21 Expressive Drawings

Expressive 3D forms assignment

Momento Assignment

Poetic Metamorphosis Assignment

Its About Time

Paper Stacking

Masked Identity

3D to 2D assignment

I had a lot of fun with the last project we did which was masked identity.I had alot of great pictures but couldnt decided what to do with all of them so I was inspired by Andy Warhol and did a collage of 4 of my favorite images in all different colors to express emotion.

Masked Identity: Futuristic Fashionista

Challenge: Development of an idea that uses metaphor and symbols to visually communicate a personal narrative.
Materials used: 18 gage wire, tracing paper, and gel medium.

My identity is yet to be determined, but I definitely know what I want it to be because of my personality. I want to be in the spotlight. I crave attention. I want to be well known but also well liked by everyone. My passion and my goal for quite some time is to break into the modeling business.
My pictures are in black and white against a blank background to make me and my creation the only focal point. Black and white pictures with a blank background, in 'modeling/agency'world, are the most beneficial pictures to have in your portfolio because its simple and classic and shows if you are capable of bringing a picture to life without relying on other objects or makeup.

Paper Stacking

Challenge: Create two stacked paper forms. The first is observed from life. The second is your own design.
Materials Used: paper, wood glue, scissors. Ink used for the second piece.
#1 - Observe From Life. Use your eyes and your hands to understand shape and line. My subject in this case was a small pumpkin from the church during Halloween season.

#2 - Your Own Design. Using the same materials and the process of paper stacking as for the fruit/vegetable, create your own form.

My first idea that came to mind was the idea of fluidity. I wanted to create a smooth and flowing motion with the stark contrast of the flat paper. I cut out squares and then cut a shape inside of them. Aligning the inside of the shape i created a unified yet uneven block of stacked paper. Using the remaining shapes, I created a curvature and bent them around my preexisting structure. My form is an abstract representation of water, or water falling.

Its About Time

Challenge:Carve two forms from life using soap as your medium. Apply concepts of time to one of your carvings.
Work in Progress:

Original

Subtractive- breaking off peices.

Subtractive- using water to mold shapes

Additive- wooden mantel and brown & black ink. Subtractive- melting of soap in microwave and slicing off pieces

Additive- wire and string. Subtractive- shaving down soap into desired shapes

Objective My goal to create two different individual pieces for this project, each one representing different stages of "time". Over the past several years, mankind has viewed animals and creatures with less respect and less caring of their existence, whereas back in timehundreds of years ago, people admired and even respected animals. Some cultures even worshiped them.

My first creation, the mounted elephant head, is to show how we has human beings see animals today. They are a hunting sport, far inferior than ourselves, used for the pure entertainment for ourselves. This is representational through the mounted trophy head and the melted soap that is attached behind it(aiming to show how wasteful it is to hunt and kill solely for sport.)

My second piece is to show back in time, people used every singly piece of an animal, either for admiration or for personal use. I wanted to create a tribal-esk necklace from what appears to be animal bones and carved rounded ivory jewelry. The wire and string are other decorations are simply there for embellishment, as tribal people would have done to their jewelry pieces.

Reading Response: Lick and Lather

My first thought about Janine Antoni was how odd and unusual her design peices were. But shortly after watching her interveiw, she correlates everything that has happened in her life through a representaion of a rope made from everything that she has experienced in her life. Those experiences also lead her to create more pieces that reflect upon her roping masterpeice, such as learning to tight rope (walking on air), the idea of feeding and cleansing herself with herself from bust portrait sculptures out of chocolate and soap. I enjoyed that she looked at the rope she created as her life line and thought it would be adequate to learn how to tight rope. Learning how to tightrope in retrospect caused her to learn how to spin hemp.

These concepts are always with us and they define who we are a human beings. Her representations show her acheivements, stregths and weaknesses.

Momento

Challenge -Make a non-representational sculpture of a memory. For example, a person, place or event. Use no more than three materials. No less than two materials. You may deconstruct and manipulate materials.
Materials Used Wire(12" and 30" caliber), string, and one rock.

