The Art Adventures Of An Undeclared Major Art 130 - Fall 2019 By: Gabriel Toledo
Table of Contexts Expectations D-School Dot-Line Letterforms Object-Iterations PSA-Posters Presentations Vocation Questions Fonts
3 4-5 6-7 8-9 10-11 12-13 14-15 16-17 18-19
Class Overview Coming into college, I was a Biology major and there was a class I didn’t like on the first day, so I decided to drop it and search for a new class to take. I wanted to take a photography class here and I had to take this class before I can take a photography class. The first day, Professor Ries said this class isn’t easy and I didn’t really bel;ieve her. The reason she said that was because my major was Biology and she believed I was taking this class because I thought it would be easy, but she was right. My homework time consumed mainly of Biology and then my other three classes would fill in the rest of the times. But in reality, I’m glad I took this class because it was something different that I wouldn’t really see myself doing. The nights at the art center finishing up a project and some of my classmtes would be there too working. There were days where I did not want to be in class for the two hours but then there were days where I enjoyed being there. The work load was up and down, there were days where we didn’t have too much homeowork but then there were those days that made me want to drop the class, but I’m glad I stuck with it. Since the class size was small, we were able to learn each others names and get to know each other a little more. Then around the beginning of November, I decided to drop Biology as my major because I began to get very difficult for me and I was losing interest. I don’t know what my major will be, but I some options and art could be it or as a minor. The big reason why I enjoyed this class was becuase of Professor Ries. She brought her excitement and passion for art everyday to class. Even though there were those days she assigned a lot of homework, I still enjoyed having her as a teacher. If your reading this Professor Ries, thank you for making this an enjoying art class and if I take another art class in the future, I hope I have you as a teacher.
D-School Objective: Interview someone that you hardly know and ask them questions. Then follow up with “why” to get them to think even more about it. Then be able to make something in a short spand of time and you have to show the person the thing you made, complete or incomplete. Engaging with a person face to face helped me think about my prototype because I was put in the spotlight for about 4 minutes thinking about how and what to say. There were parts where I had to pause and think about how I put my answer into words and hopefully I say it correctly. It wasn’t too bad showing unfinished work to another person but then at the same time, it felt a little awkward showing work that wasn’t finished.
The pace felt fine because it challenged me to reflect quicker and not have a full thought process which would take up a lot of time. Normally, I have a slow pace when I work, and I like to take my time into my work, but this challenged me to work quicker. I would continue working on the box that I made but probably work on the taping of it so it can look a little cleaner and not have all this tape mushed into the corners, holding the cards formation together.
Dot-Line Objective: Be able to work with limited amount of shapes and create something unique to a specific word. Be able to make multiple models and that each are unique in their own way. Be creative with this project and think outside of the box.
Creating rough drafts for this project was a little difficult because I tried not to make them resemble previous ones. There were plenty of designs to think and choose from but the hard part was to choose which one you liked best.
Gestalt to me is being able to identify the picture as a whole and be able to break down on what is going on in the photo. Being able to see a photo from different perspectives opens your mind to see more than what it shows. It opens a mind of creativity and fully being able to evaluate a photo and even creating your own. Being able to recognize different patterns with shapes can fully create new ideas and even better ones than the original one. Creating five more thumbnails helped me find new ways to move around the shapes in my designs and expand many ways they can go. Art allows the idea of creativity to come alive and new ideas to be born into this world. As the article “Shitty First Drafts� noted was that attempting many tries turns artists into good artists but good artists always have space to improve their art.
Joy Rejection Freedom
Letterforms Objectives: Choose a word that you would like to spell out and that it has meaning to you. Be able to carve out the letters in order to ink them manually and place it on paper. Ink the letters into a design which goes with the word of your choice. Be creative and have multiple drafts set before the final.
What did you learn about letterforms by working this way? I learned a lot about typography and how it takes time to carve and print out the letters by hand. This was my first time working on something like this, but it was enjoyable and hard to do. The carving of the letter to me took the longest to do because we had to cut around the letter and try to get the letter to stand out from the background. After that, I enjoyed inking the letter and seeing my project come to completion after every print of a letter of the word. It was kind of hard to get the letter dark and not have many white spots in it.
It was hard when I had to keep the letters straight on a line, but it wasn’t that hard when you were able to curve the letters and move them around. For me, it was a messy project because I would get a lot of ink on my hands when I would ink the letters I used. It would be fun to do it again and maybe even in a different font to explore different options.
