Parsons SIS Friday, July 25

   Today in Design Portfolio we set up and presented all our work in an open house at the school. Seeing all my work hung up on the walls and watching people study what I had done felt very fulfilling. I greatly enjoyed talking about and showing people what I had done over the past four weeks. This was a wonderful way to end the program, and I hope I can do more shows like this in the future.

Parsons SIS Wednesday July 23rd

   Today in Design Portfolio we used InDesign to make booklets describing our project for the whole of the program. This was very difficult at times because I was unfamiliar with these programs but I was able to figure them out and produce an effective booklet. I prefer Photoshop and Illustrator to InDesign, but I am glad that I know briefly how to use all three. I will be glad however when I am finished using InDesign.

Parsons SUIS Day 16

•   Today in Design Portfolio we finished editing and printing our posters from photos we took of our dresses. Working with Illustrator and Photoshop was challenging because I had never done it before, but after a while I got the hang of it. The help we received from a professional graphic designer was very interesting and necessary to my learning of the programs. I was very happy with my finished product, and I felt it looked very professional.

Parsons SIS: Day 13

  Today we learned how to photoshop our posters for our brands in Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator. Learning a bit of Graphic Design from a professional was very interesting and different. Having some skills in photoshop I can already tell will help me in the future. I also finished construction on my product, which is a Bluetooth earpiece with twisted wires extending from it, enveloping the face like vines.Something that was first just decoration, has turned into a commentary on the way that technology takes over our everyday life, something like a parasite, and can become a nuisance. I am very happy with the finished product because, with help from my teacher, it has turned into something better than I had originally planned, and has taken on new meaning. I will post pictures of the finished product later.

Parsons SIS: Day 11

    Today we shot the finished dress around the city and inside Parsons. I'm very happy with the finished product because of its subtle structural beauty and elegance as well as the pattern and texture that developed from the application of the newsprint. Learning how to light a photo shoot and modelling the dress were both really fun and interesting; I always love trying new things, but I think I should just stick to designing. 
      We also started our product design, which I am enjoying because I can design my product alone, instead of in a group. Finally, something I can make by myself! So far it's a very intricate Bluetooth earpiece for "our woman," who is a fierce businesswoman. 

Parsons SIS: Day 10

    Today in Design Portfolio we took the subway to the Brooklyn Museum of Art and viewed the many interesting exhibits. We started our sketching for the day in the Egyptian art exhibits, in which I found multiple interesting things to sketch, not only because of their form but also the many colors and intricate inscriptions in some of the smaller pieces. 
     My favorite exhibit was that of a female artist named Swoon, who had created almost her own world within one room. In the center of the room was a humongous tree covered in fabric and paper doilies. The room was also filled with two large boats and numerous wooden cutouts that were hand painted. These pieces were all influenced by Hurricane Sandy and the wreckage afterwards, and were completely constructed from recycled materials. I found a deep connection with these pieces because they reminded me of New Orleans and the gloomy but hopeful nature of the exhibit really intrigued me. I was lucky to be able to sketch part of one of the wooden cutouts.

Parsons SIS: Day 7

   Today in Design Portfolio we finalized our design for our dress and continued to construct it. We are using masking tape for the base of the skirt and laying strips of paper I found in a phone book over it. A really cool pattern is developing from the text and I am very happy with the lines throughout the form. This is my sketch of one of the original designs, we are altering it a bit:

     
      We also started perspective/three-dimensional drawings using graphing paper, which has been one of my favorite things we have done so far, because the critical thinking involved is very interesting and the style of drawing is fun to play with. 

Parsons SIS: Day 6

    Today in Design Portfolio we started our studies on color theory. Before that, however, we did critiques of all our previous artwork, which was very helpful. The comments were all very constructive and mostly positive; it was wonderful to get honest, thought-out opinions of other artists. After our critiques we discussed the values of colors and started painting color wheels with exact values. This was very interesting because it showed me how to view colors in a completely different way, and showed me how to strategically use colors to add to a composition.
   In the other portion of my classes, we started solid construction on our recycled materials dress, using my design for the top of the dress with folded vellum paper. The very structural aspects of the design really reflect our inspiration well, and I can't wait to see how it turns out.

Parsons SIS: Day 5

  Today we visited not only the Museum of Modern Art but also the Museum of Art and Design, after eating lunch on the rocks of Central Park. Here are some of my favorite pieces of the day:

This was a Cindy Sherman piece which I found somewhere in the MoMA. I love the characters she creates within each piece; she almost creates a whole storyline within each photo.

I don't know what it was about this piece but for some reason it really caught my eye and pulled me back to it, and I just stopped and stared for a couple of minutes. It created such an emotion and environment with the low-toned colors and charcoal lines, I couldn't resist the home-y yet calm and solitary feeling it gave me.

Of course, it was such a privilege to see Starry Night in person, my mouth fell open when I spotted it. The brush strokes and deep blues are so much more beautiful in person I could not believe that I was looking at the real thing. This will always be one of my favorite paintings, it's impossible to compete with.

This was an interactive piece of modern art at the MAD, which wove a three dimensional picture of the viewer on a screen and could be manipulated. Interactive art is always so incredible to me

Parsons SIS: Day 3

     Today I finished my first project in our figure/ground studies, which was a study of negative space and ground. In this work, we were required to outline the model and every student and desk within our focus, and fill in all other space with black gouache. I chose to focus on the model's torso and to fill some of the large spaces with other details in order to make the composition of the piece more interesting, and the end product came out looking very abstract.Working with the figure/ground relationship and negative space was not only more difficult than just focusing on figure (which is usually done in compositions) but also required almost a different skill and way of thinking., which I found deeply interesting.

Parsons SIS: Day 2

        Today we visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art as a class and viewed the new Charles James exhibit, as well as the permanent exhibits. To continue our figure drawing, we sat and drew statues from the Greek collection. This was a wonderful experience because it was extremely calming to take time to sit and sketch great works of art and famous statues among the other people in the museum. The statues were also less difficult to portray than the live model because of their near perfect features and lack of movement, and the beauty within the works was astounding.

We also sketched suits of armor from one of the permanent collections. This was helpful to my understanding of joints and the human body, because of the extreme detail put in to the design of the armor. Studying each joint within the suit developed my understanding of the movement of the human body, and I found that drawing the suit was actually very difficult because of the amazing detail involved.

My favorite exhibit by far was the Charles James exhibit because of the technology used to analyze each piece. Cameras, x-rays, and lasers danced around and under each dress to examine in depth the construction and detail within each dress. The design and beautiful construction of his dresses was truly inspiring and added to my knowledge of pattern making. I sketched some of his designs and fell in love with the details and concepts behind his work.

July 1: 

 Today in my first day of Design Portfolio at Parsons (The New School), we began our design project by searching the city for inspiration. I greatly enjoyed hunting for detail and shape within the incredible architecture of New York, and found inspiration surprisingly easy to find. The thinking skills I'm developing in this course have already changed the way I view art and design, and the design process is becoming increasingly more interesting each day. From our inspiration, we started to develop shapes and forms that could be translated into a wearable garment. This I found surprisingly difficult because of the intense critical thinking required, but once I found my rhythm I was able to translate some good ideas onto paper. Next we started multiple figure drawing exercises from a live model, some 30-second drawings, some 5-minute drawings, and some 10-minute drawings. I really enjoyed these exercises because they were great practice and I find the human body exceedingly interesting. Drawing from a live model was somewhat difficult because the proportions were sometimes hard to perfect, but I was reminded of how to measure in terms of "heads" and was able to portray her proportions accurately for the most part. Overall, a very successful first day of classes!