Chelseyblog

Duluth Prints

2006-05-11T18:47:02Z

For my final project I chose to take photographs throughout the city of Duluth of various things that I found interesting. I tried to take pictures of mainly things that really meant something to me personally as well. This got to be a little tricky at times because Duluth is a very large city and it required a lot of time simply to get the photos. Once I had these pictures, I brought them into photoshop and cropped them until I got only the specific part of the image that I was planning on using. Then I placed various amount of photographs on each page by collaging them together. Once I had my desired composition I made the different pictures at varying degrees of saturation. For the most part I made the images very saturated and colorful becuase I wanted a fun, busy look. This was by far my favorite project that I have done in this class because it felt so personal to me. I really liked the end result and am glad that I chose to create six images rather than my original idea of four. I believe that the black matting also adds a lot to finish up my desired look.

Pomegranate Clothing

2006-05-01T21:15:06Z

We were assigned a Greek project for the extras of a movie that was never actully created. Does that sound a little confusing? Well honestly, I was a little lost for where I should start on this project. (as was my group that I was working with - there were three of us). We actually took a small part of the Greek myth that focused on pomegranate and incorporated that in clothing design. After a bunch of research viewings of pomegranates, we designed Greek dresses that incorporate that look. For example, I designed a dress (based off of traditional Greek ware) and created a border design along the bottom hem that shows cut open pomegranates (close up). I drew all of dresses by hand with pencil on regular print paper, and once I had them drawn out I went back over them with black ink. Once this process was completed, I scanned these images into my computer and digitally added some color and played more with pomegranate images. With the digital files, my group created a CD filled with various dresses. With all of the original drawings we each made a storyboard that would go behind the fashion designers from the movie in the extras part of the DVD. At the end I believe my board had a professional look to it and I really was pleased with the outcome. At the beginning of this project I was nerveous of the outcome - but I am overall happy. Even though one requirement was to have some digital work since this is afterall a digital class, my favorite part by far was doing the hand drawings and designing of the dresses to begin with.

Artist Jochem Hendricks

2006-04-24T21:04:56Z

Background information and description of Jochem Hendricks:
So many times art that is created with technology such as computers is not truly seen as a work of art. In some ways, I can honestly understand why many people believe this. (Or I should say I USED TO understand why people thought this). However, now that I have worked with this type of media to create some of my own art I have a new found respect for it. This form of art still takes time, effort, and skill. The other argument that people have against digital art is that there isn't a feeling of originality. With the programs such as Photoshop people are very able to go into images and make them almost too perfect. This creates images that are no longer hand made or crafted. However, the artist Jochem Hendricks from Germany gets the feeling of process and originality in his work. Not only does he leave his work alone (don't "fix it up" in Photoshop), but he also draws in a scribble-like way. The process of drawing in his work is done by having people physically wear goggles with infrared video that traces the eye's movements. This then is transferred onto a computer. The finished product is then a complex line drawing that sometimes turns up a recognizable image of what the person was looking at and tracing with their eye. However, the traced image usually ends up being a large scribbled mess - which is very interesting to think that that is how our eyes view things.
This link leads to some of his work:
http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/works/augenzeichnungen/

]]> Context and Category in the book: Chapter One: digital technologies as a tool:
This is quite obvious how he incorporates digital technology as a tool in his work. If someone were to try to draw exactly what their eye was looking at including the jumping around that it does, it would never be acurate. By having this infrared available to him he is able to show this eye activity very precisely. It is quite a complicated process because it involves infrared lasers that are hooked up to goggles that someone wears, and this entire set up is hooked up to a laser printer that prints out the final image of eye movements.

Specific work I like:
"Hand (left eye)" I really like how this image turned out because it is recognizable to viewers. No doubt this is an image of a hand, however it is still very abstract due to the way in which is was created. This image ended up having a very cubist feel to it because of the jagged lines, which I really enjoy because it is a new way of looking at a very common image.

How this may influence my digital art:
After looking at Hendricks' images, it makes me want to create digital art that is left more to it's original or natural style. Rather than going into something such as Photoshop, I would like to make images that have a naturally interesting form and composition to them so I won't have to go in and add effects. I also really like how all of his images are done only in black and white. This makes people look deeper into the form itself, rather than rely so much on color.

three billy goats gruff

2006-03-01T22:55:32Z

I created a website depicting the story of three billy goats gruff.
I depicted this story in a very simplistic way to make it a little more modern that how it is normally seen. A very common strategy used by advertisers lately is to use basic silhouettes on the main objects/characters (in white). I personally find this to be a very effective use of negative space. Because I see this so often now, I decided to test it out for myself. One of the biggest challenges for me in this process was to get the silhouettes to have very smooth, fluid edges. This was a very important thing to take care of because the white really stands out against the other colors that I used, and if they were to just be left it would have a very sloppy outcome. My favorite part of creating these images was drawing the troll in Photoshop. Because trolls are thought to be ugly it made it easier for me to have fun and design something that didn't necessarily have to have a clean cut look to it. The reason I stuck to three main colors was to make sure that the goats were the primary focus in the images. I first experimented with creating backgrounds made of photos of grass and such, but later decided that those images looked to busy and unclear. Overall, I am pretty satisfied with the outcome, and I believe the strongest points are in the images with the troll. http://www.d.umn.edu/~diet0167/story

My self portrait

2006-02-06T22:54:33Z

This image is created by many images that I have of myself in the background with the one large close up covering the majority of the piece. I used a large variety of images throughtout my life to give the viewers a feel for who I am. Part of the assignment was to divide the overall image into nine sections, and to create one overall united image with each of those individual ones. I chose to change the texture of the larger image of myself as it crossed into the new sections. However, for the background I left the textures natural, and instead chose to change the colors. Many areas of the piece have very saturated colors, which I think fits with the chaotic pattern of the background images. Overall, I believe that this digital piece shows pretty well who I am - mainly because of all the pictures that I incorporated throughout the background.