Fickle Finger?

Just because it kinda wraps up my last post, here's the final—as in: spent more than a few minutes on it—hand study. Really, it's a finger study, but who's pointing fing…oh, never mind.

Interesting things I learned from this:

1. My hand and finger WILL cramp even in the most relaxed position if it's extended for any amount of time.
2. Applying the appropriate level of tone is irritating in whichever direction I err.
3. I obsess rather a lot at even the smallest assignments.
4. I have more scars on my hand than I recall having lived to make, and…
5. more than nearly all my fellow students (some of whom have a total of NONE), and…
6. that my instructor is young enough that HE'S never conceived of scars innate to hands on a student.

Joy.

Still, a worthwhile exercise. These past two drawings are really the first time I drew myself without hiding behind some barrier or sprawled distorted across a reflective surface as some artsy way of hiding.

I also had to draw an egg…and something. This is what I decided my egg should be doing.

It's because of the multiple lights in the room. Spotlights, yes? coming from different angles, all focussed on you, little egg. Everyone out here in the audience, everyone all over the world, waiting breathless for what you will express when you finally…uh, crack.

Fun With Body Parts

Okay, this wasn't my planned next post, but I tinkered with it tonight and need a justification for the time spent and the blog wins the scapegoat lottery.

For the record, I have never drawn my hand before, or really any other part of my anatomy. While I have taken drawing classes, it just never came up. My fellow Graphics students all have woeful tales of having drawn their digits thirty or forty times (one says a couple of hundred, but really?).

After seeing Escher's "Drawing Hands" in High School, I suffered a secret urge to follow suit, but never considered taking on the task for real until after I had grown a cramp from yesterday's assignment to draw a digit (we weren't supposed to put so much effort into the rest of the hand, but one gets carried away) I felt the need to switch models. It's hard to draw a moving hand—and the drawing is not so good, but the results didn't get crumpled up and tossed. A little post production and viola!

Left Hand Drawing

Okay, so less 3D messing with your perception and more basic "Hey this is my left hand drawing my right!" coyness, but the picture: it is got. Yes?

Mapping the Process

An assignment we had for our seminar class was, by yours truly, translated into this work of…cartoon?:

Follow the red (okay, pink) tape to get from the load of WTF to the load of coin. It's simple, no?

Well, I thought it was funny. I winced and swooned over most of the assignments for this particular course. It was clearly a very helpful class, designed to make graphic design students think about their options…so, naturally, I was unable to comply.

This, though; this was fun. The original had, among the array of "things," a urinal that was shaped like a cartoon head; an example of a truly bad idea—you know, those things that are not supposed to exist in brainstorming sessions.

Somebody always stands up at the start and says, "Let's throw everything out there! There are no bad ideas!" but they inevitably forget to write a few things down…things there maybe, after all, should not be any record of.

Who forgot to forget cartoon head shaped urinals? Fire that guy.

Logos of Me

An early assignment to create a logo out of our initials had me thinking, at least momentarily, of grade school art projects. But it's harder than you think to create a "brand." I had six kicks at this cat. Three had to be created on computer and three by hand. I can't say they were all successful. All of them are a little rough by later standards. I'm posting them because they're part of the record, not because I see them as examples of skill.

One, I absolutely hate, but it was the one my instructor liked, and it was picked out by several people who saw the array of them when I finished. It's this anchor thing. I guess it just feels to heavy (get it?). It doesn't say much about me. I do like sailing, but the sailing part of it, not the stopped at anchor part.

Well, it took some experimenting to get the 3D shape and gradient to work properly. It challenged my poor Macbook Pro, too. I'd never seen it take so long or chug so loudly as when it was rendering the dozens of positions I twisted the letters into. What you see is a T welded to a W. The circle at the top is merely to tie the sucker to a boat.

I always say that I designed a logo for a company I used to work for in Nova Scotia, but really it was more like artwork for an ad. I have no idea if they used it even twice. At least I saw it in print that first time, though.




