#assignment three

When I start part 3 I would not have considered myself confident when it came to working with colour, it is something I find most difficult within my art and I was a little uneasy knowing I would be working with colour for a whole project. However by the end of this part of the course I really started to enjoy working with colour and exploring colour palettes. Learning about different types of colour palettes such as monochromatic or single-colour palettes was really interesting and will hopefully assist me in later projects when it comes to deciding on colour palettes.

The seemingly simple task of observing textile samples and recording the colours by mixing gouache paints was really insightful, I had never thought to look at colour in this way and it made me understand and think about the colour choices within designs more. I feel that the gouache studies I produced, particularly the coloured sample, is one of the best pieces of work I have produced so far on this course.

Fig 1 View of cover and sleeve

Fig 2 View of cover and re-positioned sleeve

When creating my colour resource book I tried to be very conscious of keeping everything very neat and simplistic to allow my focus to be on the actual content rather than the design of the book. I actually decided not to make a “book” as such, I wanted the ability to add and subtract from the work in the colour resource at a later date so binding the work together seemed like the wrong idea. I instead opted to make a sleeve to wrap round my pages to keep them contained as a collection and to avoid adding any dents into the page by using clips or something similar. I am happy with the outcome and glad I went with this design, I mostly kept to one piece of work per page so each piece really stands out. I also ensured that all colour swatches were the same size so there is a real feel of uniformity. I used the sleeve as an addition to the cover, adding the visual aspect of the cover design onto the sleeve rather than the cover page itself. For the visual aspect I have used one of the palettes of colour swatches from the collage exercise, I thought this showed what can be seen throughout my colour resource book and represented it well as a whole. The gradient of light to dark blue is also very appealing visually so I think it works well on the cover.

Fig 3 View of “book” pages and sleeve off

Fig 4 View of first “title” page

I included a “title” page for each section, with a short description of what was covered in the following work. I wanted to keep these pages simple to match them to the design of the rest of the book. I also wanted to keep any text together and away from the actual work as I feel that text takes away from the colour work.

Fig 5 Pages in original order - Original piece and then accompanying colour palette

Fig 6 Re-ordered pages to show colour extensions together

The fact I have not bound the pages together allows me to edit this colour resource in the future as previously mentioned. The fact I have displayed each piece of work and it’s palette on their own pages, enables me to rearrange the pages if I would to. For example, if I would like to observe just the swatches themselves I can do so by taking them out and looking at them separately to the accompanying work.

Fig 7 Re-ordered pages to show palettes together

Another assignment, another daunting task. The prospect of this sounded really fun, but the idea of reaching out to someone I looked up to and asking them questions was yet another scary aspect. I had so many people I was thinking of that I couldn’t nail it down to five, let alone one, creative. Seeing as the limitations were very vague, it could have been anyone. But I managed to create a list of five individuals;

Michele Feghali; a graphic designer at Rooster Teeth who I really wanted to interview because of this project,

Josiah Brooks; a youtuber,

Baylee Jae; a youtuber,

A friend who’s a make up artist

A friend who’s a cake decorator.

I contacted the top three people through the contact section of their website, but none of them replied. I was a little upset by that because I really wanted to try printing the interview on a shirt for Creative No. 1.

I then reached out to litographs because I was still in love with printing something on a t-shirt. They did reply, but it was a negative response (they don’t have a team of designers who do their designs; they work with freelancers).

So I messaged Cognitive Surplus on tumblr. Didn’t get a response until I was already working on my project, which by then was too late.

The make up artist friend isn’t really someone I talk to all that much, so I felt weird about chatting her up after a few months of silence just to ask for help.

The cake decorator friend had too much going on all at once and I didn’t want to add to that, so I let her be.

I reached out to an internet friend for help, who told me she knew someone who was professional creative.

After asking questions, I found out her name was Maria La Duckworth, and she designs and makes jewellery, which I think it is pretty dang cool.

I asked her the questions, she answered, and then I asked for pictures of the jewellery she makes.

Because her profession is jewellery themed, I decided to stick with that, and go for a jewellery box where I put cards in the box that have pictures of her work on it.

I made a little prototype at home so I could see what it looked like, in terms of dimensions.

After seeing it all put together, I decided I didn’t want the box to be that deep. And I wanted the compartments to hold life sized jewellery in there. So I took my own necklace, found a box that perfectly fit it, and measured that for the necklace compartments. Did the same for the bracelet compartments, and I had a really big box (27 by 28, roughly).

Pretty big, but I did it anyway. It’s only on imgur because it wasn’t uploading to tumblr for some reason.

Curated Experiment One

I wanted to reach a group of 15 random people. In terms of how I knew for sure if I reached them, they would pass by my piece everyday. I wanted to pose the question, “what is your passion and why aren’t you pursuing it?” on a piece of paper and hang it up wherever I could. The location would be all along New York City. That way, my audience is not limited to a specific group of persons–as long as you can read, you can be included within my project.