End of Year Show - Vintage

Preparing the show took a lot more effort and time than I expected since the whole room had to be cleaned up and re-painted in order to look crisp enough for the private viewing. Everyone helped with this process, including myself since I came in during a weekend to help with the labels, to put the work up and add items to the back wall in order to fill out the blank spaces.

But now the show has now been up for a few weeks, and from the private and public viewings a lot of good feedback has been received.

The showroom was quite big displaying the work on chipboards and on the walls with the back wall caked in scrap pages and rough sketches and ideas, a table hosting three macs - one played music with a cycle of humours photographs of the class' trips to London and the other two showcased our websites. Along the windowsill were examples of packaging and beneath were a couple of tables with FMPs on so that they could see what a project looked like:

My favourite pieces were displayed in the show including my type and calendar posters:

FMP- Finally Finished

In the end I decided to do a cutout for each month of the calendar and through the project I thought that I had taken on too much but thankfully they were completed and I was proud of the results:

Each were vectorized and coloured on the mac. My particular favourites are Divali and St David's Day - they took the longest but were worth the hours.
 

Progression

After this course - BTEC National Diploma in Graphic Design - I will be studying Graphic Design and Advertising HND because I still have no idea to what path to go down and I feel that this provides a broad range of techniques and allows me to keep my options open for another two years. Thankfully the location is next to the college I am attending at the moment so the area will be familiar which relieves the stress of the whole situation.

Where I will go after that, I am unsure, but I am hoping that this course will help me develop my cutting skills and will help me gain a distinctive style which will fit into the market and allow me to get a good job for the future.

FMP - Research

Amongst my research I looked into colours and their meanings, thinking that I need a neutral colour for the calendar so that it wouldn't be biased. I found this piece of research rather interesting:

Red - strength, passion, aggression
Orange - energy, vitality, courage
Yellow - intelligence, memory, optimism
Green - stability, balance, soothing
Turquoise - sophistication, calming, protection
Blue - calming, intelligence, consciousness
Purple - influence, intuition, imagination
Pink - femininity, nurturing, ethereal
Black - protection, power, prestige
White - peace, purity, precision
Brown - reliability, comfort, strength

Final Major Project (FMP)

For my final project I am going to make a Religious Calendar, each month highlighting a different celebration from a broad range of religions. Although the subject doesn't claim my interest, the style of the illustrations I am going to produce does. I am planning for it to be simplistic and by the looks of my initial designs, tile-like.

My final list of celebrations:

1. Jan - Makar Sankranti
2. Feb - Milad un Nabi
3. March - St David's Day
4. April - Ridvan
5. May - Wesak
6. June - Summer Solstice
7. July - Pioneer Day
8. August - Lughnasadh
9. Sep - Rosh Hashanah
10. Oct - Diwali
11. Nov - Niinamesei
12. Dec - Christmas Day

I have chosen these events because I feel they have a diverse selection of themes that can inspire many ideas and good outcomes.

To get Full Merits and Distinctions:

In order to get a Full Merit for Unit 5 and 43 I have to:

5 - Art Nouveau - Include opinions of others (quotes) to support my influences.

43 - Packaging - Evaluate final designs, take photos of final mock-ups, stick in nets.

For the Full Distinctions I have a choice:

4 - Xmas Card - Need to demonstrate a greater understanding of other peoples work that has influenced my outcomes.

OR

4 - Packaging - Need to evaluate my packaging against an example of other packaging to establish its overall effectiveness, need to write an overall evaluation that states the different materials & techniques used, practical constraints considered and the influences.

7 - Advertising – make a couple of posters with photos from London Trip, health and safety sheets, highlighting the glue gun, wax, etc, put posters on billboards, evaluate effectiveness.

