Layers Assignment

This assignment taught me about the importance of building art in layers. Layering is a good way to work through a peice. It allows for more flexibility as one tries different compositional/design options and refines those options--choosing which to keep and which to trash or remain unseen. Layers are a great editting tool--they enable you to work on your peice without effecting it entirely (unless you should choose too). Layers can also be well organized under different headings.

personal logo assignment

Here it is: my very own logo, desighed by myself.

I have used the colours green because of its prevalence in creation. I have used the light yellow because of its hint of brightness--it is a guiding light. Both colours act as a metaphor of life--green being the colour of most living vegetation, and yellow conjuring up images of the sun, also a source of life. I wanted my logo to be full of life, as a testimony of my gratitude for it.

The letters are my initials. I have used lower case because they seem to be less dominate and stark, lower case is more inviting and playful. The initials' surface appears glossy like liquid. This is done to imitate wet paint. the thick and thin lines that make up the initials and the leaf are like hand drawn lines that a pencil or charcoal has done. The wet paint effect and the varied lines, as well as the dotted appearence of the leaf and caste shadow have been all done intentionally to convey the fact that I am an artist--and I especially love to draw and paint.

The leaf is to symbolize my love for creation: I love to capture it in a drawing or painting, I love to go for long walks through and in it, I am myself apart of it and called to care for it! Creation both delights my Maker and me!

Finally, I'd like to explain that this logo was done in vector so that it can have crisp lines no matter what the size. Each image has been done by way of a drawn path (the leaf, each letter) and than the path was filled in with colour. I than selected the 'blending options' key thus adding various techniques such as 'bevel and emboss', 'outer glow and inner glow', and 'drop shadow'.

I think that this logo represents me well as an image.

Improvements...

I am re-posting my peice called "lisa christine" and it is now improved.
Last class we critiqued the art peices that we did for this paint and colour assignment. It was so good to see how diverse the class is with regards to their peices and compositions. I loved seeing and evaluating where each peice was strong and weak. For my own peice (lisa christine) petra commented that it had a strong sense of line and good use of colour. Also the expression in the face was honest--so I had picked a good original photo to work with. Some of my few students commented on how they liked how I had extracted my palette from Rembrandt's self-protrait of 1661. I enjoyed doing this, especially since I admire Rembrant's sense of light and warmth amist darkness.
I have learned from this assignment that I must pay close attention to the background of a peice--for how I treat it will inevitably effect the subject matter depicted, since the two cannot be seperate but instead are to be used effectively together to convey the whole of the composition.
I am usually careful with paying close attention to detail, however this assignment proved that I can slip up and become neglectful to see even the details. See how the size of lisa's arm is bigger than one would suspect in my first peice. This is because I had blended her arm with the couch cushion and so had created an area of the work which didn't seem quite right. I am proud to say that this has been amended.
Overall, I am glad to be learning from my mistakes.