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Color Theory: Paul Gauguin

Finally we get to choose the medium we want to work in for our Color Theory class.  We were also permitted to pick a picture from a pile the teacher laid out.  I chose Paul Gauguin.

Project:  Abstract the painting down to 5 basic colors and match them (term: local color).  2nd rendition: change the mood by changing those 5 colors (expressive color).

This was so easy that sometimes I wonder if I am missing the point somewhere!

Original is Paul Gauguin’s The Flageolet Player on the Cliff.

I pulled out a square portion of the painting to simplify the 5 colors so it looks abstract.

On the left I used pastels to create the local color.  On the right I used watercolors on Arches very thick watercolor paper (the only way to paint with watercolors!) to create the expressive version.  The only thing I would have changed is to do the expressive in more of a blue tint, shade, and tone to represent nighttime a bit more specifically.

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USPS Stamps – Looking for Snowbabies

Project:  create a USPS stamp book in Adobe Illustrator.

This was a very fun project in Illustrator since I have a long standing love affair with the postal service and letter writing.  Those of you who have known me for years were probably on my long running newsletter mailing (which I closed down when I started college.)  The stamps on my envelopes were as much a part of the monthly communication as the letter itself, often chosen to celebrate the time of year.  In other words, stamps are way cool!  (And I really miss mailing that letter!)

This time I decided to get feedback from buddies on Facebook.  One is a graphic artist and also works at the post office… how neat is that?  With coaching on colors and fonts, the final product came out really fun!  And finally… I got a 100% on the project! Yes!

I call it… “Looking for Snowbabies”.

Looking for Snowbabies

Update:

The graphic artist for Bonanzle.com told me that my peeping snowmen inspired her holiday design for the site (how cool is that?):

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CD Packaging

I had so much fun with this one. 

With the idea that Christmas is coming and I am so driven by efficiency, I opted to give up the edgy “cool” idea and go for nostalgia.  Sigh… teacher called it “cheesey”.  Sometimes you just want to give up.  However… it meets my needs beautifully and right now, that is what counts!

Target audience: my family – with a few adjustments this will eventually house a collection of digitized old photos and be gifted to each sibling and Mom.

Theme:  a commemoration to our family and to our father who passed away 13 years ago.

Every detail was attended to:

  • Christmas cd – it will be a family album and Christmas gift.
  • “Band” – THE Shepherd’s Children is a double reference to Christ and to my father who not only raised sheep, but was a pastor in his later years.
  • My siblings and I are the band.  The grandkids are the “Chorus”.
  • A multitude of tiny details have significance to the family or just me.
  • Each photo is one I have taken around the farm over the past 30 years except for the one of my brothers on the back (taken in TN).  Even the pine tree branches is one I took on the farm for photography class last quarter.
  • Inside the booklet, there is the Irish Garvin coat of arms in the lower right corner.

Update 11/24:  A week later it came back to me with a 95% and the feedback that I have the spine text on the wrong direction.  Not sure how I missed that!  So in spite of the “cheesey” comment, the teacher still gave me a good grade and the “cheesey” has become a joke between us.  Trust me… I won’t be forgetting that and I won’t let him either! 

Back and front of case

Open case and cd

The front cover/booklet opens up to the following pages:

Front cover foldout

Inside

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Ad Campaign for ThermaCare

This project convinced me that I do not want to work for an ad agency.  I am not ruling out graphic design altogether, but advertising does not float my boat.   Since I am here in order to get out of the dry side of technical writing, it would be like jumping from the frying pan into the fire.   I would call this the dry side of graphic design.

I was also expecting my classmates to crucify me during the critique, but they were gentle and had good suggestions, such as lightening up the “Congratulations” so it doesn’t stand out so much.

Subject:  ThermaCare heat wraps

My idea: Out with the old school style of pain relief and in with the new idea of portable pain relief.

