Friday, September 28, 2007

Brainstorming

The most important word that I want to illustrate in the my senior design project is the word "insecurity". As of now I have thought of representing that with broken or shattered mirrors or glass. This would represent the "fragility" or instability of the project. However since this material has been used a few times earlier I will have to come up with a unique way of incorporating it in my design.

Another important aspect that I want to show is the presence of the different people in my life. Almost all of them in their own ways have an impact or some sort of influence in my life and are therefore very important components in my life. As I had also mentioned earlier, to me a flickering light is soothing as the shadows it creates sort of "fills" up my room with "company" and I dont feel lonely any more. It is sort of a temporary solution to my lonliness. Which is why I am very keen to use light and shadows also in my project.

My insecurities often lead me to doubt almost everything and everyone and as a result it leads me to a lot of "confusion". I feel confused about a lot of things in my life and is another important feeling I want to represent in my project. I could represent this confusion with twisted or mangled wire.

So, so far the words that stand out the most are:

1. INSECURITY/ FRAGILITY/ INSTABILITY:
black, blue, red, shattered glass/mirrors, moving water, moving shadows (like ghosts), anything broken/ with jagged edges

2. COMPANY:
light and its shadows

3. UNHAPPINESS/ LONLINESS:
black, dark, emtpy, hollow

4. CONFUSION:
mangled/ twisted wire

Now I need to come up with a successful and convincing way to show all these concepts with these materials. I will most likely create an installation. If not, my next option is a sculpture.

Tuesday, September 18, 2007

Senior Project Idea

There are a couple of ideas that I have for my senior project but they revolve around a central theme, but how I execute it is not confirmed as yet. The project is based on me and the root cause of my problems= "insecurity". Insecurity in terms of my family, my friends, my profession, my life, my appearance or almost everything. This insecurity eventually leads to unhappiness or lonliness and is a sort of an endless cycle.

Idea 1:

To illustrate or represent this idea I wanted to show a big glass dome. This glass dome would be hollow and the inner walls of this dome would be covered with a sort of a mosaic of mirrors or glass or a combination of the 2. The glass or mirrors will be with jagged edges to represent "fragility" or "insecurity" too. Also when you look at these walls, it will show many reflections of you, thereby showing how different I am in different situations. Even though there are many images of me in those mirrors they are all still me, still one person.

The dome wil represent me..or my world. Earlier I described what the dome will look like from the inside, but from the outside it will "look" smooth as I will cover it with plaster. The thing about plaster is, that when it dries it will become white. White represent peace and purity something I try to "portray". But when you come close and touch it you realise its not that smooth after all as plaster is rather rough when it dries. The globe on the whole will also have cracks in it, to reveal what is inside. Kind of like what I am, if I am comfortable enough I reveal a little about myself too..a little about myself. It also means that theres only so much one can "portray" and sometimes a person just creacks under worldy pressures and reveals a lot about themselves people would never know. The cracks in the walls of the dome represent that concept.

Idea 2:

Idea 2 is much like the first one but the only difference is that instead of a dome I use the shape of a swirl. (Like a whirlpool) This shape looks a lot like something trying to curl in, like when a person curls up into the "womb" position when they are feeling unsafe or insecure. Also if its this shape entering the installation will be easier as one end will be open.
It will also be "maze-like" to enter it as it will be circular representing how it is when people get to know me better, im rather confused and confusing.
All along the walls of this swirl, there will be a mosaic sort of a pattern with broken mirrors or glass. Sort of to represent my "sensitivity" or "fragilityy" as a person. As one goes deeper into the swirl the concentration of these broken mirror mosaics increase and it gets darker to represent that as people get to know me, im not really who I "seem" to be but more of a sensitive person in reality.

One element that is common between both the ideas is the presence and importance of some light in the entire installation. At night if I am sleeping in a dark room I like to light a small candle that floods the room with a warm glow. The shadows caused by the flickering flame "fill" the room for me, and I dont feel like Im alone any more.Lighting a lamp has a lot of spiritual and religious significance in India. A burning lamp is also used to represent the mind of a person and since this entire project is to do with the stability of my mind it al relates very well. I will position these lights randomly in protrusions from the walls. The protrusions will have a mesh like look to it and with candles in them they will create shadows. These protrusions represent the people who try to reach out to me in my life and the shadows- their imprints, impact in my life. I will haveto decide what exactly the pattern of this mesh will be, therby effecting what the shadows will look like too. I will also have to decide whether the lights are natural lights like lit candles or artificial electric lights. The natural lights shadows will be wavering representing the wavering influence of these people on me. The electronic lights will create steady/ unwavering shadows representing the importance of that person and how steady their influence has been on my life.

