Finished!

FINALLY FINISHED THE MAGAZINE!!! This has been the hardest part of the class for me, but I feel like I've really learned a lot, and I could use these computer programs again if I wanted to. I'm really pleased with the way my magazine turned out, and now it is all finished and printed!

I also printed my poster of the cover today. 

Tonight I finished of my older paintings my painting in the woman on the camouflage painting. 

Almost done...

Worked on the magazine all day again today. I'm still not completely done, but I've made a lot of progress! I'm learning a lot about the different Adobe computer programs such as Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign. Here is my finished cover: 

Magazine work

We worked on the magazine all day today, and I now have the basic layout done! I feel like I'm getting the hang of it, even though technology can sometimes be frustrating for me. I've learned how to retouch photos, which is coming in very handy to make our dress look as good as possible. I don't have pictures of my magazine, but here is the (unedited version of) the photo I chose for my cover. 

Starting the magazine!

This morning we started work on the magazine! The computer stuff is kind of tricky, but I'm sure it will turn out well in the end. Here are some pictures from the photo shoot: 

And here's a shot with my group mates Regina and Alex in front of our fire station! 

This afternoon was our last painting/drawing class with Paul. We had a nude model and we worked with colors that were of similar value. 

And here is my finished axonometric painting! 

Painting

Today, since my group had already done our photo shoot, we spent the whole day with Paul painting pictures of our dresses. It was difficult to portray the transparency of our dress in gouache, but I tried to do it by using white and gray paint along with the colors that show through the tracing paper. We also had to paint other people's dresses in the background. 

Last night, I did a fashion illustration of our dress with Prismacolor markers! 

Photo Shoot!

We had our photo shoot this morning! I think it went really well. We took a lot of pictures in the lobby of the building, and then we went out to our fire station to take some pictures there. I was the model for our group, and my makeup was heavy black eyeliner and red lipstick. I also wore there earrings made out of matches. 

 It was cool to take pictures at the fire station, even though it was really hot today. After taking some pictures, we knocked on the door until someone answered and asked to take some pictures inside the station. There wasn't a fire truck in, but there was a smaller fire car, and we also took some pictures in front of a wall that had pictures of all the firemen on it; they even let me wear a fireman helmet for a few pictures! 

In the afternoon, we worked on our axonometric drawings. We transferred them to Bristol paper and started painting them. 

Guggenheim and Met

This morning we went to the Guggenheim museum! There were some interesting exhibits involving light, including this one that projected color onto screens that reached the ceiling and changed colors. 

The Guggenheim has such incredible architecture! I love the way it is set up like a corkscrew spiraling to the sky. 

After lunch we went to the Met and looked at some paintings, since we didn't see any paintings last time we were there. My favorite artists that we saw were Van Gogh, Renoir, Degas, and Monet. 

Finished Dress!

We finished the dress today! We had to redo part of what we did last night because the way we had put the folded pieces on pointed down, whereas we want the dress to carry the viewer's eye up. In order to solve his problem, we took the pieces we had glued on off and re-glued them so that they pointed up. We had had some trouble figuring out what to do with the skirt, but we came up with a simple yet elegant design today, and I am very happy with the way the dress looks as a whole! I'm happy that we were able to glue the tracing paper pieces on in a way that still showed the colored paper underneath. 

In Paul's class, we learned the color wheel, and how to mix the colors so that they have the correct value. We used a grayscale to help match the colors to their value. 

Working on the dress

This morning my group made more progress on the base structure of the dress by hot gluing colored paper to the wire structure. 

We arranged the colors like this because flames have a bit of blue at the bottom, then it fades from dark (red), to the lighter flame (yellow), and then there is the smoke at the top. We came in after class and started gluing our folded pieces of tracing paper on top, being careful not to completely cover up the colors. 

In the second class, we did value reduction paintings of a nude model. 

MoMA

Today we took a field trip to the MoMA! We saw a couple of special exhibits and then went some of the main painting and sculpture galleries. I really like the exhibit with the architecture because it had a lot of variety; there were models, blueprints, maps, watercolor landscapes, and other paintings. I love maps, so I enjoyed the ones in this exhibit. I like how it can be a simple line drawing but also has so much detail and an interesting composition. In the main painting and sculpture galleries, I saw some great paintings! My favorites were Starry Night by Van Gogh

And Girl Before a Mirror by Picasso 

I love the brush strokes in Van Gogh's paintings, and I think Picasso's use of color and shape is really great. 

 

Making Progress

Today we built more structures for our dress, and now we are basically finished with the form! 

We bought colored paper in colors that reflect the mood of our project and we are going to put them on top of the wire structures so that we can then glue our folded pieces of paper onto something solid. We chose to use colored paper because it will show through the tracing paper. We also burnt some of our paper, and I really like the look of it! We are going to mix the burnt paper in with the not burnt paper. 

In the afternoon, we learned about isometric drawings and practiced those. 

We will use this skill when doing our product design for an accessory to go with our look. 

Dress Structures and Grayscale

This morning, my group got some more materials and worked more on the structure of the dress. I made another wire structure, but this one goes on the shoulder. 

I like the way that shape continues down asymmetrically into the skirt. 

We bought some matches and we're thinking about making jewelry out of burnt matches. We also want to burn some of the paper that we use on the dress.

We've been playing around with the folded pieces of paper on the forms we made, but we are trying to make sure it doesn't get too busy and take away from the beauty of the shape of the dress. 

In Paul's class, we learned how to mix a grayscale, and I'm finishing it for homework. 

Starting the Dress and Tone Drawing

This morning we started working with the materials that we got yesterday, and my group is starting to get some great ideas for the dress! I'm excited for the actual construction part because when I'm designing and making clothes, I'm really in my element. We made a lot of folded pieces of paper to put on our dress, and I built a structure out of wire to build on top of to get the shape we want for the skirt. 

In the afternoon class, we had another nude model, but this time we were working with tone, not line. 

Tomorrow we will be making a grayscale with gouache paint!

Getting Materials and a Model with Fabric

This morning we looked at sketches our group had done for our garment and decided on a basic shape and brainstormed ideas for materials! We decided on a dress with this basic shape: 

We played around with folding tracing paper to create a pleated look and liked the idea of using a bunch of pieces of folded tracing paper to emulate the shapes of flames and we could put color on the base of the dress so the color would show through the paper. This is a sketch of a preliminary idea for the dress, because I'm sure it will change when we are actually working with the materials. 

Then we went to Home Depot and Utrecht and got some materials including a cheap strapless dress for the base, tracing paper, metal wire, brown paper, caution tape, and steel wool (to look like smoke). We also want to play around with burning the paper, because that would look interesting and reflect the fire station. 

In the afternoon, we had a model sitting down, draped in camouflage fabric with a few pieces of different camouflage fabric draped in the background too. We drew in the model and fabric, and so far we are only supposed to paint the fabric parts, not the model. 

To the Met!

We took a field trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art today! After going to see the Punk Fashion exhibit, first we went to the Greek and Roman statues and did contour line drawings of some of them. These are the statues I drew and my drawings. 

After lunch, we went to see the suits of armor and drew contour line drawings there. 

The last place we went was the African art section, and I drew a bowl. 

Yesterday, we had the day off, and I finished my gouache negative space painting. 

I feel like I am learning a lot and getting better at drawing body proportions and figures!