Execution:  3 magazine ads that “have legs” – meaning you can use the idea more than once, on multiple products, and could continue it for possibly years (i.e. the Energizer Bunny).

Several students in the class really impressed me.  This class is pretty amazing in their creativity so I was not feeling quite worthy with this project.  My head does not seem to work in an advertising sort of way.

ThermaCare... your hands free option.

ThermaCare... your pill free option.

ThermaCare... your discreet option.

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Acrylic Breakthrough!

Illustration board!!!  2 simple words that have made ALL the difference!  I saw some students from another teacher’s color theory class and their work looked so nice.  “Is that acrylics?” I asked.  “Yes, we have to use illustration board for everything in Diane’s class!”  They were complaining.  They should try watercolor paper!!!  Diane is a painter, though, and she would know the creative angst cheap watercolor paper and Liquitex acrylics would send an artist into!

So… I purchased that expensive illustration board and went to town on this week’s project.  What an amazing difference – the experience does not compare. 

No…I still do NOT love acrylics, but I certainly gained a lot more pleasure working these color combinations within geometric shapes than I would have had on watercolor paper. 

This project was about combining color to create different visual effects on a single geometric design (the black and white line drawing in the photo.)  I chose a quilt pattern called “Tumbling Blocks” which can be made to look so many different ways.

Teacher took one look and said, “wow.”  However…she is so quiet I have absolutely no idea what that meant.  I thought maybe I had done it wrong.  But she said it was fine.  I am assuming it was more an expression of suprise (probably at the illustrator board).  She is a quilter and would definately recognize the pattern(s). 

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Web Design Final

Finally… I ended the online web design class on a great note:  100% on my final.  That is because the teacher was grading to a rubric and not on creativity.  What a relief!  I did not have time to mess with creativity and doing it on notepad takes some extra work.  I am told the ground class is allowed to use Dreamweaver and are able to spend more time on the creative aspects, but 5.5 weeks with a full class load does not allow for that.

The teacher told me she hoped I would continue with web design.  🙂  A great thing to hear when that is your major!  I fell in love with the whole idea of .css (style sheets) and clean code.  It fits perfectly with my technical writing training and my love for crisp business communications.  (I know…I know…I am not so crisp with personal communication, as this blog illustrates!  I do assure you that my business writing is very crisp – years working on government regulated documentation will do that to you!)   

I would call this a “thumbnail” version of my eventual website for Squangles, meaning it is a very, very roughed out idea.  Squangles is the business Charlotte and I are working on together.  It is in its beginning stages and we have big ideas, but I need to get through the next year or two of college.  I have much bigger plans for this site once I understand how to work tables, etc.  Here are a couple of pages:

The Poet

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Front Cover of a Comic book

This one was harder than I thought.  Maybe because I was in a hurry as I wanted to spend Sat. with my family on the farm.  Seems like any time you are in a hurry, things conspire to slow you down!

We were learning “live trace” and “live paint” in this exercise.  I hand drew outlines of the cat and the castle, scanned them into the computer, did a “live trace” in Adobe Illustrator, then did the clean-up and “live paint” work. 

I learned that  I am not real crazy about live trace.  If I had 20 more hours I might have been able to get him to look the way I wanted, but the tediousness was a bit much for my creative soul.  He is what he is. I am thinking that in the future I would probably use the pen tool for this type of work, but I can see how live trace could be handy for certain projects.  I also think I am still old school enough to want to do my art work by hand (draw, paint – you know… all that wonderful, messy, glorious tactile stuff.)

Criteria:  Illustrate a fairy tale on a comic book cover using live trace/live paint.

I chose to simulate a 1960’s comic book cover.  (The teacher tried to tell me several times that the UPC was not on the front cover and I reminded him each time that this was 1960s!  The teacher was not even born yet, so I do realize that it is probably hard to remember a time when UPCs were not on the front of comic book covers.  [Ok…that was a bit tongue in cheek…but really now!])

