I Liked The Bird Part Katherine VanDenHeuvel, Art 130 - Fall 2018, St. Norbert College
I dedicate this book to my dog. His name is Cody and he is soft, loud, and his fur was used in one of my pieces.
D-School Objective: To redesign the gift-giving experience for my partner by creating a product for my partner within the time limit that fits my pertner’s needs
Engaging with my partner helped me come up with a good solution to her problem. If I’d been just given a problem to solve, I might have chosen a different solution and prototype to create. But with input I was able to make a good prototype. This fast pace is unlike how I usually work. I felt like I could only create a framework, a skeleton of the best product I could possibly make. It felt a lot more productive than how I usually work since I procrastinate and fuss and let projects stretch into forever timewise.
I was tasked to create something my partner needed. She told me she wasn’t good at wrapping boxes, so I made her a small box to practice wrapping. My last job required me to take apart boxes, so it wasn’t hard to reverse that and make a box. My box isn’t pretty to look at, as it’s less “art” and more a tool.
Dot - Line Objective: To build strong abstract compositions with minimal elements (dots/lines), to build a foundation of using abundant iterations to arrive at successful solutions, to demonstrate an appropriate grasp of value, scale, line, and visual hierarchy, and to practice excellent craft in my final solutions.
Thumbnail sketches of Oppression and Longing
Gestalt is seeing a collection or grouping of parts as one big part, seeing something’s entirety first before seeing its parts individually. While creating each of these pieces, I had to consider negative and positive space, scale of lines, the values of lines and dots, and other such things, and see how the alteration of each part affected the overall effect the piece would have on a viewer. Most of the critiquing was evaluating the piece as a whole, and considering how individual parts affected the whole.
Freedom
I’ve never liked abstraction, or at least not very much. I’m often too literalminded to appreciate anything abstract. I was a little surprised to find myself appreciating negative space and anomalies while critiquing the abstract pieces the rest of the class created.
Longing
Oppession
Text Typography Objective: To experiment with a variety of hand lettering, think about how the form of letters impacts the meaning of the word, build a foundation of using abundant iterations to arrive at successful solutions, practice excellent craft in final solutions, and continue to refine compositional skills and eye.
Hand-lettering taught me that calligraphy was possible to easily do with the correct tools, and that writing fonts neatly wasn’t as difficult as I initially thought. I’ve tried copying cool letters before, but my drawings always looked terrible because I never spent much time on them and wasn’t focused on keeping edges neat. The content of my ideas is stronger than their form. Each of my finished pieces is strongly related to the word “dig”, in that they’re made to call to mind rocks, roots, dogs, and dust, although the “dogs dig holes” idea is too loosely related and no one understands the piece but me. On the other hand, my executions do not get across my ideas 100%. The roots piece doesn’t have very noticeable stumps and might make people think of rivers or veins, and the dog hair in the dog piece could be easily mistaken for another animal’s hair.
I had, in the past, sketched the typography of video game and movie names. However, as one can see in the left picture, I rushed a lot and wasn’t quite good at it. If one compares my past attempts in the left to my work on the right, the right is a lot cleaner and nicer to look at. The right picture had more time and care put into it. Below is the map of the word associations I had with the word “dig”. I made this to help generate ideas for my project.
“Dig” Dog Hair
I experimented with fonts and explored the various word associations I had with “dig”. I settled on letters made of dog fur, letters made of rock, letters made of tree roots, and letters made of dust.
“Dig” Tree Roots
“Dig” Rock
Object Iterations Objective: To experiment with a variety of media and modes of making, to show range, creativity and curiosity in experimentation, to create unexpected yet recognizable depictions with integrity to subject, to embrace the making process as a means of discovery and understanding to challenge myself to create in new ways, to acknowledge and work both with and past cliché, and to refine and modify work to fit within set parameters (e.g. square format).
I chose the bearded vulture as my subject and made many iterations of it. If I were to make more iterations of the bearded vulture over a year, I’d try abstracting it more, and draw it in the styles of more artists. Maybe I’d even work up the courage to try sculpting it at some point. The most challenging media to use was collage. Making a collage takes a lot of time and care, and I did not have the patience or time to enjoy it. I also found it hard to keep glue off the clean side of the pieces of the collage. The most enjoyable medium was ink. I’ve worked with ink in the past, and I love the look that it has.
I made many sketches in different poses and styles in order to determine which iterations would be reworked, improved, and included in the final seven.
Blind Contour Iteration 1
Mayan Codex Drawing Iteration
Hokusai Iteration
Collage Iteration
Blind Contour Iteration 2
Text Collage Iteration
Geometric Iteration
Data Visualization
FAST FACTS
Objective: Use principles of design to illuminate and accurately represent specific data, produce a “single revealing graphic” based on the data that uses type and image to tell the story of the data, and use a limited color palette to support the main ideas.
More than 40 majors, minors and pre-professional programs Degrees Offered
SNC Fast Facts poster layout sketch
I was tasked with creating a poster for the SNC Fast Facts data. I chose to focus it on the academics, financials, and outcomes. I mimicked the iconic arch on the campus in the design to have the poster’s imagery connect to St. Norbert College. What I learned from making posters was don’t put all the information in you poster if you don’t have to, and don’t stick to weird decisions you made to save time if your decisions are hurting your design, like using every color in a limited palette of five hues. Using color was okay. I like playing with coloring specific objects and making palettes, but not picking colors for boxes and text.
SNC Fast Facts Poster
Bachelor of Arts Bachelor of Science Bachelor of Music Bachelor of Business Administration Master of Arts in Liberal Studies Master of Business Administration Master of Theological Studies Value/Outcomes
Financials
• Freshman retention rate: 83% • 6% of our students graduate in 3 1/2 or fewer years. • More than 70% of the aid offered is money that doesn’t have to be repaid. • 93% of graduates for whom we have knowledge were placed in jobs or grad school within 1 months of graduation. • We have one of the best 4-year graduation rates in the Midwest.
• Students receiving financial aid: 96% • St. Norbert grants/scholarships: 65% • Other grants/scholarships: 10% • Work-study: 3% • Student loans: 22% • Students graduating with no loan debt: 30% • Average indebtedness of graduates receiving loans: $33,641
4 Year Graduation Guarantee We believe so strongly that you should be able to finish your undergraduate degree within four years, that we’ll waive your additional tuition if, through no fault of your own, you cannot get through in that time. While there are some small exceptions, we mean it.
I’m not sure what to be proud of specifically when considering all the art I’ve made in the past two years. I do not make much art, and I rarely sketch, so each piece I made was an experiment, a leap into unknown frontiers and mapping them to the best of my abilities. Each time I did so, I accomplished something significant. Blending surrealism with realism, using various types of media, emulating the style of another artist… If I was to be proud of something I made, it would be my progress. As of today, I am unsure whether I am called to creative work in graphic art, or art of any sort. I’m not sure I can be an endless fountain of creativity, and I’m not sure I could ever have the patience to work on one project for hours. I don’t feel any particular calling to any other field any more than art. It’s easier to pick out the fields I know I don’t have a calling to.
This book was made as part of Introduction to Design at St. Norbert College in the fall of 2018. The fonts used include Copperlate Gothic Light and Book Antiqua. It was digitally printed and saddle stapled at the college’s print center.