Late Update: 2nd Assignment

Here are the pictures of my second MAJOR Principle of Design assignment. The task was to create an artwork that shows your understanding of any one of the principles. I chose "Contrast" and decided to explore the relationship between organic and geometric/straight lines. The artwork kind of reflects my inner state of being: restraint, chaos, confusion, etc. Handing in the assignment, not knowing which end of the spectrum will everyone's reaction belong to, was pretty nerve-wracking. My only consolation is that my lecturer was aware of the effort and strive I put into it. 

It took me a few tries, from trying out with a few randomly-placed masking tapes, to scribbling over the final artwork with regular ol' Sharpie marker.



Trial and error:

The final piece:

The white horizontal strip in the center is supposed to represent a "rubber band" holding all that chaos together. Similarly (as explained by our lecturer), sometimes we need constraints, and we need to know the rules, so that we know when to break them. Philosophy 101, you're welcome.

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Week 14: Distorted Reflection

As you can tell by now, this week has been a hectic one (3 assignments for one module). 

In this assignment, we are supposed to sketch our distorted reflections. Things that could be taken into consideration include the shape of the frame (eg. shape of a spoon) and the composition of the reflection. 

This one was my reflection on the shiny metal cover of my sister's piggy bank (weird, i know). Note: I kept my reflection off-centre on purpose. 

That's about it for today.

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Week 14: Colour Cards

Colour cards sounds simple enough, but it isn't and I have the dark eye circles to prove it.

Basically, you experiment and play with colour to better understand the temperature and spatial properties of a colour. Yellow would be a warm colour and seem like it is advancing towards the viewer, so to speak. In this assignment, we were forced against our will asked to create 10 pairs of contrasting cards by painting them and arranging coloured shapes onto them. I tried to give each card meaning by thinking up a story/narrative for it and giving it a personality.  

There weren't too many comments on my cards (not exactly a good thing) because my lecturer didn't spend too long analyzing it and went on to look at my Tioman trip assignment. He did manage to comment that it was interesting. Obviously, I have much to explore and improve on. 

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Week 14: Tioman Trip Storyboard

Recently, us FID students went for a trip to Tioman Island off the coast of Mersing, Johor. You could say that we came back with boat loads of memories and experiences. What better way for a Principles of Design lecturer to take advantage of that by tasking us to document our trip by drawing storyboards and recreating them with different, unique methods. 

From the storyboard, we moved on to fleshing them out, with suggestions and advice by our lecturer. The process was time-consuming to say the least, and personally, I was stuck trying to figure out new ways to recreate those drawings. I used watercolour, painted on plastic, and drew on felt, among other things. In the end, there were a few hits and misses but the results were satisfactory, as evidenced by the lack of screaming when I showed my assignment to the class today.

I compiled each scene and made them into a short video (song credits is Outro by M83). I also tied them together into a mini book. The lecturer liked the variety of textures in the book eg. watercolour paper and felt. Needless to say, I'm fairly proud of it too (3 sleepless nights and all).

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Late Update: Batik Workshop Trip

Back in 13 April, we had a class trip to a quaint batik workshop in Kuala Lumpur. We were briefed about the basics of batik and then proceeded to paint our own batik print. 

The batik workshop is situated within a residential area. A spacious, green compound dotted with Frangipani trees, a souvenir shop and cafe made for a very homely, relaxing experience. Imagine painting your batik on a grassy compound with sunlight filtering through the leaves of the Frangipani tree; a light breeze and the smell of hot wax. Everyone (all 30+ of us) quietly painted away and left the prints out to dry in the sunlight once we were done.                                                                                                

I painted orchids growing out of a window of sorts. One, because I love orchids and two, because it suited the medium.            

Key takeaways from the trip:

• Batik is cool.
• Apparently, you can apply the Principles of design to EVERYTHING (including batik).
• Which is why our lecturer made us create our batik prints with reference to these principles.
• Something which I sort of disregarded at first.
• Spontaneity makes for interesting results.
• Your art can act as a form of self reflection.
• Hot wax smells like freshly-dried laundry.

T'was a fun, enriching class trip.