My memory from this piece is about experiences that I grew up with regarding many habitat for humanities projects in a small town called Calnali, Mexico. My first trip was when I was about 12 and it truly changed my life forever. Most of the work that was done was intensive manual labor (i.e. laying cinder block bricks, hand mixing cement, hand pouring and laying the cement, and building walls-replacing the cardboard or plastic that was known as someone's home). Every day was an uphill battle, and witnessing such a differently lifestyle of those less fortunate than me has really opened my eyes to exactly how blessed I am. Many of these families lived in shacks, slept on dirt or mud floors, and shared their living spaces with their chickens and livestock. The children there wore shoes that were 3x too small for their little feet, and had maybe 2 outfits for a whole year to wear. Just this past year, December 2011, I went on my own journey down to Antigua, Guatemala to do volunteer work at an orphanage. Just seeing the happiness in those children's eyes as you start to care for them, give them affection, love them even- the joy and hope that inspires them is something that I will forever hold deep in my heart and I will truly cherish for the rest of my life. These experiences, I believe, have made me grow stronger as a person and develop a sense of appreciation for the blessed world I was brought in to.

I wanted to created a memento from 3 bracelets that I have acquired from my mission trips. They are regular, intricately braided, friendship bracelets that children haven given me as a token of thanks and a forever long-lasting friendship.I weaved wire through them to give them more structure and to bend/curve them how I please. Next I took thicker wire, wrapped it with the same string that make the bracelets and formed it to represent a tree-like figure. The bracelets represent my time being in Mexico and Guatemala, and the tree like branches surrounding them indicates my time as a person and how much Ive grown just from the humbling experiences. The rock that is shown was also a token that I found walking along the beaches of Mexico, on a leisurely vacation trip. Coincidentally enough, it has a perfect heart shape cut into it- a perfect illustration of how my heart has seeded my passion for wanting to return someday and continue similar work for humanities projects.

Reading Response: "Inventory/ The Tokens"

My thoughts about this short essay is how similar my design objective is to how the mothers wanted to remember and leave behind a small piece of themselves to their children, just as I want to remember all the children that have touched my life. Small trinkets and other precious momento pieces are giving to abandoned children in hopes of one day the mother will be able to return to her child. Given the time period, I think it is an interesting way to "document" your child all the while staying anonymous in hopes of not being shunned from the community. It is saddening to know how many children were left behind, how many died, and how many remained in the shadows of permanent orphans. I feel like this reading and the memory I tried to bring to life go coincide very well together.

Poetic Metamorphosis

Challenge: Using only white copy paper (do not use card stock) make three paper sculptures. The three paper sculptures are to represent the setting discussed in The Metamorphosis and will be miniature. The three sculptures are: a bed, a chest (or container, box, drawers, etc...) and a bug. The bed should contain the following elements: a mattress, a box spring, a bed frame that elevates it from the floor, a headboard and at least one pillow and one blanket. This assignment uses limited materials and does not allow the use of tape or glue. Final solution should be stable and visually communicate your response to the readings. In class we will discuss how line, color, texture, shape, scale, pattern, focal point, balance and repetition can communicate content as well as the perceptions made when viewing the miniature.
Vocab List:
Metamorphosis: a complete change of form, structure, or substance, astransformation by magic or witchcraft.Any complete change in appearance, character,circumstances, etc. A form resulting from any such change.
Arbitrary- whimsical, chance
Indisposition- dislike, disposition
Ascertain- make sure
Scrupulous- extremely careful
Outline/Plot: The story begins with Gregor waking up in bed and finding out that he’s just turned into a giant bug. Despite his state, Gregor feels that he can still go to work. However, he proves unable to do this when he finds he has so much trouble getting out of bed and opening the door. Furthermore, no one can understand him. Gregor’s boss who had come to Gregor’s house to get him to work, leaves in a very nervous state and Gregor worries about losing his job.

