Art 130 Process Book

Dedicated to my cat who ensured I was never alone and it was never too quiet.

Introduction

Hello! My name is Austin

Struble. I am a 2nd year Communication and Media Studies major with a minor in Graphic Design. I have changed my major 4 times and when I began this class I was hoping I would never change again (it’s working so far). The namesake of this book comes from the idea of looking at something for so long that it doesn’t look like the thing it is supposed to be anymore. I spent many hours working cloesly with each of my projects so much so that I would keep finding things wrong with the project. A lot of the year I then spent forcing myself to take breaks from looking at it or asking a friend what they thought to keep myself from trashing the project alltogether.

The decorations on the in-pages themselves was a centerpiece in one of the projects that I experienced a hatred for the most. In fact, my new least favorite animal is a giraffe because of how much time I spent staring at them. So, in the end, I learned many creative ways to approach my art. I figured out that 20 minutes before the project is due is not enough time for the print center to print my project and I discovered how easy it was to procrastinate my other classes with the homework for this one. I hope that my growth and efforts are evident in this eternalized history of my participation in this class. So thank you for reading.

you

to pick a side which do you choose and why

If I had to pick a side (art or design), I would have to pick design. Why? Because I have a massive tendency to be absurdly critical of my own art.

Design is defined by Google as “a plan or drawing produced to show the look and function or workings of a building, garment, or other object before it is built or made.” while Art is defined as “the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination...”. And personally, I value my brain a lot more than I value my handiwork.

the skills of my wrist rather than my knowledge), it makes it too easy for me to hate myself. When I work with design, though, I find easier to rely on my gut which further enables me to be more open to my work.

When I have to hand draw or hand paint or work with any form of art in a physical manner (like using

Design becomes a way I can move things around or color and re-size in a way that satifies my eye in way that simply being artistic cannot. With design, I feel like it doesn’t even always have to my work that is being design or used in a larger design layout which further allows me to admire someone else’s work while still adding my own creativity. And finally, to me, design says that the artwork is done but there is still so much more you can do with it.

If

have

If I could completely support by a career in design, I would choose to design books (much like this one) or those massive promotional posters. That is a profession that I would simply have to move things around to be aesthetically pleasing or eye catching.

Or really, I would just want there to be a possibilitiy where I could think of a project and suddenly that is what I want done- or just a different kind of laying something out and creating something aesthetic to look at and read. I become very bored very easily with any job I do for a long period of time so quite frankly the job would need to keep up with me for me to enjoy it.

I think it would be really cool or edit and organize spreads for newspapers or books and can really see that as something I would enjoy most as long as there was a constant change in the project or that I at least would not be able to default on a formating or system.

This class was the first time I have ever really had an interaction with people in completing commissions a one on one and I have come away understanding that it isn’t my favorite. Working for a professional company or under someone that wasn’t me would be a dream come true for sure.

If you were guaranteed it would support you financially what would you want to design or make for a living

Crash Course

This project was purely for the purpose of understanding how the rest of the year may work. We ran head first into creating and working with eachother which really set the tone for critique the rest of the year.

Engaging with a real person allowed me to figure out what I needed to work out right away. It also made me more comfortable working on the project as a whole because I felt as if it wasn’t just me working on the prototype.

Having to show the unfinished work to my partner, however, made me anxious because I wasn’t sure how they would react to my ideas. But my partner was really supportive

and positive about the whole process which made it more bearable. I was not a huge fan of how fast we needed to move as I like to take things slower and deliberate on my actions but at the same time, a shorter timeframe forced me to just say what I thought and act on instinct. I think next time I would pick questions that allowed me to dig deeper into my partners issue to find a better solution and create a usable prototype.

Brainstorm ideas to fix problem

DotLine

For this project, we were tasked with making an abstract piece of work and utilizing the term Gestalt. The goal was to imply the meaning of a word using only dots and lines intended to teach us how to make a piece that presented the word artistically without illustrating too much. As in, do the dots and lines present the word without needing to picture them as living things or objects that aren’t the dots and lines they are.

Gestalt is essentially how we view art. It is taking what we see and giving it a specific name or idea or description. The whole point of the dot/line project was exactly thatbeing able to produce a word using only dots and lines. It was up to us in

viewing the art to give it those ideas and decide if we saw the word it was. Had I given myself more time, I believe my project would have been much more well-crafted, but I definitely prefer being able to spend more time on a project and fixing the small details to make it perfect. The only down-side would be

Exhaustion Thumbnail Sketches

that I may spend TOO MUCH time on the project trying to fix those small details; probably would be better to do things quickly. But this project allowed me to easily see how what I see is completely opposite of the person across from me and yet, somehow, it still fits the prompt.

I enjoyed the challenge nonethless.

For my second (basically first) art project after a really long time of no art, it really helped me to get used to thinking creatively again. I certainly would never want to do a project like this again due to how complicated it ended up being but

I now have a better understanding of the word “abstract” and trying to represent an idea without illustrating it was challenging because I am so used to picturing an image before labeling it. Like when I am writing a story, I picture the shapes and then use describing words to illustrate those shapes to form the picture I want.

And now in understanding the words gestalt and abstract, I feel that I will be able to use the words every time I look at the world around me. Maybe I’ll be a better cloud watcher or maybe I will be able to watch a movie and go “wow the way they place a bunch of blue in the background of that one scene was blah blah.” Or maybe I’ll have a different appreciation for art I do not understand.

