COLOR AID PAPER

HEY EVERYONE, just a reminder.... PLEASE PAY HEATHER RAGLAND FOR YOUR COLOR AID PAPER!!!

She is in the business office at Gibson Hall (the administration building just across Poplar from Overton Park).

We will start working with this material this week, and I am unable to give it out until the material cost has been paid.

Bring me a receipt or have her send me an email.  

Thanks so much.   I hope your Travel Posters are going well.

Tom

Color Trip_Artist Statement

Artist Statement.

For the Color Trip assignment we will be writing a short artist statement about our Travel Posters.

What are artist statements?

Artist statements are short (generally one page) statements that cover the basics about your art, or a work of art you have created.  Some of the things you might want to include in your artist statement include.

WHY YOU MAKE YOUR ART, WHAT INSPIRES YOU TO MAKE IT, WHAT IT SIGNIFIES OR REPRESENTS, WHAT'S UNIQUE OR SPECIAL ABOUT HOW YOU MAKE IT, and briefly, WHAT IT MEANS TO YOU.  

Since these are probably things that you haven't considered so much at this point in your artistic career, we are going to start off slow.  YOU WILL WRITE many many artist statements while you are at MCA.  For this particular statement however, we will be writing about the travel poster. 

For the statement please include:

1. The destination that you picked. 
2. The subject matter that you have selected to use in your compositions to represent your space and possibly how you have arranged this subject matter (design)
3.  The color choices (color schemes) and the way you have used color to effectively convey this destination in your travel poster.   Here is an example from a previous semester:

Artist Statement: Color Trip, Destination South Korea

            Overall, my artwork always has something to do with the balance, sometimes lack thereof, between nature and technology.  In this assignment, I chose South Korea as my travel poster destination both because a large fraction of my family is Korean, and because through my knowledge of the country, I know it holds a wide range of sights, geography, and weather.  There are many sights and landmarks that are both natural and manmade, old and new, in South Korea from the multiple mountain ranges, including the Dinosaur Ridge (as is added in my composition), to more modern architecture, such as the famous N Tower which provides restaurant dining and aerial cable car viewing of Seoul (seen on the far right).  I wanted my main focus in the poster to be the East Palace from the Gyongbokgung Palace--perhaps the only thing that defines the destination as an Asian country.  In the end, I also added the national flower of South Korea, the hibiscus syriacus, because its topical air contrasts with that of the cool mountains.  Likewise, I chose a color scheme that would describe the bright, diverse array of culture that can be seen in South Korea today, and settled on warm versus cool colors (also inspired from the national flag which juxtaposes red and blue, two obvious displays of the temperature at near opposite sides of the color wheel).  Warmth is created by the natural red accents of the N Tower and painted woodwork of the East Palace, but also by a sunset behind the mountains and a mimicking reflection on the cobblestone yard in front of it, with the previously described hibiscus flowers' natural colors.  Every other color used is a prismatic or muted cool color, being mainly blue and blue greens (that of the mountains).  The mountains become a backdrop for the man-made buildings, which then become a backdrop for the hibiscus and gradient. 

Color Trip

Color Trip

So far in the course we have discussed the color wheel (primary, secondary, and tertiary colors) and the relations colors have with one another.  We have also covered intensity ranging from prismatic to muted and chromatic grays.  And finally, we have discussed common color schemes (triad, tetrad, complementary, split complementary, analogous, monochromatic, square, earth tones, warm/cool contrast, etc.)

For this project:

You will choose a country or destination of your liking to create a travel poster using an effective color scheme that you come up with yourself.   Each color scheme must use a variation of in intensity (a muted, chromatic gray, prismatic) in the composition.    Consider a place that might be your dream travel destination (Greece, Italy, Thailand, France, etc.)  Do a little research to find out what items might be unique to that location (including architecture, food, iconic buildings, agriculture, etc.) You might include images of these items in your composition. Please do not use words in your compositions. 

Sketchbook:  Create 4-6 sketches that will effectively convey to the viewer the country of destination that you have selected.  Carefully consider both an interesting and engaging design as well as effective combinations of color that you will be using to make your poster.

Create:  a 7x10” poster using shapes on Bristol board with Gouache.  Remember craftsmanship will be of great importance.  You are encouraged to use visual references.  You may google “travel poster” for inspiration, but the design needs to be something fresh and only yours (no reproductions).

Presentation:

You will present your work along with a short artist statement) about the work that you have created, discussing the subject matter and choices of colors you have made in the composition and why.   This one to two paragraph artist statement will count as one of your research papers.   

You will need to turn in a typed version of this artist statement along with your composition.

Sample Artist research

If you are having an issue or question about the artist This is a good example of what the artist research should look like.  It doesn't have to be all philosophical just put down in three paragraphs

1. Who the artist is?  (Short BIO--1 paragraph)
2. What kind of work they make? (describe it, its style, how its classified... ie. pop, minimal, etc.)
3. How does the artist use color in his work?

DON'T FORGET TO INCLUDE AN IMAGE OR TWO OR EVEN THREE!

John Doe

Design Foundations

Thomas Green

Alex Grey

Alex Grey was born November 29^th, 1953, in Columbus Ohio. Not the place you’d think a great psychedelic artist would originate. The vajrayana practitioner is associated with “the Age of Aquarius” a.k.a, New Age Movement. This was a period in which the art was based off of self-help spirituality. He is considered on of the founders of the contemporary visionary movement, and currently teaches at NYU.

            Grey’s work has a wide variety of: performance art, process art, visionary, installation, and paintings. The work I’m best familiar with is his album covers for the metal band Tool. When I was young, my mom would show me a lot of music and loved showing me the cover art as well.  I didn’t understand the heaviness of lead singer Maynard’s lyrics but it made sense with Alex Grey’s razor eyes and mandalas. His work and Tools sound complimented each other in a way gears to a clock did. Alex Grey also did the cover art of Nirvana’s in Utero and Beastie Boys’ III communication.

            I admire Alex Grey’s intricacy in his paintings. His work is so clean it looks like he made his painting in Photoshop. In Grey’s work he shows a lot of human anatomy and its interaction with his depiction of spirituality, energy and chakras. Grey always knew he was an artist to the point he dropped out of high school to pursue his dreams in New York. His anatomy drawing where so on point that he was recommended to do illustration in anatomy books as his first job. Grey considers his art as a form of meditation and attributes a lot of his work to LSD and his enlightenment. I agree with his idea of art being meditation,. Art is often used as a rehabilitation technique.

            In Alex Grey’s Overlapping of human anatomy, spirituality, and energies I find inspiration. We go in our own personal trance when we create. It is the physical form of our mind. Gray uses a great deal of vibrant color and progressive pattern, and also plays with figure/ground relationships and reversal in an always new and surprising way. I agree that finding your style of art is a form (if not the most important) of finding yourself, and in that way we can all connect with Grey’s work.

Scanning Your Work

One of the most important things that you can do from here on out in your career as an artist is properly document your work.  Sometimes works may get lost or stolen, or even sold, and you will want to have a professional running catalogue of all the works you create.   While you might not ever show any of the works you have created in Color Theory or other Design Foundations courses to the general public,  it is good to have documentation for personal reference and reflection.  The processes by which you will be documenting these works will also apply to your future endeavors as an artist.  Thus, this is great practice for when you start making more serious works that you will want to share with the public. 

Scanning Your Work

To scan your work for color foundations, you will want to

1. Place your work picture side down on one of the many scanners available to you at MCA.  

2 Place the work in alignment with the edges of the glass scanning window. 

3. From the applications folder on the MAC locate "Image Capture" and open the program:

When you open the application, if you get a window that looks like this:

Or you might get a window that looks like this:

If the window that opened was the first one, you will need to click on the "SHOW DETAILS" button and the second window (pictured) will open up and and Image Capture will automatically run an overview scan. 

Once you are on the second window pictured above.  We will want to check, and possibly change the settings so you will get a print quality image of your work. 

To the right of Scan Mode:  the drop down tab should read "Flatbed." If it does, then you are good.  Go on to the next step.  If it reads "Transparency-negative" or "transparency-positive" then you will want to click on the drop down and change it to "Flatbed." 

Next, your "Kind:" tab should read "Color." If it reads "black and white" or "Text" then you will want to change the setting to "Color" 

The next tab, "Colors" should read "Millions" if it doesn't, then click on it and change the setting. 

For Resolution, you should have "300" dpi selected.  If you are not on this setting, then you will want to change the setting before proceeding. 

Just below "Resolution" click on the "Use Custom Size" to let "image Capture" know that you will be using one of their settings. 

Next you will want to highlight the area that you would like to have scanned.  To do this take your mouse up to the top left of the picture plane in the center of the application window and click and drag to cover the entire picture plane.  When you do this, Image capture will create a border and include the dimensions in the "SIZE" windows just below "use custom size." 

The next three settings tells Image Capture where you want to place the file, what you would like it named and what type of format you would like the scan to be.  

I like to select "Scan to: DESKTOP" so I can see the file as it is finished, and I can move on to the next work I need to scan.  

In the NAME window,  Enter your last name.  All images that "Image Capture" scans will be placed on the desktop with your last name as the base and a number (depending on how many times you have scanned).  For example, your first scan will be titled "Yourlastname" then "yourlastname1" "yourlastname2" and so on. 

Once your settings are all set, go ahead and click "Scan" in the lower right of the "image Capture" window.   Sometimes you will get a "Scanner is warming up" message in the scanning window.   Do not be alarmed

once the scanner is warmed up, the scan will begin and you will see the message change to this: 

This will take a approximately 20 seconds for the scan to completely run.  WAIT until you see the image on your desktop before removing your work from the scanner.  Once the images is finished and on your desktop, you can continue to scan the rest of your work without having to adjust any of the settings. 

Color Air Paper

Greetings Everyone,

Please go and pay Heather Ragland (in the business office at Gibson Hall) the 30 dollars to purchase Color-Aid Paper.  The school has ordered the paper for you and you will be using it for most of the second part of this class.

You must either have her print out a receipt that you will bring to me as proof of your payment, or she can send an email to my email address confirming the payment.  

Thanks so much.

Tom