Lesson 1 – Black Square Problem

Bold, Increase, Congested, Playful, Order, Tension

12×12 inches, digital

With the void of color, design becomes crucial. This problem tasked me with considering design very seriously and precisely to create six unique pieces that articulated a specific visual experience. 

Original:

These were the images turned in for this assignment. I got feedback that I needed to work on the shape of my squares, making the lines straighter and the like, and that my photographing skills needed work. 

Version Two:

Because the feedback I got was pretty ease to take and make those changes I decided to do it digitally to create perfect clean edges and corners and better contrast between the black and white.

Lesson 2 – Personal Color Wheels

Disliked and Beloved Color Wheels

12×12 inches, digital

The disliked color wheel is a representation of my least favorite colors and images I associate with them. Admittedly, there are really no colors I dislike so this was a difficult assignment. Orange, I find, is a color that is difficult to pair with others which is why it is so prominent here. If I were to rework this piece, I would try and diversify the range of colors a little bit more. Since this piece is paired with the Beloved Color Wheel I think it would also be nice if there was more balance between the two, which would be best achieved by including the same number of colors in both. The Beloved Color Wheel is a representation of my favorite colors and images I associate with them. If I were to rework this image, I would ensure it was a perfect circle and perhaps reorganize the flow of the colors (particularly better representing the flow of colors on a color wheel).

Lesson 3 – Color Mixing

Color Wheel and Scales

8.5×12 inches, acrylic paint, ink, mixed media paper

I wanted to elevate the color wheel in this by giving it a more interesting design. The repeated hand pattern is supposed to be a representation of unity across lines. I wanted to do an interesting design with the scales as well but struggled to figure out one that worked visually. If I reworked this piece I would likely try and find a way to make the scales more visually interesting and also worked on the violet area of the color wheel to create more saturated colors. Due to the resources I have at home, my color mixing capacity was somewhat limited since my red had such yellow undertones.

Lesson 4 – Bezold Effect

Bezold Orville Peck and Bezold Lil Nas X

8×8 inches, digital

For this assignment I wanted to create something that was reflective of my interests and identity, as a queer person who enjoys country music. Both Orville Peck and Lil Nas X make music I really enjoy.  There are some changes I would make to both of these if I reworked them such as making the Orville design more radial and focused around the center instead of reflections and giving the Lil Nas X design a better background.

Lesson 5 – Logo Design

Sun Child Comics

12×12 inches, digital

Overall I am very happy with the results of this assignment. I’m not sure how likely it is that I’ll ever use this logo as it doesn’t actually match the style of my current comics very well but I do like it. I think it would possibly look nicer if the line art matched the colors near it instead of being black, or if it was thinner. Additionally, while I cleaned up the lines quite a bit, there are still a few spots it could use work in.

Lesson 6 – Camoflouge

Cuba at a Crossroads

5×8 inches, found image, found item (mini bowling pins), acrylic paint, ink

I really loved this assignment. Growing up one of my favorite things to watch was Skin Wars which tasked body painters to blend a model into a scenery, so it felt a little like living out my fantasies of doing that. I had originally planned to paint 3 of these tiny bowling pins but ended up doing only 2 as the third would have been almost solid black and it was difficult to get the grass blades to align. The image in the background is from a 1991 National Geographic article called “Cuba at a Crossroads” and was photographed by José Azel. 

Lesson 7 – Colorizing a Black and White Photograph

Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries

8.5×11 inches, digital, original photograph source unknown

Since this assignment was given to us during Pride Month I decided to colorize a photo from the beginnings of the Gay Liberation movement in the USA. This picture was taken at a STAR Protest. STAR or Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries was a group Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera (pictured) founded to help transgender women who were food and housing insecure, many of which were sex workers, that fought against the many injustices this group faced including police brutality, transphobia, homophobia, racism, and classism. Overall I am really happy with how this turned out but also recognize that some of the color is not 100% accurate to how it should be considering lighting and atmosphere.

Lesson 8 – Color Scheme Variation

Self Portrait in 6 Variations

12×9 inches, digital, original photograph by me

Self portraits have always been one of my favorite things to do, perhaps that makes me full of myself but to me it is a great way to reflect and be mindful. Self portraits help catalog how I have changed and grown as I have done them, and as a trans person this is both especially apparent and important. I overall really enjoyed this assignment and playing with the use of different colors. I like how the final pieces turned out. However, if I were to rework it I would consider on the piece using complimentary colors to not do it as foreground and background but instead use both colors throughout. (I would also consider doing this with the warm and cool color pairings in the future, but the assignment requested a cool figure on warm background and vice versa.)

Lesson 9 – Still Life

Bedroom Bookshelf (Proof of Life)

12×12 inches, digital

I rarely do still life drawings or paintings that have strong middle grounds but it was fun to figure out how I would do that. Using the books as a middle ground was interesting as it provided something visually interesting but not too distracting from the figurines in the foreground. I spent about 7 hours on this over the course of two days. I am very very happy with how the detail ended up being rendered. This was my first time trying something so detailed digitally and also trying to use only “paint brushes” as typically my digital work is more flat and less textured.