Scarcity and Longing Thumbnail Sketches

Longing noun a yearning desire

Scarcity noun the state of being scarce or in short supply

Exhaustion noun a state of extreme physical or mental fatigue

Letterforms

For this project, we were first tasked with carving individual letters out of linoleum. These letters created the class alphabet that we then needed to use to print our letters. This process taught us how to work closely by hand with the manipulation of letters to understand how the apperance of words and letters can change the meaning of a word. Additionally, the project taught us

to start at the beginning and work our way up. Essentially, creating a foundation to build off of rather than starting from the get-go.

By working with letterforms I was able to glean an understanding of how complicated it used to be to print out books and other media to the world. The letters have different names and tiny differences to them in order to separate the different vibes that each font can Front brainstorming

Front practice

copying process to create final typogrophy form

give. I loved being able to figure out how to manipulate the letters as the font they are to express the meaning and the word I was trying to express. If I were to continue working with these letters, I would attempt to manipulate the letters more, such as pulling them to look like sound waves or making each letter look like a mouth. I would play around with opacity and quantity and try to include more of the critique I received.

About the word I chose, I realized that talking and communicating is such a crucial part of human existence that I wanted to see if I could articulate that in this project. In fact it was me talking to others that almost made me run out of time to finish the project! In the future, I hope to do similar projects with printing and the manipulation of letters.

mind map to help create ideas

Final Letterform printed cleanly

Final Letterform using another Typographic Variation

Iterative Illustrations

This project was made to challenge our brains and think creatively. We needed to create something that strayed from cliche while still maintaining the importance pieces of whatever our object or animal was. The goal was to also experiement with the different forms of media within the peramaters (such as geometric collage, typographic collage, basic collages, and one line drawings).

I learned a lot of different ways to create a giraffe. I also learned that I now hate giraffes and I do not think they are cool or tall.

I had already tried to mimic other artists’ work when I was younger in order to create some

form of art that actually looked like the thing I was trying to make and I still found it challenging to an unexplainable degree. Using artists that have a lot of pieces under their belt and then trying to imitate that was the most frustrating part because I wanted my iteration to be as perfect as the original piece. Eventually I just let the piece alone and moved on to my favorite parts of

Unused Original Collage Iteration

the project- specifically the collages.

It was most enjoyable to stifle through magazines and find what I needed to create the perfect image for my collages. And when I finally got them into Photoshop, I did not have a lot of new things to learn about the program to help me because I had used it so extensively in highschool. But it was a lot of fun

to get back into using Photoshop and learning more short-keys to use and make my life easier.

Something I also struggled with in this project was being able to adjust the animal and mypieces to fit the peramaters of the project (i.e. everything needed to be square). Giraffes are tall and I really wanted to be able to represent that

First Draft Version 1

in my piece. When I discovered, however, that I was defaulting to center my piece in its square, I realized that I could fix that issue.

If I had to continue working on the project though, I think I would have lost my mind. I love using photoshop and indesign but I really hate giraffes after staring at them for so long (hence the title of this book). So I think I would try using an object instead of an animal and work on not defaulting to centering my shapes. I think I would have also

liked to take more time on finding an artist I really had an interest in to mimic rather than picking someone random or someone who was from a country I have a fascination with. Truthfully, this was my favorite project. I am a true hater of working by hand; I find it much easier to be self-deprecating. Digitally, I feel the whole world is my oyster. So after painfully working by hadn for the first two projects, I was elated to final use the program that feels like an extension of myself.

Unused Collage Iteration 3

Artist Imitation: Lisa Yuskavage

Final Illustrative Iteration Project

psa

With this project, we were first tasked with writing a Public Service Anouncement (PSA) prompt. Of which we then shared with someone as if we were commisisioning them to create the piece for us. Meaning for the project, we were learning how to work with others while also developing a better understanding of how something can be artisitic

even if it is just text. Furthermore, we needed to develop an ability to create visual importance to what was necessary in the poster. Being able to utilize arangement of the poster and our natural inclination when reading a poster was vital in making sure the poster read the way we wanted it to. When I realized that I could

not use any images on this project

I became so infuriated with the project I stopped working for the day. Then I took a deep breath and came back and really enjoyed the project because I could mess around with fonts and to me, it felt like I was putting in more than just text.

I used large font sizes to denote titles or more important items that would catch someone’s attention;

I used different colored boxes and negative space to separate the text so that it did not look like a wall of text.

I think I understand now that you don’t NEED images to make a piece complete. There are many other ways to use text to still make a visually appealing piece. I think I also learned how to work with a client and their commission and kind of how to

Thumbnail sketches page 2

read the commission and approach them with questions or concerns.

During the time of this project, I was also struggling with some mental and physical health issues that greatly affected my motivation and energy levels for the project. However, I still worked hard in assuring that I follow my partner’s prompt and genreated

sevreal ideas for the to sort through before finally submitting the project. In fact, I think it was a good comparison project since the first one we did for the semster was also one that we needed to interact with others. I was able to see how my perception of art changed and how much more difficult it was to create a project based on my partners desires rather than my own.

Poster on message board in the dorm hall

This book was made as part of Introduction to Design at St. Norbert College in the fall of 2022. The fonts used include Stranger Things, and Corbel. It was digitally printed and saddle stapled at the college’s print center.