His family, however, cannot believe that the bug is Gregor and his father shoves him back into his room when Gregor tries to step out, badly bruising Gregor. Gregor returns to his room and goes to sleep. The family is now faced with the problem of the lack of money since Gregor was the only member of the family that worked. Luckily, the father had saved some money which the family would be able to live off of for about a year. Eventually, each member of the family got a job. Herr, the father, got a job at the bank, Frau, the mother, got a job knitting lingerie, and Grete, Gregor's sister, got a job as a store clerk. The only person who enters the room is Grete who comes by and feeds Gregor twice a day. After time,however, the maid was fired and a charwoman was hired to do the cleaning. Also, the family took up three lodgers to help pay the rent on the flat. These lodgers, however, did not know about Gregor.

One night after dinner, Grete began playing the violin which lured Gregor out into the dining room. The lodgers caught sight of him and Herr pushed them into their room out of sight of Gregor. The lodgers threatened to leave without paying. Gregor was pushed back into his own room. Early next morning, the charwoman came to clean and found Gregor dead in his room. She told the rest of the family. Herr ordered the lodgers out of his house. The entire family then wrote letters to their employers requesting a day off to relax. They then took a train trip where the Samsa’s realized that it was about time that Grete got married.

Work In Progress

Design Objective

My goal for this particular piece was to create a scene that was after-the-fact, after Gregor turned into a bug. The scene that I had in mind from what I had read was dark, musty, and from a very gloomy setting. Therefore, I wanted to portray very dark, melancholy colors to represent the bleakness of Gregor's situation. The greens, blues, and blacks also are to resemble a bug like setting- a place a filth, dirt, and mold- how Gregor actually favored living as a bug.

The furniture was simply to replicate the furniture from the time period of the 1920's-30's. I wanted an elegant, rod iron bed frame with an intricate wooden headboard specifically fashioned by an artisan from the era. That fact that is only a twin sized matress is supposed to represent just how alone Gregor was in this transformation, that he didnt have any comfort from anyone else except the comfort he gave himself. The dresser is more of an interpretation of an old fashioned trunk, typical of that time period.

The fact that the mattress, pillows, and blankets have a worn, beaten down feeling to them furthers my perception that Gregor fully enjoyed the moldy and filthy lifestyle rather than the clean and fresh manner that he was so use to as a human.

I wanted "the bug" to be more iconic than literal. With the colors I tried to create the sense of a bug-like creature, adding textured lines and molding the paper to make a basic shape of a bug. The rest is solely representational. Gregor is getting old and tired-beaten down from all the hardships that he has had to endure. I created an "apple piece" to show the scene where an apple has been embedded in Gregor when his father threw it at him. The bug is iconic to the end of Gregor's bug life, right before he passes on.

Expressive 3D Forms

Challenge: Using only the materials listed below, make four, small scale sculptures. The content and meaning of each form will reflect your interpretation from the following list (select four words - one for each sculpture): calm, sad, hopeful, angry, ambiguous, determined, old, dubious, chaotic, stoic, voyeurism, memorial, dangerous. Avoid conventions and symbols. Do not use text. Utilize both the interior and exterior of each form. Each form should fit in your hand. You do not have to use all materials for each form.

Dubious: I created a piece that I wanted to look as though all the pieces were only slightly held together, creating a sense of instability with severe angles and pieces jetting out from the center.

Voyeurism: The first thing that came to mind when I read the definition was a menacing nosy neighbor peeking through windows that he knows he shouldn't. I created the "curtains" with masking tape, and created "windows" with clear packing tape. The box it representational of a house or of someone's room.

Calm: When I think of calm, I think of rain or the calming notion of water falls or soft gentle waves. I created a small flat structure with ripples in it to resemble the essence of a calm lake with water droplets.

Ambiguous: This sculpture was supposed to be a piece for another word I chose, but I couldn't accomplish my original idea. Without planning, I soon found myself far from the original concept I wanted and ended up with this new from that I unexpectedly was rather fond of, hence the ambiguity of it.

Work in Progress: