The basics.
Archive for October, 2009
It’s been so long.
I just finished writing my first academic paper after 6 years of doing…not…that. Hopefully it doesn’t suck too bad?
Rhythm
Exercise in establishing rhythm. Not so successful.
Heritage
In my Form and Communication class we were instructed to keep a detailed sketchbook. The goal is to develop in us a deep sense of process and to always keep our brains moving and to stay creative in our sketchbooks. This wasn’t really new for me, I’ve been doing this since grade school; but what was a nice change of pace were the assignments given to be done in the sketchbook. While illustrating my family tree with colored ink, a circle stencil and a mechanical pencil, drawing baselines and cap heights I was staring at where I’ve come from. All the people who made my life possible and working in the tools that those in my profession used before me.
The Importance of Drawing
Before I could start at RISD for real they wanted me to take a condensed version of their foundation studies year. All freshmen coming into RISD take an entire year of 2D design, Drawing and 3D design before declaring their major.
At first I was skeptical. I’ve taken so many drawing classes, so many design classes, what was I going to learn? The drawing class was what I was least excited about. Over the past few years I’d come to terms with my drawing skills and wasn’t really interested in learning how to do things the ‘right way.’ I knew drawing is important to me as a graphic designer, I knew it’s a great skill to quickly communicate an idea, but I wasn’t really interested in developing this skill much further. I was kind of happy with where I was at.
Light and Shadow
Lately I’ve been experimenting with photography as a means to generate graphics. Instead of looking to capture a subject or an event, I’ve been searching for puzzle pieces, little bits of possible future images. This process has been extremely satisfying and has allowed me to look at photography and the world around me in a new way.
First Roll
The other day I developed two rolls of negatives. It was incredibly surreal to realize it had been 10 years since I’d been in a dark room. I’m pretty happy with the results, we weren’t charged with doing anything specific on this assignment, just to properly expose two rolls and to develop them.
Back to the Blog
My other blog turned into a bit of a mess. It didn’t really have any focus and was just kind of meandering through the internet with no purpose and no real excitement around it. The internet must have sensed this, because someone hacked it and when I went to update the security on it I ended up losing my content (d’oh! forgot to backup).
But no matter. This blog is going to be focused on my work at RISD and my education for these next few years. While the topic at hand is obviously broad I feel like it will help me further refine what I’m writing about here and also give me a place to share work that isn’t really appropriate for my portfolio site.
I’m just using this old theme for the moment, I’m working on developing a new one but it’s slow going with all the homework I have going on, which is more interesting than how this looks anyway since you’re probably reading this through an RSS reader. Anyway, new blog, new internet, let’s do this thing!