Printing pt2.

Adam and I went to Office Depot today to find paper. Adam couldn't find any paper at Hobby Lobby that was suitable for printing. Ms. Yucus told us to find card stock paper, but no where in Wichita Falls carries card stock over 8.5x11. So we went to Office Depot, praying that we would find some thing . . .
They had two paper types, but only one of them was for an inkjet. We'll see what Ms. Yucus thinks about the program paper tomorrow. Now I just have to wait on Adam to finish his project, so I can cut the program to size, eat something, and go to bed.

 I have plenty of Voices submissions to edit in the meantime.

Printing Again pt1

Well, Ms. Yucus decided to make the project easier for us by not requiring us to mount our projects. However, since I already printed my project on the original paper she required, I have to find new paper and reprint my program so that I can fold it. The plan was to have everything (but mounting) done before the holiday break. I charged Adam with the task of finding a paper for out programs so that we could could print once we got back to the Falls from visiting my parents. Adam bought a canvas paper, which I just tested and it didn't work at all. So much for not being stressed for this project. I'll go to Hobby Lobby tomorrow after my morning class - thanks to my afternoon professor letting me out of taking her early final tomorrow.  :)

Printing

After a couple of tries (and help from Garry Goldberg), I finally got the printer to work. The printers have three feed areas, so make sure you don't choose a manual setting or the printer won't recognize that there is paper in the main feed area. Both of my pieces came out beautifully. I plan to mount them once I get back to WF from visiting my parents over the holiday.

Apart from temporarily losing my flash drive on Friday (thank you art students for not stealing my flash drive when I forgot to remove it from my computer after staying after class on Thursday night), this project has been unstressful even though I was a little anxious to get my last minute changes done on Thursday during class. I'm always a little anxious about something.


I hope that my classmates are making as much progress I am and that they are not running into any problems.

Final Design

Based on everyone's comments during class today, I made some changes to my design. Below are my final designs.

I will be printing over the weekend. I think that I will save mounting until after Thanksgiving Break. I just have too much going on this weekend.

Up-Dated Designs

Adam suggested that I center and move the text on the back cover of the program. I do like it better moved, but I'm not sold on the centered text. What do you guys think?

Also I have added text to the poster, and I am having trouble with the placement. I don't like having the text next to the figures because I think the text takes away from the image, but if I put the text closer to the petals, the text looks like it is floating and it looks weird. The grounded text is the better option, but I still don't like it. What you you think?

Also I really like the fonts that I have chosen. I tried reversing them: the sans serif as the title and the serif as the rest of the text is my favorite. Do you agree?

I really need everyone's opinions as I want to print and mount by Tuesday, Nov. 22.

Revised Petals

Melody requested that I add a twirl to the petals. I took her advice and re drew the petals. I do like them better. Thanks Melody!

Since the red pastel stains the paper, I will have to use the clone stamp in photoshop after I rescan the image.

Program Digital Rough

Thoughts, comments, suggestions on type faces and positions?

My goal is to have finished products by Tuesday, Nov. 22nd. I need your comments.

Finished Concept

Things came along quite nicely, I think. Your thoughts?

There are some smudges that I will have to fix in Photoshop: red pastel will stain your paper. I decided to leave off her arms that clasp behind his back (like in the program design.) I think I like the design better without them on poster, but I can easily add them in, should I need to. I have already had a request to change the petals a little bit (before the color was added).

Work in Progress

After the Mustangs Rally on Saturday afternoon, Adam and I went to the computer lab so we could work on our projects. Adam is doing most of his project on the computer, at the moment. I still had to start my poster. We we're in the computer lab for several hours and left when my red pastel pencil ran down to the wood. (I didn't have the right pencil sharpener with me - I have been forgetting a lot of things lately . . .) I was able to get most of the flower done. At first, I wasn't sure if the pastel was going to give me the effect I wanted. I was having trouble with the shading on the smaller petals around the center of the flower. I'm pleased with how it is turning out. I decided to change the vase back to an earlier concept because I accidentally put the flower too high on the page and the vase I had would not look right if it was taller. I think that it is a good change. I'll just have to look for images on the computer to see how the reflection will be. Unfortunately, the vase I decided to go with is $25 at Hobby Lobby and at the moment is out of my price range. The other vase was only $6.

Anyway, here is my work in progress.

Don't forget your circles

So, today was a work day in class. Last night, I prepacked all of my art things so I could go to school and not have to go home for anything. I usually feel like I forget things when I actually forget things . . . I didn't have that feeling last night.

I forgot my circles . . . I have an awful time drawing circles so I always use something, like a cup or a canned food. (I do have to redraw the image so that it is more proportioned on the paper, which means I need to choose new circles anyway, so I guess it is ok that I forgot them.) So I'll have to wait until I get home to work on the poster.

In the meantime, I have the image for my program. So I can scan my program and work on it.

. . . Go buy a Flower and Vase and Make a Still Life

My favorite part of any project is researching. I love it! I have gotten so good at researching that I can gather a lot of information (say 20 sources) in a short amount of time (1-2 hours): my motto is that you can never have too much research, and as a result, my works cited page ends up being two or three pages long. However, researching for the art projects has been a little different than my researching habits for English papers. Instead of researching for essays in databases, I am researching images in broad search engines like Google.com. It takes longer to weed out the things I don't need, and sometimes, I have to go through 15 pages of find the image I want. Regardless of the time used, I eventually find what I am looking for . . . or so I thought this time.

Red Gerbera Daisy

These key words pulled-up a lot of images that I found useful. With them, I was able to pull together a rough sketch of the design I wanted to do for this project. After getting the approval for this design, I sat down to do another, more detailed sketch . . . the images I found were of no help this time. I found myself throwing away several sketches - they were worse than my first sketch. "What do I do now?" I thought to myself. ". . ."

". . . go buy a flower and a vase and make a still life." So that's what I did. I decided to go to Hobby Lobby and buy a silk flower instead of going to Mystic Floral and getting a real flower. (AnnMarie always has red Gerberas.) The silk flower would allow me to bend it in to different positions, and silk flowers don't die.

The silk flower worked out rather well, and I was able to make a sketch that I was happy with.

At first I didn't want to use a full-frontal view of the flower, but Gerberas have long, curved stems and I felt like the stem took-away from the design. (Plus, when people have flowers on their desks, they often have the flower's face facing them so it makes sense to have a frontal view of the flower.) I hope everyone in class is as pleased with it as I am. I've already made preparations to transpose it on to my nice charcoal and pastel paper tomorrow during class.

Sketching

Creating three sketches for this project is prooving more difficult than I thought. I have done two of the three sketches already, but I have drawn a blank for the last design (no pun intended).

My first sketch features a red gerbera daisy, as it is the flower seen in the movie, and the petals are falling off. Two of the petals at the base of the page form a silhouette couple kissing. I will drawn both images (the flower and couple) and use the computer to fill the silhouette with the texture of the petals so the  idea of the petals becoming the couple is apparent. The program for this design features the couple again, but the woman is holding the flower this time and removing the petal. The petals fall to the ground behind the man. The words "She loves me . . . She loves me not . . ." are on the back of the program.

My second sketch feature a silhouetted woman holding a silhouetted man in the palm of her hand; the man is kneeling in a proposal pose. I have thought about adding a flower in the silhouetted figures. The program for this design is a close up of the woman's hand so that the holder can see a ring box in the man's hands.

I like the first design the best so far. We'll see what I can come up with in the next 24 hours for a third design.

The Shape of Things

In my Computers for Artists' class, we are designing a poster and a booklet cover for the theatre department, who is performing the play The Shape of Things in the spring. We watched the adapted movie last class period. I am intrigued on how the theatre department will perform the play.

Last class period, the director came to speak to us about the play and his hopes for our poster and booklet cover. He did not have any restrictions or guidelines for us other than what our professor had already given us. He seemed to desire something new, edgy, and possibly abstract. Since watching the movie, I have come up with one idea and another that is still in progress. I hope that I will be able to put my ideas on paper - sometimes I feel like I have problems with that.