Science Chart

Sort of an original and unexpected assignment--our next big to do in drawing class is to create a scientific chart of some aspect of nature, similar to those that used to be in science textbooks (before hi def photos replaced them).
Like these:

I guess because of my fishing background, their visual value, and my ability to identify them in the wild, I went with common lake bed plant life. Rather then formatting around genus's or species's or whatnot, I went with the ones I encounter the most while excluding "floating" or "emergent" (like cattails, reeds, and lilly pads) weeds only because they would switch up the overall look of the piece too much.

Here's the thumbnail

I don't think I going to use markers and colored pencils on the final piece but instead use oil pastel overlayed with watercolor which creates a cool effect. I'm also going to work on a very tall and slender piece of paper in order to accentuate the towering nature of these plants... and also because it will look cool.

Binding pt 2

The next part of the sketchbook binding had to with constructing a hard cover to fit around the bound pages and create something that looks official. This next part of Girard's lecture involved a large amount of measuring and cutting in order to create a perfect fit for the folios. Since there was no sewing involved, I was able to keep up with the clan throughout this stage of the game. Being a bit nervous about gluing at first (i have a history with poor craft caused by hassles with glue), I was surprised when everything went well; especially since I was using Japanese paper, which can be hard to work with.
I haven't finished putting mine together yet but the next phase involves pasting the two end pages of the folio to the inside of the cover. After that I'm going to paste a sheet of red Canson over the inside of both cover pages in order to give the book a more contrasting/ dynamic feel. I definitely have to buy glue though, because I'm running out of Sobo and I wont have access to the studio's Yes Paste (and it takes a shit load of glue to do anything in the world of bookbinding).

Mosaics Group

In my English/Humanities class (which is called Mosaics for no reason), I am set to be part of a group project  dedicated to creating a PowerPoint which elaborates on the question: "Should Muslims be able to build their community center near ground zero?"- a current issue in downtown Manhattan.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20013655-503544.html
http://blog.constitutioncenter.org/pointcounterpoint-two-sides-of-the-ground-zero-mosque-debate/
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100822214609AAzeevY

Were supposed to display both sides of the argument, but I wonder if my rag-tag team has the ability to get past the obvious answer of "yes they can, the Muslim religion had nothing to do with 9-11, it was crazy terrorists who did it...besides Islam is all about peace and also innocent Muslims died too America is supposed to be a melting pot of cultures living in harmony etc.. " and actually present both sides with little bias. I fully agree with the idea that its OK to build the community center, but still I realize that my opinion isn't part of the assignment. Luckily, I'll be alright because my job specifically, is to find and quote the people's opinion (via online forums and such), I just worry about the team basing the rest of the presentation around their opinions. If we could just find a time where we could all meet up perhaps I could put put my worries to rest but are scheduals are all so different to the point that we might end up each doing a piece of the PowerPoint and sending it to one person to be put together.

Colour portrait

One of the two week long assignments for drawing this semester was a large scale self portrait. though it wasn't required the class had the option of drawing oneself without looking in the mirror at all. I utilized this to the fullest in half of the thumbnail drawing (done with oil pastels) as I drew one portait of myself (without looking in the mirror) facing another portait of myself (drawn while looking in the mirror). Apparently I don't know what I look like though because the portrait drawn from memory looks like a potato headed muppet.

(without mirror on the left)

For the large scale portrait I went back to the drawing board (..literally--hardy harr har). This time I depicted my self in bed in a cave (with chalk pastels); which I suppose at the time represented my lethargic attitude- spending too much time in my room sleeping or connected to headphones, trapped in a lazy stupor and severely separated from the outside environment.
As far as the method of drawing myself goes, I used a mirror, but very sparingly. This resulted in somewhat of a likeness of myself with some oddly exaggerated features.

book binding

Now that 2-d is coming to an end and there's no more sketchbooks to be completed (thank god! that was getting incredibly redundant to a point where it was causing every week to blend together), its time for the annual session of sketchbook binding. Our class was lead by pack leader Girard (whose named after the street I assume.....or visa-versa), who reimbursed the laws of successful bookbinding shown to us last semester.
Showing up slightly late to class foreshadowed my tendency to fall behind the rest of the class when stitching the signatures (folios, singular sketchbooks, folded paper, etc..), together--as far as i could tell I was the only one who had to take mine home to finish sewing.

After glueing Japanese paper over what became the spine I let the book dry over night only to find in the mourning that the book shifted, and the whole shebang is now oriented on a slant.

another photoshoporockism-->

This Photoshop assignment was all about fusing Photos with photos and photos and textures via lassos, clone stamps, etc... Ones goal I believe was to make a cohesive collage image.
This is the image I started with:

Then I fused my dog's face into the cliff side via clone stamp and this photo:

I think this part was pretty successful in that my dog's dog face somehow lined up with aspects of the cliff's cliff face pretty well, especially considering the fact that I didn't re-size either photo.

Next though I tried to incorporate scanned fabrics into the picture's foliage with the cut and paste lasso tool. I couldn't really get into it though, no successful groove was found. Rather then having a collage type feel, the trees just ended up looking like they where decorated with ghost farts and the grass was none too fresh either.

Anyways here it is:

Photoshopping

Basically the idea of this one was to scan an existing drawing into Photoshop, then use the paint brush tool on top of the image to create a digital drawing. I started off using a pen tablet (for the first time), which was cool because I could vary the line opacity and hardness by applying more or less pressure to the tablet. It was nice to be able to produce expressive lines on a computer screen; I'll have to try the tablet again soon.