Design Fundamentals online

Diane Andrews 2009

I began this design with the hopes of creating a lot of depth with some oppositional elements. Although this may not be the exact image I had in mind to begin with, it really has taken on a life of its own and I am pleased with the result. I deviated from my original design and color schemes, but I think that it was for the best. I stayed with most of the same elements, however I thought that they needed to be a little stronger. I altered a few things, added a creepy tree and removed the 'structured' mountains from the background. I was tempted to add a moon to the design, but felt it may be a little cliche, so I opted to leave that out. As for the color scheme, I used a warm hue for the hands. It not only goes along with my 'opposite' theme, but really adds a lot of contrast to the coolness of the blue/gray colors below. I darkened up the rest of the scene because I felt that it needed to be a little creepier; plus, I really like the contrast among the white, torn paper against the dark, mysterious background. I ended by adding some hues of blues and grays. I feel like this portion is teetering on the verge of being monochromatic and achromatic, but I felt that this is what worked best for the whole design.

Resources

Check out this Jing tutorial on creating a master canvas for presenting thumbs (including color wheels)

http://screencast.com/t/YThjNzM4

Coming up with an Idea - BRAINSTORMING

Color Resources

Go to this link

http://www.tigercolor.com

It has very clear graphics showing the various color schemes you will be using for these thumbs.

REMEMBER - you are rendering your preliminary composition in 4 different schemes for practice and feedback (see my student galleries). You can use ANY color combination for the final as long as you describe your choices for us, and why you used them.

How do you create these roughs in different schemes?

Create your design, placing each element in its own layer.

Save your original! Do a 'save as' for colorization.

Select a layer and (in Photoshop) do control U for hue saturation. check the colorize box. Move the hue slider (and others) around until you get the hue you need.

Proceed to the next layer -

Once done, flatten, move to the presentation canvas, resize, place a small color wheel next to it, mark the colors, move on to the next design.

Thumbs example

More notes: Photos and Figures?

Common questions regarding using representational imagery and photography:

Can we use people?

I think 'people' are OK - but we won't know for sure until we see some thumbs

The reason I can’t just say ‘people’ are or aren’t OK is that some designs might be able to pull off a figurative element, others will look amateurish

Regardless of subject matter the composition should work -

That is why I recommend looking at the composition upside down, and in the mirror

And will the people be photographs? Anime? Abstract?

take a look at and you can see there are as many interpretations as there are artists

socialmachines.jpg
luezer_censorship.jpg
painting.htm (the top image)
philipguston.jpg
peterSaul_artcritics97.jpg
wojnarowicz.jpg

"Can i use photos for my final?"

Using portraits

If you can't think of what to do try this - either a self portrait or a portrait of a person you know.

This link selfportrait.htm is from a color theory class but you can see that the portrait has been interpreted using color and design principles, sometimes quite abstractly.

Portraits go way back in art history, and are an easy solution to finding subject matter for an assignment IMHO.

Preparation for Final

Student Work

Emilie Davis Proposal, thumbs, color studies 971k PDF

Brent Fountaine Proposal, thumbs, Color studies
1.2 MB PDF

Here are screenshots of text and image of week 5 works, or final projects, including week 5 proposal, thumbs, color roughs, and then the week 6 final with statement

NOTE: some of the jpgs are 600 x 2500 pixels, almost 500k. They may take a few seconds to load.