For this project, our professor wanted us to define a certain number and types of spaces within an 8″ x 8″ x 8″ cube, by using a minimal number of walls and columns, which we could colour white or black. We needed to have at least one space of each type: large, small, overlapping, and double-height.
This is one of the projects that shows why I enjoy design so much: even though the rules of the assignment are strict, everybody makes something different. For example, mine is symmetrical, abstract, and sculptural, while many of the other submissions looked architectural.
The model is based around two intersecting cubes that form a diagonal hourglass within the implied outer cube. These three cubes are my large spaces. The rest are all defined by the framework at the pinch in the hourglass. That creates the small space, overlapping space, and double-height space.
The professor kept the model for the next CIDA review, and put it in the display case outside the Interior Design office, along with a couple other entries from the same assignment.
One of our professors had us do a poster and invitation for an exhibit of Eileen Gray’s works, and a rug design based on hers. Even though this was the last assignment of our monochrome term, our professor invited us to pick a signature colour for the assignment. Myself, I like red.
I did my typesetting and layout in Indesign CS2, since I wanted some precise effects with colours and overlaps that I couldn’t do by hand. The typeface is Futura. The illustrations of Gray’s pieces are all done by hand, as was the assembly. Oh, the scent of rubber cement in the morning. See more of this project »
Our final project in Interior Design I was to make a construction that combined volumes, planes, and lines, and would make exciting black and white photographs, since we were still working on the theme “light as inhabitant,” with the goals of learning composition, light, texture, and craft.
Since it began with my hacking holes out of hotglued boxes of battered foamcore board, and wedging them into each other, I called it the agglomeration. The official project name “Light as Inhabitant Part Three” was much too pretentious for it then, and nickname stuck, the same way that software codenames do.
Even though it was constructed entirely out of right-angled boxes and planes, the final composition feels much more dynamic than you would expect from that. Again, we were invited to craft interesting joints, and I did. Headache-inducing joints, like these multiple angled crossings and wedgings:
As I mentioned earlier, I’ve read a couple of Scott McCloud’s books about comics and storytelling — what makes a comic a comic, and how do they manipulate space and time with only paper and ink. So, when my art history textbook talked about how the artists for Trajan’s Column divided scenes, marked time, etc. I was primed to think “just like a comic.”
Since all the suggested essay topics for the course were dull to me — I’ve learned the hard way that the topic has to strike sparks off me or the essay will suck — I got permission to instead explain how comics work and why Trajan’s Column is one, despite its pretending to be a Greek frieze.
Read Trajan’s Column as Comic (PDF, 1.5mb).
The leaf tower was one of my favourite assignments of the year, since I managed to make it do something a bit special. The rules were to make a three-dimensional structure out of one sheet of bristol board, with only cuts and folds, and without removing any of the paper. Here’s what I came up with.
The zipper up the back holds the two edges of the sheet together into a circle, and the “windows” on the back are really tensioning struts that hold the front to the back. These struts are then folded on the front side to lock them in place, which along with the fold between them, brings the tower to form an asymmetrical heart shape. I then added the ornamental leaf cut-outs, and bent the leaves slightly outward to make it look as though it was covered with vines.
After our two-dimensional work, our professor had us tackle the third.
This piece was to make us experiment with using the height and texture of the cardboard to create an effect. Having done a lot of cutting of cardboard recently, I made a grid and then blocked out the size, height, and directions I wanted, so that everything would be easy to measure and cut. It worked out quite well and the professor kept it for the next CIDA review.
Posted: October 25, 2007 – 6:59 pm
Categorized: 1st year
Tagged: model
A small selection of works in conté done in first year. One of my biggest hurdles for going into design was and still is my lack of drawing skills. Every other person in my class seems to be a natural artist. I’m not. I can see, and I can imagine, but I have trouble putting that vision on paper well enough to satisfy myself. (Working in any media I can’t erase is petrifying.) I also have trouble with lighting. I can mostly tell when it’s wrong, not predict how to get it right. So when the other girls complained about our graphic presentation teacher marking too easily, and how it wasn’t worth doing good work for her, I wanted to shake them. You could tell from their tone that this stuff was child’s play for them, and that they had no idea how it would feel if drawing were difficult and scary to begin with, and doubly so because it ought to be perfect.
Since my opinion of my artwork is usually that it sucks, or at best is flawed — see this problem here and another one there — the professor telling me that it was good for a beginner (a.k.a. “easy marking”) was a really big help. It made it a little less scary to do the next assignment, because it was not going to come back covered in red ink.
One success made it slightly easier to try for the next, and you know what? By the end of the year, my drawings sucked a lot less than they used to. Some of them even look good to my ruthless perfectionist eyes. Obviously I needed (and still need) a big helping of confidence along with my drawing lessons, and I’m grateful to our professor for having given me some. After having seen how much I improved in a year and a half, even I have to agree that I can learn how to draw. And eventually, I may stop being scared of markers.
For Interior Design I, Tony wanted us to learn about composition, light, texture, and craft. Our first project was to make three-volume assemblies out of corrugated cardboard and then photograph them. Each was supposed to have a clear dominant, subdominant, and subordinate volume, and to make use of the cardboard’s texture. We started by creating ten sketches:
Since Tony was interested in joinery I borrowed some ideas from woodworking, such as pegs and dovetails.
The next stage was to pick the best two. Number three (the feature photo) was one of my favourites, but I had to admit it didn’t make an exciting photo in elevation and display the light-pipe effects that made me love it. Tony and I selected sketches five and seven as the best. I remade them at higher quality and took a full set of photographs for each.
My favourite pieces played with balance, in both physical and power terms. They were supported or held together by the subordinate piece, such as the slices in five and seven, and the slender column in three. If that piece was taken away, the assembly would tip over or fall apart, so it was subordinate and dominant at the same time.
This group of items are from an assignment doing monochrome graphic design. The “lines” item suggested a plaid to me, so that’s what I did. The black stripes are paper, and it was very hard to cut and glue 1/16″ inch strips accurately. I deliberately threw the black/white balance off-center in this one too. Bob kept this for the next CIDA review, so my attempt at asymmetrical balance was clearly working.
The boxes pieces came out better than I would have expected since I have never had much of a feel for abstract art. Like the plaid, it’s off-center and balanced at the same time. Bob kept this one for CIDA too.
It is surprisingly difficult to paint straight lines and sharp corners accurately. I should have borrowed a trick from Candace and masked them off with painter’s tape.
This marker sketch of a seashell was done as a preliminary stage for the organic pattern, which didn’t come out as well as I would have liked it to.
Eight items from my 2007 entrance portfolio for Interior Design.
I love the vibrant colours of this tree frog, and the contrast between the smooth watercolours and the texture of the block-printing that forms the background and main lines. I like carving linocuts better than I like drawings, since if I get the block right I can experiment with different colours and papers for little extra work…especially with water-based ink. This print is oil-based ink, thanks to the watercolours, which was very messy to work with. It turns out that baby oil is a better clean-up liquid for it than turpentine.
This charcoal drawing shows a view through multiple spaces, and is based on my photograph of a garden in the National Gallery. At the time I had no training in perspective drawing, and no experience with charcoal, so you can imagine how much trial and error went into it. I began by drawing an outline of the scene, without tracing the photo, and used a light table to do the toned version on a separate sheet, because I knew it would take me more than one try to get it right. See more of this project »