Again… another 90% but no reason as to why (one student laughed at me for being bothered by that.)  Steve (teacher) did say he thought it looked like “Tom and Jerry”.  Sheesh… I told him I was trying to mimic that time frame and drawing style (although this is not Tom or Jerry.)  I hit all the stated requirements and did my own drawings from my head right in class (which he saw), but again it just wasn’t enough. 

It is a frustrating thing when you can’t get the teacher to tell you what it will take to please him/her, but I think this is my quarter to learn to “accept the situation.”  However, I am not used to this sort of thing happening, since as a consultant I usually obtain all the requirements up front in order to bring the client the “wow” factor. 

Somehow I get the feeling I am missing something and I haven’t figured out how to get him to tell me what that might be. 

I will keep trying.  I have a few more weeks yet.

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Family Time!!!

Our family gathered the first week of November so I ditched some of the homework requirements (such as posting for my online class) to meet up with them on Monday and again on Sat. 

The TN family came up for the full week (it is hunting season), then half the week the Ohio Yeske’s came over.  For the weekend the Garvins from PA joined us.

Monday night we had a noisy and rambunctious Thanksgiving meal.  On Sat. we celebrated Mom’s birthday and the guys hit her farm/household To Do list and cleaned the place up nicely! 

I took lots of photos and held the babies.  Even with 5 of them in their 2-year-old “testing Mommy” stage, we had a real pleasurable time of it.  I so appreciate my family and the grace God has extended to us with healthy kids and the fact that my siblings and their spouses enjoy spending time visiting and work on projects with each other.  I am learning what a rarity that is the more I talk with the students at school.

Me and just a few of the kids.

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Another Logo

Another logo?!  Only this one was done in acrylics and let me tell you, it was a pain!  I can not get Liquitex acrylics to behave.  You know… stay in the lines, cover the paper consistently, etc.

This is a simple logo of the 4 personality trait symbols: circle, square, triangle, and squiggle.  From the color wheel we had to pick and use triad colors:

triad colors

I was just attempting to get the project done in order to spend time with the family, so this is really uninspired.  It does contain all the personality trait symbols though: Circle/Square/Squiggle/ and me… a triangle!

Still got a 100% on it because I met the criteria.  Not happy about the watercolor paper/acrylic paints execution!  Ugh! 

IMG_3772sm

Uninspired logo

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Logos Galore – In Illustrator

What was with all the logos?  Funny how the teachers talk differently about how to create one!!!

Beth Remsburg was all about simplifying to the minimum. 

Steve Williams wanted it to really tell him something about the company (he docked my grade because of that!)

Anne Nickolson did not care what we did as she was not grading on the design, rather on the color combinations.

Here are my Illustrator logos and stationery for Squangles, the company Charlotte and I are playing around with right now.  I created these on Halloween night sitting at a one-on-one agility training Charlotte was taking with a national champion and trainer!!  It got me out of the house and the doorbell.

Criteria (that I knew about) was that they were to all be different concepts.

Sidenote:  Squangles is a children’s products company and Charlotte and I are waiting until I go through a bit more schooling before we do further planning, what we will focus on, and whether to formally launch it, etc.  Our first product was the children’s book.  Then I began adding her poetry to my children’s furniture (now ensconced in two doctor’s offices and various households around the country.)  We have played around with the idea of t-shirt designs also. 

Steve wanted me to put a less ambiguous logo (i.e. a book or chair or something concrete) with the Squangles name and docked my grade for that reason.   Even after a discussion with him, I am not so sure I agree.  That sort of locks us in.

I think I will wait until my corporate identity class to set up my logo.  In the meantime, I will play around with it. 

My intention here was to explore something that has a children’s business look and feel.

Logo1

Square and Triangle (our personality identifiers)

Suangles2

My puppy

Suangles3

Sailing the Sea of Imagination

Suangles4

Purple swoosh (squiggle) with circle/triangle/square