This one's better. I like it because it's so colourful. It's fun. It's got motion. It uses all four of my initials.

There's only one problem: it's also not quite me. I'm not quite so…girly? Whimsical? "Wispy! Wispy! Wispy!" to quote Lily Tomlin.

Still, I can see it turning up in a lot of places.

Now, the thing about the next one is that it was familiar right from the start. The T and W are bands around the ball, tensing and squeezing it slightly. They are repeated in miniature in the negative space of where their points join. That tiny shadow? Well, it's a hard light I live in.

I created the original in watercolour and ink, but was only a couple of weeks into my watercolour class, so felt the need to redo it in ink.

This is one of two sword logos. (I'll have to edit the other into this post, as it appears to have crept off). Most people who choose from the bunch pick this as the best logo for me.

I think my initials (T and W) lend themselves to it more naturally than any other form, and it's rather cool.

Limited colours, simple lines, no need to ground it. I could see this tattooed on an arm—not mine, of course, a fan's ;)

It's done with ink.

This lovely thing uses three initials (CTW) and speaks to my love of bones and all things skull. The watercolour wash behind it was one of my first successes in the other class.

Well, I think it's pretty.

Ahh, InDesign. We meet again!

Two table comparison of edible and poisonous mushrooms.

Some of my assignments in the Graphic Design Program are more geared to commercial, rather than creative pursuits. Don't get me wrong, graphic design is art (and I'm willing to sneer "elitist" at all those who say otherwise) but it's also in demand within industry as a conduit for information.


In other words, one of the things we learned early was creating and using tables in InDesign, so we'd be able to put together that boss brochure on car deals.

Er…or mushrooms.

I put together the two tables here to compare poisonous and edible mushrooms for the fictitious "Brews, Brooms & Shrooms" magazine. While I did do the research, and the chart is accurate as I see it, I'm hoping it's publication to the web isn't taken seriously by anybody. It's just fun and games. Please don't depend on it for any kind of eating advice—or homicide, come to think of it (BB&S is not a nice magazine).

My fav of the two, because it's pretty, is this second layout. Rather than a magazine page, it's a fridge chart for the merry murderer to keep handy all year round.

Refrigerator Chart

All the images used for this piece are from a wonderful (and not at all advisory on what mushrooms to eat or things homicidal) book called Reflections On The Fungaloids by B.L. Williamson, who is also the book's artist. published by Algrove Publishing © 2002

One of My Fav Posters

I'm enrolled in the Graphic Design program at the New Brunswick College of Craft & Design. I chose it over photography—after much consideration and second guessing—for two reasons:

1. My favourite thing to do with photographs at this point in my life is muck about with them until they look completely different.
2. While photography would very easily and joyfully fill my days, my written work is much more in need of graphic design accompaniment than photos.

So, what I've learned so far in the program is basic use of tools and the elements of design. I've had a great deal of fun and no small amount of frustration learning them. At this point, it's only fitting that I show off at least a little something:

The poem quoted here was written ages ago while I waited to see a woman about becoming a writing mentor for me. It was one of the inspirations for my novel, and shows up in part on one of the covers.

Hours of work go into my pieces. I come to hate them near the end. For some few, I fall in love all over again. I'm quite fond of this one. I'd call it "Bones" but I call everything "Bones," so should probably come up with something else.

Tristis is an artist…too.

The author sits in attendance among her learned student colleagues.

Here I am, back at school.

Okay, technically, I've been at school for a little while now, but I don't ever let things like chronology get in the way of a good celebration and the start of a blog should be celebratory.

So break out your party hats, folks and take a look at what I learned me at art school (sic)!

First: It's a two year diploma program that I'm enrolled in (drumroll, please) : Graphic Design.

I chose it over photography only after months of waffling and lip-chewing. My main reason for going in this direction was that it was more or less the same thing I was already doing. I figure I can go back to take photography later, but I suspect Robert Frost had it on the nose with the roads and the wood and the sigh.