Stretching Your Body Also Stretches Your Mind
William Farr
Table of Contents Pg. 3- Stretches I Do Pg. 4- D*School Crash Coarse Pg. 6- Dot/Line Pg. 10- Expressive Text Pg. 16- Object Iterations Pg. 18- Children’s Book Pg. 22- Japanese Influence Text Pg. 24- The End
Stretches I Do To Stay Flexible
D*School Crash This was a great assignment to begin this class. A common feeling between everyone in the first couple weeks of class is being nervous. Going about this process was difficult at first. It was hard to generate ideas and questions for the other person and ended up turning into random questions and ideas. This got me thinking very fast and helped with my critical thinking skills. I like the end results of this process. I made a shirt out of paper that took 2 minutes to. If I were to go back and do this again with someone I would ask more questions and try to generate more ideas.
(Draw Something Cool)
Dot/Line My understanding of gestalt is that one object can have many different ways of being view. There are multiple parts that make up an object, which gives meaning to the whole of the object. This relates to the phrase, “The whole is greater than the sum of the parts�. This means that each part must work together to give meaning to the whole. The idea of the dot/line project can be very basic. Arrange the dot/lines in a way that gives meaning to the word the artist has chosen. Going about this process was very different from other projects. Other projects I would do more detailed sketching or marks. This required thinking more outside the box. In terms of abstraction, A+B=C. This is very basic, dot + line = idea. That being said, creating meaning out of simple dots and lines proved to be difficult. The dot/line project is the basic set up for a lot of design projects. A simple A+B=C. This all helped me with my abstraction thinking and detailing skills.
Expressive Text Other people’s handwriting has always fascinated me over the years. I enjoy seeing when someone has super neat hand writing and then seeing someone having very poor handwriting. Both are interesting because everyone has different handwriting. Hand lettering is very different from digital rendering printing in a couple of ways. Hand lettering gives a more organic authentic feel than digital because it’s more precise and exact. I experimented with calligraphy a lot for this project and learn a lot about the art of calligraphy. My handwriting is very average and is something that is hard to work on. I spent a lot of time learning the different motions of the pen in order to get very pleasing calligraphy handwriting. I want to practice this more and learn more of the art of handwriting.
Object Iterations This project really expanded how to think about one object. The object or animal that I choose was a fox. This was most exciting for me because the fox is my sprit animal. I learned from my object the different forms and body motions it can take on. I also learned that certain objects have particular features that are central to that object. For an example, the fox that I did has distinct features in its tale and ears. This is something I worked off of and expanded on. This was the first time using Photoshop, which was a learning process for me. I think that this is a project I will come back to because its something I’m very interested in.
Children’s Book I had two authors, for my children’s book. When I first started to work with them and generate ideas for the stories, I asked them to write about an animal because that is something I am very passionate about. Only one of the two authors used an animal as the main character. This was Geoffrey the Giraffe. The other author just wrote about thing you can do in life. This left it open to me to choose a character for the book. For this, I choose to illustrated a monkey but personify the animal to fit the text. I don’t think the two authors majors brought a whole lot to this project. The text was very basic but interesting. The illustrators for this project display much more creativity. As I said, the text was very basic. So I wanted to come up with clever illustrations to complement the text. I used color pencils as my medium because I think that color pencils are something that almost every child grows up with. If I were to do this project again, I may change up the medium.
Geoffrey the Giraffe Written By Caitlin Deuchert Illustrated By William Farr
What Can You Do? ¿Qué puedes hacer? Written By Kelsie George Illustrated By William Farr
Japanese Influence Text
Over the last two semesters, I have had the great fortune of befriending a few different Japanese exchange students. Meeting them and learning about their culture was very amazing. I was very inspired from there handwriting. I would write down different words, names, or phrases and ask them to print the Japanese text next to it. I would later on practice how to write these bizarre symbols but was still be amazed that this was a whole language to the Japanese.
Dedicated To My Mom And Dad