Ceramics: Handbuilding

Now to the ceramics portion of our program... We started off the semester with handbuilding. Ok, so the last time I was in a ceramics class was in middle school, and before that, my 2nd grade clay class, I like to think I've improved a bit since then.

Pinch Pots, minimal to no tools used. There are two more, but they didn't get fired hot enough and so the glaze is this strange pea-soup color >.< I may post them later, but I doubt it.




















Pinch Mugs, some tool use, mostly to carve out the handle. There are three, but I'll probably only keep the smallest one, it's my favorite. As far as measurements, I'm not really sure how big they are, but they are pretty small, same with the pinch pots.

Value Color

First off, I love ribbon dancing. If I was graceful enough to pull it off, that would be my chosen career path. Well, maybe just in the top 5. Anyway, I wanted to incorporate that somewhere in the semester, so I chose to do it for my value project with color. I looked at a lot of different pictures, and got a sense for the movement of the ribbon and the dancer. I made quite a few sketches of what kind of composition I wanted, and ended up with this. My instructor didn't like that the background was a solid color, and told me to make it have variants like the figure and the ribbon. I had already tried that and it was too distracting. I got points taken off anyway, but whatever, I still like it like this. :) We had a few color schemes to choose from, and I chose complementary.

Grayscale Value

For my Grayscale Value project I did a self-portrait. I am not bald, my hair is just pulled back... Anyways, I've noticed that a lot of people do this type of project with organic shapes and curved lines, so I wanted to do only straight lines. So I did. I thought it was interesting to see a human face done in straight lines, because that is not what we see in the real world. I used three values.

GridMorph

So, next we had to do a grid morph project, which is similar to the Character Morph, but we also had to look at how the composition changed when the colors were switched in the positive and negative spaces. Also included is the assigned grid, with the original asymmetrical shape. I think the last one looks like a penguin :)

Character Morph

Basically what we had to do was start out with a symmetrical humanoid figure, and then manipulate it by degrees to become something totally abstract. My teacher wasn't a fan of my final layout, what do you think? Project done in Illustrator.

He also didn't like my final morph, so I redid that. I like it in a different way, but I kind of like the original one better. I have no idea what's up with the funky gray shape outlines, so just ignore those...

I'm back!

Hey, so my life has been crazy and I haven't had time to post anything. It's still crazy, but that's how it goes. So, after the book cover project, we did a magazine layout, but I haven't figured out how I'm going to upload that yet, so we'll hold off on that one. :) Anyway, I'll be updating with my projects from my 2-Dimensional Design class, as well as my Ceramics Intro class. After that, Drawing II projects will be forthcoming, I just have to take pictures of them first. Right then, here we go. Up first, 2-D design.

Book Cover: The Final

 OK, this project was a pain in the neck. Literally. After who knows how many hours on the computer, I've finally created my masterpiece!! So, maybe not really a masterpiece, but pretty cool in any case.

I'm so happy with how it turned out!! I overlaid textures onto all the buildings individually, and added the text onto the Ministry pyramids.  As for the back, I got some quotes off of Amazon (thank you by the way!) and used the pyramid shapes as paragraph spacers and to create implied line on the spine.  I looked up the original publisher, and created a quick logo for them because I felt like it.

Honestly, my favorite part of the cover is probably the back, especially those 4 pyramids at the bottom that look kind of creepy.  Kinda random, but it's still my favorite part!  I created the barcode in Photoshop, and in retrospect, I probably should have made it smaller, but oh well.

Here's a closer look at the cover.

And here's the cover upside down, because  I know you're curious :)

It was a screenshot at an earlier stage, which is why it my look a little bit different, especially the texture of the dystopic Ministries...

















Feel free to comment with question or observations!