Visual Language Week 13 – Typography Portrait

This is my finished Typography Portrait

I started first of all by looking at some of the amazing portraits the 2nd year students did, and they are amazing! Hoping for a bit of inspiration before I sat down to tackle the portrait myself.

I used an image of me (with Naomi + Emma) as the source of my sketch. My original plan, as you can see below, was to use words to spell out the different part of my face in the shape of them parts. However, I didn’t quite do that in the end and I changed my idea. I opted to do a college, again. Mainly because I feel a lot of comfortable working with my hands than with a Mac. I did however print off words and used them in my collage. I used the words “thisisme” for my entire face, the word “eyes” for my eyes and the word “kiss” for my lips. My brown hair is made up of the letters ‘H’ ‘A’ ‘I’ and ‘R’. I also tried to make the letters stick out a bit to give that 3D effect, it doesn’t quite come through on a scanner though. Finally I did an outline of the eyes and mouth just to make them stand out a bit more.

Original PhotoPlanning

Planning

Sketch.

Finished Portrait

It looks slightly better when it’s bigger , but I’m happy with how it turned out.  Looking around at everyone else’s – they are all great! XD ./

Also – I GOT SNOW ON MY BLOG! MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

Visual Language Week 12

In this week’s lecture we started typography.

We started off by learning a definition of typography (“a complete alphabet in a single design”) and about the origins of typeface, and we spent time going though numerous old typefaces such as Roman and, my personal favourite, Gothic. I love Gothic script, it’s more of an art that I typeface to me. We also learnt about differences between serif and sans-serif and why and how these came about.

Example of Gothic typeface

In this lecture we also covered readability, and why typeface is an important in this. While gothic typeface may be beautiful, it’s difficult to read. We went about saccadic movement – when a person doesn’t read all of the words in a sentence when “skimming”. We learnt that line-spacing is also important because if the lines are too close together, it’s too difficult to read and the reader will just move on. Letter spacing is also important for clarity, and we learnt the difference between tracking (space between multiple letters) and kerning (the space between just two letters).

In the labs this week we all presented our semiotics assignments to the class. It was actually really good, as it gave me a chance to explain my collage rather than just show it off. I was really pleased with how my collages turned out  in the end, and I hope the class liked them too.

We got our next assignment today as well. It’s a typography portrait. We have to sketch ourselves and then using that sketch, use typeface to create our portrait.

Visual Language Week 11 – Semiotics Collage

I’ll start off by talking about this weeks lecture. We continued on with Design Principals, and discussed the rule of thirds – or the golden mean. This is something we covered in Digital Photography also. The rule of thirds means that a image is broken down into 9 equal squares. Instead of placing an image in the centre of the frame, you place it on one of the 4 joints.

An example of The Golden Rule

We also covered Gestalt Principles, which are: Figure and Ground, Similarity, Continuation, Closure and Proximity. We were split up into groups of 4/5 and each group was given one of the 5 principals to portray suing only ourselves. I was with Daire, Peter and Dan and we were given Continuation. We decided we would portray this through evolution of man – a good example of continuity.

Evolution = Continuity.

And now for the assignment….

For this assignment we were asked to compose three celebrty portraits, using the same celebrity image each time, and associte them with 3 of 6 different statements. We could do this in anyway – I chose to do this by collage.

The celebrity I chose was John & Edward (Jedward), and the statements I chose were “I am masculine”, “I am wealthy” and “I am popular”.

“I Am Popular”

This was the first collage I did. My aim was to create a collage that resembled a popular magazine cover, similer to ‘Heat’ or ‘OK!’. To dot his I got my hand on a lot of old magazines and seached through them all to find images I felt would help me portray the image that I wanted. I used popular people to help make John & Edward (Obama, Cheryl Cole) look more popular by association, and I also used images of screaming fans in the background. The image of John & Edward also resemles the famous photo of Barrack Obama. I’ve also included a screenshot of a youtube video which shows John & Edward as having over 1 million views – which again, helps portray a popular image.

“I Am Masculine”

For this collage I tried again to get images of as many things I could think of that could be associated with a stryotypical man. I’ve included cars, football, rugby, motorbike, a razor (Gilette – “the best a man can get”), Uncle Sam (the army). I’ve included people such as David Beckham, Irish Rugby team, Popeye and The Stig because I felt these are all men who appeal to other men. I’ve also included some women, a bond girl and Jodie Marsh (although with Jeremy Clarkson’s head).

I’ve tried to portray John & Edward as famous masculine charcters – James Bond and Indiana Jones and I’ve given them rippling bodies.

“I Am Wealthy”

For the final collage I tried to make Jedward appear wealthy. I put them in front of an image of a giant yacht, and included images of fellow wealthy people – P Diddy and Paris Hilton. I’ve also added a few wealthy accsessories – a tiny dog, a handbag, and some Gucci. Also, of course, they are suuronded by money.

I’ve given John & Edward some plastic surgary. John now sports a rugged jaw line, and Edward a new nose.

Visual Language Week 10

In this lecture we revised out previous lecture on Semiotics before moving onto Design Principals.  At the beginning og the semester we started to look at elements of design/visual language with point, line, texture, colour, space etc.  Design Principals are what we do to these elements of design.

In the lecture we discussed balance, contrast, movement, unity and emphasis. We looked how important each of them are and how they can draw the viewer in. Adverisiments and movie posters almost always use these design principals.

A good example of design principals used film posters.

Today’s lecture was the most intresting so far (although, of course, they have all been interesting).

We are also still working on out semiotics assignment. I’m using a collage as I don’t feel 100% confident using photoshop at the moment. Hopefully by the end of the year I’ll be a wizz at it though

Visual Language Week 9

We missed one week due to mid-term, and then the following week due to conferring.

This week, in our lecture, we learnt about semiotics.  We learnt that an image is just an that, and not the thing itself – “Ceci n’est pas une pipe.” Semiotics is the structures of signification in culture. It is what we associate with certain things. As humans we associate certain things – for example, a rose = flower + passion, or wealthy = money + gold. Semiotics can also lead to assumption, often wrong.

In today’s lab, we continued with photoshop. Introduced more tools, and tried to get a grip of the basic photoshop ideas. We created a character using imgaes of fruit an other foods. I have included a picture of the man I made below.

We also got information on our next assignment today. It is based on semiotics. We have to pick one celebrity and portray them on 3 of 6 ways. I chose John & Edward (aka “Jedward”).

Visual Language Week 6 – IMMA Trip

On Friday 23rd October we had a field trip to IMMA (Irish Museum of Modern Art) as part of Visual Language and Digital Photography. We  arrived at 11:30 and given instructions on what we had to do. We were split into two groups and each group took turns using the cameras

For our Visual Language assignment we had to pick 3 pieces of art that stood out to us. We had to sketch and take note of the visual characteristics of each of the 3 pieces of art. The 3 scanned sketches are really faint sorry. I have the originals if you need to see them.

The first piece that caught me eye was titled “Mosquito Man Arthur”, a piece by Alan Phelan. It is a sculpture based on Arthur Griffin. It was made using paper, metal pipe, cocktail sticks, toner and balsa wood. This piece really stood out to me. It was by far the most unique piece I saw during our visit to the museum. Arthur Griffin was a public figure and played a major role in Irish history - especially during the early stages of the IRA. I think this is why Pglan used newspaper to make this sculpture. A newspaper is a public document that can be much disregarded – much like Arthur Griffin was disregarded in Irish history today. I like the shape of the sculpture and its overall appearance.

Sketch #1

The 2nd piece that I sketched was a piece titled “Hate/Love”, a photography by Isacc Julian. This piece caught my attention because it as visual very striking to the eye. It’s dark colours of gold and almost wine colours stood out against the pure white walls. I think the image is one usually associated with gang and youth culture. In this piece however the image is split. One side features a fist with the rings that read “Love”, and the other first reads “Hate”. The words “Love” are written on the right hand. Both fists are centered in the image with the focus on the fists themselves, as the background is slightly blurred. The focus is on the words.

Sketch #2

The third and final image that I sketched was  by a young Irish artist, Camille Souter. This was her first Her painting, “We don’t want to see blood”, initially got my attention because I thought the texture of the painting was beautiful. It was only when I stopped and really looked at the painting did I get it’s real impact. The painting of the plane bombing the now empty desert land. The red paint, blood – shows us that the life that was here is now gone. The painting is really broken up into three section – the plane (aviation), this disaster and the desert. This is using line to help create an effect. When looking at the painting we are first drawn into the place – then we see the disaster, and finally and empty desert. It almost tells a story.

Sketch 3

After the groups switched, I was able to complete my Digital Photography  assignment. I got to photograph some of the artworks outside of the museum as well as photograph the grounds. Overall I really enjoyed the field-trip to IMMA. Not only did I enjoy getting to see some of the great art works and exhibitions on show but also getting the chance to meet up and getting to know some of my class mates better outside of ITB.

Visual Language Week 5

In this weeks lecture we covered bitmaps and vectors. We learnt what a bitmap image was and about pixels.

We looked at thee bitmap formats in detail, GIF, JPEG and PNG. We also looked at vectors, which is a way of creating a graphic using points and line instead of pixels.

In this weeks lab we were introduced to photoshop. We also looked at pohotoshop in out lecture this week as well. I’m really looking forward to working on photoshop more and hope I can improve on it.

Visual Language Week 4

Today we all submitted our assignments. 60 images of apples, done. Finally. I am really happy with some of them, but others could have been better. Having quickly looked around at others – some of them are amazing. How some people managed 60 images of a bag is amazing!

In today’s lecture we learnt about Wassilly Kandinsky and his view of what colour is. We also learnt which colours men and women should wear to attract each other.

Here are some examples of my 60 different apples;

Visual Language Week 3

In today’s lecture we learnt about point and line and it’s impotance in a picture. We also looked at emotions using points and line.

We also did an experiment using lines and points to to create an image of a male, female, love, angry and confusion.

Visual Language Week 2

In today’s lecture we covered topics including form, space and negative/positive space. We went over cubism, and attempted to do some ourselves. We did a a task which saw us trying to draw our hands without looking at the page. We then had to do the same again while looking at our hands from a different angle. We drew the second image over the first, making it appear 3D.

In today’s lab, we started our first assignment. To pick an object and draw it 60 different times. The object that I chose was an apple.