On Sunday, my friends I went to Coney Island to hang out at the beach for a day. Of course we had to build a sand castle, especially since one of my friends is majoring in sculpture. We didn’t have any tools, so we had to just use our hands, and it turned into more of a sand village than a castle. Then we decided it was a utopian society, with a school and a university, but it also had a laboratory where dinosaurs were created, and a colosseum where they would fight to the death, and a racetrack where the winners would race. See also if you can spot the luge track, the pit the criminals and dinosaurs are kept in, the volcano, and the giant piece of pie. My god, we’re such art students.
About two weeks ago, I designed some business cards for Lauren Fairweather and also decided I wanted some for myself. Lauren introduced me to moo.com, who have really great prices for a lot of different types of printing. I ordered 100 minicards for only $20, and Moo lets you have different images on the backs of the cards, so I got them in three different colors. The idea is that I can fill in the blank with whatever I am to whoever I give it to – when I go to internship interviews I can write in graphic designer, and when I go to YouTube gatherings I can write in video blogger, and when I go to Hogwarts I can write in Slytherin. Let me know what you think in the comments!
After meaning to be finished pretty much every day since December 27th, I’ve finally finished updating my site with all my work from Fall semester. A lot of it I’ve posted here before, but some of it is final projects which most of you haven’t seen yet. I’ll post below some of my favorite new pieces and some information about them, but be sure to poke around on the site a bit more if you want to see everything.
Map of the Cereal Aisle: For the second final project in Making Meaning, we had to make a series of three maps, one objective, one subjective, and one that can be a mix of the two. I decided to map the cereal aisle in the grocery store. In the first one, I tried to present cost and sugar content in an easy to read way. The second is an abstract composition of what jumped out at me while looking at the mess of colors and logos and cartoon characters that is found in the cereal aisle. In the third, I tried to present the location and ingredients of the different brands in an aesthetically pleasing way while trying to recreate the difficulty of finding what you need while standing in the actual store.
Custom Puzz3D: For my sister’s Christmas present this year, I made her a custom Puzz3D of the caboose in our backyard. This has been a work in progress since the summer, which is when I took the photos that appear on the final puzzle. I went through a pretty long process getting everything to fit together correctly, so I might make a separate blog post detailing all of that in the future.
Moaning Myrtles Merchandise: I already wrote a blog post about the designs of the new merchandise for The Moaning Myrtles, but I added photos of the actual products that give a more complete look at what the designs look like in the real world.
Thanks again for reading. If you find a broken link or an image that doesn’t work, please let me know either in a comment here or an email. And even if everything is working perfectly (cross your fingers), any comments are always appreciated!
I said in the last post that I would share some other drawings here. These are probably the only ones you’ll see since the rest are kind of embarassing how terrible they are. I don’t know, maybe my standards are too high, since half my friends at RISD are illustration majors and they’re all incredibly talented. But whatever. Enjoy.
This is probably the drawing I’m most proud of. It was for the RISD home test, which is where they give you three topics and you have to submit drawings of them as with your application and portfolio. The one they do every year is to draw a bike. I spent about three weeks on this, even though it was also from a photo (don’t tell the RISD application people). However, if I had tried to do this from life I think I would have permanent neck damage. Anyway, it’s in graphite on 18″x24″ paper.
This one was also for the RISD home test, and the topic was to draw whatever you want in graphite on 18″x24″. So I decided to draw a deer skull with a piece of rope and my dad’s gun (it’s heavier than it looks). This one probably took about 2 weeks, and I’m pretty happy with it, especially the texture on the skull which took forever. (For full disclosure, I’ll admit this was also from a photo).
Ok, this one was from life. It’s a drawing of a model I made for drawing class first semester, which was later turned into the larger drawing below. The sketch is in charcoal pencil and the final piece is in charcoal. I’m actually happier with the sketch than the final; I think the little figurines turned out kind of adorable.
This one was also from a model for that class. I don’t really have much to say about it since I don’t think it’s that great of a drawing. It just took forever to get the perspective looking almost acceptable (still not perfect). Oh, maybe I should also explain what it’s of. The assignment was to draw an event that happened in our childhood, so I chose the time that a bat got into my room and my mom had to hit it with a racketball racket and trap it under the garbage can.
This was from my second semester drawing class (yes, it was required, otherwise I never would have taken it). I probably spent a good five or six hours getting this to where it is now, so when I remember that day I kind of want to rip my eyes out in boredom.
Finally, this is also from that drawing class. It’s really big, probably six feet across, and I also wanted to rip it into tiny little pieces because drawing it was so painful. I think I spent two classes on it, which would probably add up to more than 12 hours in total. I still think the drawing really sucks, but after putting that much time into it, I might as well put it out there.
Most of you have probably seen the video I posted of drawing John Green, but if not, here it is:
And here is a scan of the final drawing:
As I said in the beginning of that video, I usually hate to draw. I understand how some people can find it relaxing, but I just feel bored and frustrated when I try to draw from life. Friends of mine who are illustration majors tell me about how they just zone out and lose track of time when they draw, but that zoning out is what I do when I’m designing somthing, not drawing. I know it just takes practice and if I really wanted to, I could get better at it. However, as a graphic designer, I don’t really think it’s a necessary skill, past doing readable thumbnails.
The thing with drawing for me is moderation. For example, when doing the John Green drawing, I would work for about ten minutes and then take a half hour break. However drawing for any longer than that just makes me tired and annoyed, and you can only imagine what torture the 7.5 hour drawing studio freshman year was.
Anyway, I just wanted to give a little background information on the video. Tomorrow I’ll be posting drawings I’ve done in the past, so be on the lookout for that (I would have included them in this post, but it’s late and I don’t feel like finding all the images). Let me know in the comments why or why not you like to draw and what your methods are. Also, do you think drawing is a necessary skill for graphic designers?
