

On my elbows with the point and click at Oceanside in Oregon, again I was attempting a new landscape by getting in close and changing the average perspective.  I chose to focus on the rocks further away from the foreground, which took a bit of tricking the autofocus on the camera itself.  I got it right much to my disbelief that I could pull it off with the tools I had.

photo-a-day 28/30

One of the best things I've found about cherrie blossoms is the bright pinks that they tend to be work really well with the browns and greens of their trees.  The detail of this came through nicely with the macro setting of my digital camera, also given that the day was a little gloomy and windy.  These specimens in particular were not the most pretty I've come across, but my main focus in this was the interaction of color.

photo-a-day 27/30

Line, form and intersection was my main aim here.  The glass distorting the buildings and the buildings reflected in the surface on the left add a new perspective to the structures.  I also was attempting for a high contrast between the lighter structures and even light blue sky in the back and the foreground's shadowed pieces.  I accomplished this again by having the sun high and bright and shooting from a low angle in relation to the subject.

skool work

In concept development we had to design a clock not using traditional means of numbering or telling time.  I also added to my task to design with a more feminine color palette as someone in class last week mentioned that men and women tend to design in different hues, shades, and tints.  Here I used some of the pinks and purples from the "be cute" posters.  To further emphasize the feminine attributes I used a highly decorative, victorian in feel, border for the clock face.
To address the assignment's needs I was originally going to show the passage of time through aging or an evolutionary scale, but then I knew someone else in class would do the same thing (and they did!), so I further explored the idea of something transforming into something else.  Here I used a 12 step diagram of an origami giraffe, the simple paper origin being the one spot and the final product being the twelve.  To further distance this as not being a standard time piece I decided not to use hands to mark the positions on the face, and instead a projected shadow is used.

photo-a-day 26/30

With this I was attempting to capture a view of linear lines in a single structure through a different angle that isn't usually observed by people.  The point and click again took this, but didn't do as well as I would have liked, not the dark corner in the bottom right.  Still this illustrates my effort...

photo-a-day 25/30

The last photo was taken at the peak of my noise making, where this one was taken at the decline.  My aim here still was texture, but now a softer material was the subject.  This was taken at the Oregon coast with a point and click camera on a very cloudy day.

Skool Work

We had to create a propaganda poster for image manipulation, I did three.

 I sampled old Soviet posters for the color palettes for the above and below.  The above image is a child from Sierre Leone, who has become a soldier.  The below is a Kurdish woman who has as well followed the same path as the child.

 The above three's images had their thresholds adjusted to create a more graphic simple print aproach.  My study partner in crime suggested I do a happier poster as the first one is depressing, and a good portion of my work for this class has been so.  I discarded the color choices I made with the previous two for an obvious cuter look, but kept the demanding Sovietesque font.



I created this last one discarding all of the assignment's requisites.  The image is from 6%dokidoki, a current clothing designer who has a healthy obsession with 90s rave culture.  Currently one of my favorite clothing designers due to the high volume of color, an almost saturated pink palette, and thus my color choices for the last two posters.



photo-a-day 24/30

Another texture picture.  At the time I took this I was making or producing at least one harshnoise album a month, and photos from this period reflect the high saturation of distorted sound I was into at the moment.  I think I took this at an event I was playing, with the intent for using it as cover art, but this never happened.  The aim was to show metal creating texture and reflect the mess of the sound at the time.

photo-a-day 23/30

Another subject from the same trip out to Oceanside, OR.  I was attempting to make the small look big again and maybe a Zen photo at the same time.  I saw the tide lines as a great opportunity for the Zen portion of this task and getting on my elbows and semi close to the subject matter for the big part.  This proved a bit difficult as I was using a really bad point-and-click camera, so no digital or macro lens to help out on the focus, which seems soft here.  I eventually used this photo for an nkondi album (http://www.discogs.com/Nkondi-Anotherburrowhereintherealmofceaselessmovement/release/628107) cover, the album itself dedicated to Koji Tano (aka MBSR), who passed away from stomach cancer in 2005.

photo-a-day 22/30

To celebrate the sun coming back to Portland I thought I post a likewise shot.  This was taken 6 or so summers ago.  I wanted to give these thistle like weeds a stencil like feel thus placing the sun behind them and angling up from a low position.