The materials that I will use for either of the ideas hasnt been decided as yet. But it will vary between opaque areas and transparent areas. Either that or I will make the entire structure opaque with small cracks in the walls to represent the "tears" (like "tearing" paper) cause by different people or sitatuations etc in my life. These cracks work 2 ways. They let outside light in, sort of like "life's illuminating lessons" in. It also gives a peek into what my life or what I really feel like inside. Technically it also helps create some ventilation for the candles to burn.

Thursday, September 6, 2007

My Work (University)

This was a stencil I made for the "production design" course. I first created the design and then went on to make break the design into different layers so that we could print in different colors.

This project was for Graphic Design 2. We had to create packaging for a make believe product of our own choice. My product was essentially clay that could be moulded into whatever you liked, and once it dried it would become real. Since this was based on fantasy and was to do with clay, I combined the words and coined the word "claytasy".
Clay is mainly associated with having fun and as that was the aim of my project too I decided to keep the color scheme very bright and attractive but keeping the shapes simple. The package itself was to be transparent either in a plastic tie-up packet or on a transparent cylinderical box so people could look at the colorful clay inside.

This was a lino print that I created for production design also. I did face a few problems because I initially overlooked the fact that we need to carve out in reverse so that when its printed it will come the right side up.
This was a newspaper design that we had to create for a funny story we made up in class. My story was to do with teenage drinking, cancer and getting lost on the beach. As a result I decided to incorporate all that into the content on my newspaper in terms of text and layout. The name of my paper was "Lost Times" as it was related to the content of my story.
We had to take inspiration from an existing newspaper and I used the German weekly newspaper called "Die Zeit" for that. I was fascinated by their unique layout by using text wraps in particular. I adopted the same word wrap technique and for the centre spread wrapped the text around a vodka bottle as my story was to do with teenage "drinking". The text in the bottle was a brief about the article with the name of the correspondent and everything else on the bottle exactly like the layout on an original "Absolut Vodka" bottle.
We had to create a front page and a centre spread for this project.
This project was for Graphic Design 1 where we were given an image (here a monkey) which we had to simplify over different stages to finally get an image that would look like a logo.
This book cover was designed in the Graphic Design 1 class. The story was called "Alphabox" and was based on a set of liquid, metallic letters that moved like they were alive. The story was also rather dark, cold and eery with a lot of confusion.
I decided to incorporate the same feeling in my cover by cramming different words that would descirbe the story. It also represents the confusion the main subject was experiencing in the story. In terms of color I kept the overall scheme very dull and grey, much like the fel of the story too. The only "color" was on the spine in this acidic yellow just for contrast.

This was a triptych that I designed for my Color Theory class. It was certainly a tedious project as minute details has to be taken into consideration. Despite all the work involved I thoroughly enjoyed this project as I love going into details and love painting too. The first panel was a collage while the second was a painting of the collage in grayscale followed by a painting of the collage in a monochromatic scheme in the last panel.

My Work (School)





The top most painting is in watercolor and was done on hand made paper. The painting depicts a piece of farmland in a place called Bhubaneshwar in the East of India. The other two works were done in oil pastels and watercolors respectively. These are just three paintings I did in my IGCSE's.

About My Work

I have always been interested in art since I was a kid and that lead me to take up art as a subject in my IGCSEs and AS levels and finally Graphic Designing as a degree. In school our instructor encouraged us to look at different artists and take "inspiration". By this she meant "copying" the paintings and making a few changes to make them our own. That was a method of learning how to paint apparently and so thats what all the students including me did. However, I felt as a result of that we werent encouraged or forced to use our imagination and therefore unable to show our REAL creativity.

The time when I felt when I really had to start straining my brain was when I joined AUD. Since the start we were told about how important it is to be original and the whole idea of "plagiarism", which was new to me at that time, was drilled into our heads. As a result the need to be unique was crucial and thats how I learnt to start using my own ideas for a change. It was tough in the beginning as I wasnt used to thinking for myself but with the help of the instructors I realised it wasnt that tough after all. I feel I have come a long way since school and my stay in AUD has been the main contributor to my transformation.

I have included some of my school work where I worked with a range of medias including oil pastels, watercolors, acrylic paints etc. From my university work I have shown a mix of my illustrations and digital work.