Object Iterations Objective: Be able to use your creativity to create somehting unique of an animal of your choice. Be able to learn basics on how to use photoshop to edit the shadings of your drawings or cut outs of paper. Be open to editing and finding new designs that will make your work better.
What did you learn about your object through this process? I learned a lot about drawing animals, shading them, working with shapes to mimic the animal, and using photoshop to edit the drawing in order to make it look better. When drawing and using shapes to mimic a hummingbird, it requires a lot of detail to them since they are mainly colorful birds. I learned from this project that it requires a lot of creativity because there are plenty of ways to draw and format a hummingbird and I had to find the best that would fit. Which media was the most challenging for you? Which is the most enjoyable? The most challenging media was the type college because for me, it was difficult to make a hummingbird as detailed as possible without looking like a typical bird. I enjoyed the master artists because I was able to draw my favorite animal and attempt to make it as detailed as possible. My Wayne White drawing of a hummingbird was probably my best drawing of an animal that I ever did.
What did you learn about Photoshop that you think you’ll use going forward? I had used photoshop before, but it was like 3-4 years ago and I forgot how it worked. When I relearned it, I’m going to be able to use it going forward for a photography class that I would like to take and when we edit photos, I have some knowledge on how to edit them. If you had to continue with this object for a year, what else might you do to represent it in new ways? I would probably draw a hummingbird while it collects nectar from a flower. I could also find different master artists to find different variations I could use to draw my hummingbird.
PSA Posters
Objective: Be able to work with a client and discuss what kind of poster he/ she would like. Be able to use black/white text with any color paper and make the poster stand out so that the audience can see the meaning of it. Create multiple designs to show your client and narrow down what design is to his/her liking.
Was it challenging to be limited to type only? It wasn’t too challenging in working with type only because in scenario, I had to make a poster where images weren’t fully needed, and that text did all the talking. It would have been nice to add different colors of text to make the poster pop out more and being able to have more to work from. How did you scale, opacity, rhythm, orientation, and negative space (among others) to create visual hierarchy? I scaled the heading of the poster as an arch to catch the viewers’ attention so that they would want to read what is on the poster. I also bolded the heading so that it popped out and made the font of the letters pretty big so that squinting isn’t necessary. I put the 5 bullet points in a zigzag formation, reading from left to right, attempting to not have awkward negative space areas. What skills or ideas did you learn in this project that you can take forward to other work? I learned that making a lot of rough drafts is very helpful in finalizing the final draft because you can see what works and what doesn’t. Then you can ideas from different posters and mash them up to make even a better design.
Presentations Objective: Be able to give a presentation on a artist and his/her work where each slide is set to 20 seconds each. Be able to have smooth transitions between each slide and talk about the artist’s work as a whole.
What drew you to your designer? What drew me to Herbert Matter’s work was that he used a lot of images with meaning rather than having a ton of text explaining what is going on. There were hardly any negative spaces in his posters, and it was all consumed by an image or color. How do you feel about presenting to your classmates? I wasn’t really confident in myself to present and it affected me because my presentation didn’t go so well. Which of the designers your classmates presented might you research further? I would further research Aaron Draplin because his work caught my attention from the beginning of the presentation, and I enjoyed seeing all those different art works he did.
Vocation Questions What is the difference between a good life and a significant life? A good life to me is when you get things done that you wanted to complete but to the bare minimum. Once you reached your goal, you settle down and don’t seek for more. A significant life is when you complete your goals but also leave an impact on others by your actions. You do more than the bare minimum and complete a goal with more knowledge gained out of it.
What is the greatest failure you’ve experienced in your life? The greatest failure I’ve experienced in my life was not giving my full effort in highschool. If I had done that, I would have leanred a ton more about how to study, write papers, and time management. I was an average BC student and my school was an hour away from my house. I would get home around 5, eat dinner, and then start homework. There were days where I was really tired from the day and I wouldn’t feel like doing homework. If I had put in the effort, I felt like i could have been an AB student but I let my laziness get the best of me. I also never really saught for help, I had oppurtunities to meet with my teachers if I needed help but I never really took full advantage of it when I would struggle learning something.
fonts
“This book was made as part of Introduction to Design at St. Norbert College in the fall of 2019. The fonts used include Mini Pro and Phosphate. It was digitally printed and saddle stapled at the college’s print center”