29 – Magazine – design and produce own typeface based on papercut designs, develop characters A-Z + 1-10, consider punctuation, demonstrate the effectiveness on page and its legibility, more sophisticated and varied use of image manipulation

OR

29 – Retro Poster – evaluate the image manipulation on the 2 outcomes, paying particular attention to the potential the manipulation has given the work, especially the 1^st design, how I was able to duplicate and add shadows, etc.

Assessment Update

Unit 1 - Visual Recording - (waiting for life drawings to be assessed)
 - Part Merit, missing M2

Unit 2 - Materials, Techniques and Processes - (FMP, Narrative, waiting assessment)
 - Full M, need D1

Unit 3 - Ideas and Concepts
 - Full M

Unit 4 - Visual Communication
 - Full M, need D1

Unit 5 - Contextual Influences in Art & Design
 - Full Pass, need M2

Unit 6 - Application, Exploration & Realisation in Art & Design (FMP to be assessed)
 -

Unit 7 - Design Methods in Art & Design
 - Full M, need D1

Unit 10 - Personal and Professional Development (all info on blogs, progression, where I'm going next year, development of work)
 -

Unit 12 - Computers in Art & Design
 - Full P

Unit 29 - Image Manipulation
 - Full M, need D2

Unit 32 - Desktop Publishing Computer Applications
 - Full M

Unit 33 - Type and Letters
 -

Unit 34 - Typographic Design
 - Full M

Unit 39 - Website Design - (Flash portfolio and blog)
 -

Unit 40 - Graphic Media, Techniques and Technology
 - Full M

Unit 42 - Design for Advertising
 - Full M

Unit 43 - Graphics for 3D Applications
 - Full P, need M2 & M3

Unit 44 - Narrative Image Making (needs assessment)

UCAS Application Sent

I have really struggled with finding the right course because I have no idea what career I want to persue in the future. I seem to be middle-stream, not wanting to do an entire course on Illustration or only on Graphics. I have also taken an interest in different subjects, so I was considering taking one of those up.

However, I talked to my tutor and she advised for me to go on the HND Graphic Design and Advertising course at Canterbury because it includes the hand-made element and the mac element and I won't have the stress of a new place.

So, I have only applied to HND Graphic Design and Advertising in Canterbury.

Current Project - Type

The result of this project will be a poster that is type orientated and an alphabet made out of whatever object we choose. To help us decide on the media we had to reasearch into fonts and a good website was handmadefont.com.

A couple of my favourite examples are:

Feathers

Red Rose Petals

Piece for Website

The only scene I have finished for my website, hopefully this idea will work. I am planning for the colours to be inversed and the type to be in the top right corner.

Throughout the second year of college we are to create our own website to showcase our work. The website is to show our personalities and our interests.

The first step was to research into other websites in order to get an idea of layouts. We then had to sketch out some rough ideas. My main idea is to have a different scene for each page, which are About, Contact, Gallery and Home:

Home page. A door in the centre with the buttons in the detail.





On the left is the 'About Me' page, showing items I am interested in, then there's the 'Gallery' page showing a street scene with the image in the centre and then there's the 'Contact Me' page, where there is a mailbox with envelopes falling out.

Out of College Work

I have tried to carry on my interests outside of college by creating pieces of my own, influenced by Henya, so that I can better my skills.  My two favourite pieces outside of college are these two:

This piece was originally made for a competition. It is a scene of foilage and flowers with a fountain in the centre and is greatly influenced by Rob Ryan.

A vase of English flowers with my name in Chinese, or the closest to it, 'Lou Bi'. Made for personal development. I tried to create a delicate piece with attention to detail, like Henya.

Paper Cuts

A great interest of mine is paper cutting. I first learnt about it last year when working on my christmas project for college. The first artist I learnt about in this profession was Rob Ryan but as I researched into the practice more I also learnt about an artist called Henya Melichson, whose style I much prefer and look upon for influence. Unfortunately she doesn't have an official website, but she has published a book showcasing her pieces:


This is the cover of her book 'The Art of Paper Cutting' and one of her more simple pieces called, 'Nature's Leaf.'