Thursday, January 28, 2016

Anchor Point Constellations

I made the word "astrotypography" by putting points on the anchor points of each letter, like I did previously with a, b, and c. I think it looks more like Braille than constellations, though.


A nest built by a non designer


Constructed by Chris. Found that he struggled to built it without rules. He got a basic structure and put moss in the middle for some time of cushion but did not connect them together. Said that he could have used some straw but since I didn't put any of that material in it he didn't use it. He did not think about adding materials to his nest.

Ammonites

Lately I've been looking at stalagmites and stalactites. I ordered several kits as well as other materials to grow a bunch of crystals. While I'm waiting for them to come in, I started looking at ammonite sutures and shells.

Here are a few designs based on my observations:


I then used them to make larger logarithmic spirals like this:


As an experiment I saw how far I could go (before it started to crash my computer):




Wednesday, January 27, 2016

Example 5


Attempted to make a 3D view of the upcoming election.
Hovering over the portraits displays a little information.

Presidency 2016 3D Mock Up

Snake photoshoot

Here are some of the images from the photoshoot that I did. I had a LOT of fun with this, although it was fairly difficult as she was unusually exploratory. Here are 3 images from that shoot, there are more on the way and will be posted after I sift through to find the best shots and edit them.





Photographs for Architypetural abstraction

I decided to take some photos in Topsfield. It has very old buildings, the detail in them, and the lines created by their forms are interesting to me. I am slightly disappointed that there are so many trees, telephone poles and electrical wires obstructing the shots. However I don't feel as if that will really have any negative effect. These are most of the buildings I photographed, I'm only uploading the ones that I feel have potential.

My next step is to play with these images and start blocking out chunks in illustrator. I'm hoping to abstract them to help get them to a more raw form, without the distraction of fine details and obstructions.












Tuesday, January 26, 2016

Earth Wind And Fire_album cover

Their logo contains an Egyptian falcon god known as Horus.
Earth Wind And Fire logo



Album cover for
Now, Then & Forever


Horus the ancient Egyptians' national patron god. He was usually depicted as a falcon-headed man wearing the pschent, or a red and white crown, as a symbol of kingship over the entire kingdom of Egypt. Their music spans multiple genres is R&B, soul, jazz, pop, rock, funk, disco, latin, African and gospel.

Earth Wind and Fire sound has contrasting vocals over an array of instruments. The sound is strong, passionate but fun.

If their music could be a season it would be summer.

My design for an Earth Wind and Fire album below



Thoughts and work

So this past week has been interesting; as I was out sick last class I did more thinking about what direction I want to head in. I talked before about how I was considering doing a series of screen prints, but with where my thesis work is heading, I've decided to nix that idea entirely. I may revisit it a little closer to the show to create take aways and what-not, but for now I feel like the aesthetic is not the direction I'm heading in.

Speaking of direction, I've been considering how I want to begin pulling all of this together. Because, wether I like it or not.. our show will be here faster than I can even comprehend. I really liked the idea brought up last Monday about filling bubblewrap with water to create really interesting scale-like patterns, but I have a concern that I'd love an opinion on. Will the idea draw too much upon the original art, I'm afraid of trying to credit an idea to myself that is not in fact mine.

I'd love some thoughts on that before I go forward with creating my first experimental piece. I have ordered the supplies, and they should (hopefully) be here within the next couple of days.  In the meantime I have continued with my water color series. These I decided to begin abstracting them further by slicing them in a way that it makes it even harder to understand that it is originally a digital image of a snake.


Today I plan to take my digital camera and do a small photoshoot. My hope is to have a wide variety of different mediums to chose from, so when the show draws closer I have a vast selection. 

Monday, January 25, 2016

Lowercase A Constellation in 3D

I took the anchor points from the letter a and moved them forward and backward along a z-axis, then connected them. This means you can only see the letter if you look at it in a certain way. 





I think this would work out easier in a physical model, as the perspective in SketchUp warps the letter a bit. I added spheres to represent planets or stars or other astronomical bodies. Not done adding them all in yet, and I'm not sure if I want to go in that direction. But I think if I could figure out a way to make a physical model of this, it would be pretty cool.

Update: Charts

I'm still working on these and I will bring these sketches (and more) to class tomorrow.



I think I'm going somewhere good with this chart below. The color around each plant is the color that each plant is and also the colors I chose in my illustrations. I have plans to arrange the plants by how much rain and water they need. But this is where I'm heading at the moment.









I also started working on stuff like this. Not sure how I feel about it yet.




Sunday, January 24, 2016

Wednesday, January 20, 2016

Update

 I've started to take notes and sketch out some of the most common fractals found in nature.


Here are a few of the "specimens" in nature I've been learning more about:

Romanesco Broccoli
which has a logarithmic spiral where every quarter turn is farther from the origin by a factor of the golden ratio.

Ammonites that have logarithmic spirals in their shells, but also have complex fractal curves between each chamber in their shells.

River Deltas, and similarly lightening and trees/leaves which follow recursive formulas.







   

Adding on to this, I started making fractal trees.


Architecture Photography

I've begun constructing a list of buildings I would like to photograph when I go to Boston.

  • Millennium Tower
  • New England FBI Building
  • Christian Science Center
  • John Kennedy Library
  • One Post Office Square
  • Institute of Contemporary Art
  • John Hancock Tower
  • MIT Dorms
I'm sure I will find others on my adventure through the city. These are just the ones that I know of currently and would like to shoot.


Sketches & Weird Things

I don't really know how to describe these, but I made them while thinking about astronomical charts. Interesting, maybe? Waste of time? Who knows. They were very entertaining to make though.



  




  




  

Also, some sketches: