Online portfolio--Yixin He

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C I T Y

Based on the city of Zenobia in 'Invisible Cities' written by Italo Calvino, I imagined a mysterious city hide in the cloud with plain base and magnificent views on the top which made adventurers hard to notice it. I built a 3D model of this city as the root of inspiration, then developed photos, drawings and printings from it. The final result is an animation about an adventure of a traveller who lost his way beneath city. The scene of rising waterline in the animation was inspired by the adventure on Miller (planet) in the movie 'Interstellar’.

‘Now I shall tell of the city of Zenobia, which is wonderful in this fasion: though set on dry terrain it stands on high pilings, and the houses are of bamboo and zinc, with many platforms, balconies placed on stilts at various heights, crossing one another, linked by ladders and hanging sidewalks,surmounted by cone-roofed belvederes, barrels storing water, weather vanes, jutting pulleys,and fish poles and cranes. ’ Thin Cities 2 Invisible Cities Italo Calvino

• city standing on pilings

I N V I S I B L E

C I T Y

This is a project developed from one text about Marco Polo’s adventure in an ancient mysterious city. Firstly I used some collage papers, white hard paper, tape, thread, and twigs to build up a 3D city.

• stilts

• jutting pulleys

• barrels

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C I T Y

Drawings developed from the 3D city

• print paint and boards

• ink and cotton swab

I N V I S I B L E

C I T Y

• ink and brushes

• print paint and boards

I N V I S I B L E

C I T Y

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Final work Animation

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-Length: 40 seconds -BGM: Come back home Two Door Cinema Club -Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/153245018 I made this animation with Adobe Photoshop and iMovie.

I drew it frame by frame using graphic tablet.

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P O R T R A I T S This project is to challenge my comprehension of representing facial detail without fine lines. I started with several drawings and used small brushes and ink, but it was still similar to the way I use fine liners. Looking at Marlene Dumas’s gouache work, “Passion�, I had an idea of using colour lumps instead of lines. This method developed my speed of drawing and also made special effect on the drawings.

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I M A G I N E D

T E X T • analyse the imagined text ink

I M A G I N E D

T E X T

This project is about reflect my own understanding and experience on the text from Dylan Thomas’s ‘Under Milk Wood’. To make the houses be in ‘silent black, bandaged night’, I put the street upside down and hanged it low so it would stay in shadow between itself and the table. Other elements mentioned all floated in the space above the turning street. This space meant the mind, elements contained were the things ‘you’ see, hear and think about. The final work is a series of drawings of this floating street. I gained great improvement from the first drawing to the final illustration based on the 3D model.

Book extract: ‘Only you can hear the houses sleeping in the streets in the slow deep salt and silent black, bandaged night. Only you can see, in the blinded bedrooms, the coms and petticoats over the chairs, the jugs and basins, the glasses of teeth, Thou Shalt Not on the wall, and the yellowing dickybird-watching pictures of the dead. Only you can hear and see behind the eyes of the sleepers, the movements and countries and mazes and colours and dismays and rainbows and tunes and wishes and flight and despairs and big seas of their dreams. ’ Under Milk Wood Dylan Thomas

I M A G I N E D

T E X T

• material: card board, transparent plastic paper, milk bottle, sponge, paper, tape, sting.

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T E X T

• black ink

• watercolour

• black ink

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E N T H U S I A S M

To find out my magical enthusiasm, I started to observe what I was keen on in daily life. When I found out I especially enjoy the contrasts around me, I researched contrasts in colours, texture, lifestyle, and so on. I recorded them by photos and analysed by drawings. The final works are two posters. The first one is about contrast in colour, the other is contrast in texture. Robert Ryman’s aquatint work inspired me to think about show the contrast in texture with all-white mediums so that irrelevant factor would be kept to minimum and contrast would be the protagonist.

• mind map

• contrast in colours 1, watercolour

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E N T H U S I A S M

• contrast in colours 2, watercolour

• Final work 1 acrylic paint A1-size poster

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• contrast in texture, acrylic paint

• contrast in texture 1, acrylic paint

• contrast in texture, acrylic paint, tracing paper

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E N T H U S I A S M • Final work 2 acrylic paint A1-size poster

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In addition to visual contrast, I researched the contrast in lifestyle.

The most obvious one must be the difference in meals. I interviewed two of my flatmates as they were preparing their dinner, and recorded the recipe by drawings. One is a Chinese girl, the other is a local British girl. The Chinese girl’s dinner must contain at least one course and rice but British girl prefers a faster meal which is usually instant pasta. The final work is a small comic book with collage front page made of packages and newspapers in the kitchen.

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E N T H U S I A S M

• Final work 3 watercolour front: comic back: A3-size poster

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