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vector imagery is something i have come new to this year with the dawning of computers to myself in graphic design this year, after previously being scared going anywhere near them incase i became an addict to which i had become for the project on dust. moving on however i found some really nice vector line work which could be a great starting point to what is a line, these were produced by a designer called pablo alfieri. They are incredibly beautiful and intricate yet although i admire their brilliance i would appreciate them far more if i could see some hand drawn work to give it some personality and depth. The colouring s also beautiful and well selected. here are a few images of inspiration. follwing this i also came across a similar illustrator who uses vector imagery in her work Nancy Veltri's illustrations are really simple and a aesthetically pleasing which are indeed simple to make and construct. none the less however a simple and less intricate way of working, a definite contrast in styles here.

on the idea of looking at artists i took the time to look back at sara fanelli whos work many people have stumbled arcoss and taken on in their own styles. i love craft. especially looking this kind of design by fanelli, the way she plays and works with old material and collaging it over and playing with material it is a fascinating and carefulselection and layering that achieves such brilliant visuals. i like the application of line in her work whichi is what our subject entails. craft would definetly be something to consider later on and in the mean time i would like to start drawing lines and familiarise myself with the selection and application of line.

More

also looking at new artists i came across a few cool ones which will hopefully help me into getting into that idea or drawing line and crafting in particlular. David Sparshott which i discovered is an amazing illustrator and designer his simple use of line integrated with use of playful collage and imagery make fantastic imagery. i love the illustration he produced over looking Bristol looking at the architecture and mixed with this simple use of black line. its really intriguing his work and i feel this kind of style and way of work could be quite simple to produce i just need to get the content and message of what i am trying to communicate across. it would be quite interesting to look at creating imagery from the pictures that i took from Paris as the streets around Paris are incredibly organized and would produce probably clearer drawing and show important places of interest or place i stayed in within a long time.

Looking on the idea of illustration again i looked at Oliver Jeffers whom i have come familiar with looking over the recognition brief but a style of which it very relevant to my ventures into the line project. his beautiful style of working reflects less about the line as he integrates watercolour into his work, instead of the piece of material like David Sparshott. i do like this way of working and even though i cannot create good water colour imagery i am good to hand with some inks and my favourite Berol pens which given practically the same effect except its just not water colour. i should hope to purchase some water colour pencils over the Easter holidays instead of eggs which is a shame, but good at the same time.

Angles

i almost forgot that i looked at this in a gallery whist in paris. how could i possibly forget it, it was truly amazing. in the paris museum of modern art which was a truly amazing building i came across this piece designed by 'Agam' presumably a design company of sorts, this piece was a commission for the frech president Georges Pompidou as a homage in the memory.

Agam's kinetic interior for the design of the elsee palce was commissioned by the president in 1971 and was to be designed as a pictoral space on which the scale of a room, exploiting walls, ceiling, floors and doors and folows the design principles of the artists ideas of polymorphic painting in its use of coloured prism shapes to create abstract compstitions that change with the point of view, installed between 1972 and 1974 inder the guidance of the Mobilier Nationale ( the state collection of furniture and tapesries). it was finally disassembled in 2000 and presented to the centre Pompidou. it draws on a very precise set of colours and materials, which offer a vision of dynamic, geometic space , suggesting a permenant metamorphosis of the visual world.

this piece was really amazing to view and from different angles i could clearly see line being composed in different angle and points. the colour of this piece was also quite amazing how it changed throught the different colours of glass and highlighting different areas of interest within the drawing of the lines. i really like the idea of perspective and it would have been better if i was able to walk around the room and properly view the piece up close and personal and interact with it. The mirror in the middle of the room was also quite amazing as the chrome reflected the lines of colour even further creating a distortion in the middle of the room. this provided me with something to think about on the subject of line by looking at an investigation into the idea of lines not on a canvas but virtual and subjective manner.

On the Subject

on the subject of line i have come across some imagery to do with line which i think could help move the process of making visuals a lot easier. here are a couple of examples. i think the most important thing which i need to consider is the element of craft which is essential i think to the visual side of things. having set myself 3 rules the first being 'to maniulate craft and only utilise digital technology to create collage or adjust imagery, not create it.' i think it is essential that i stick to this rule and in so doing i have come across a number of artists and designers who use craft within their work.

i really like the work produced using pen by jess wilson which with her use of bright almost synthetic colour reflects a kind of craftsmanship i could like to create. utilising a handdrawn style with digital colouring. This a type face she develpoed and i love it, i dont know if it would be readable but in use in short words i think this could look really attractive. on a small scale is something i think we share in common with her delicate attention to detail in her drawings.

i also came across luke best through looking at chloes blog and again its a simple styling imagery combined with colour that achieves such a brilliant imagery. as of yet i havn't limited myself to a colour pallet which could greatly help in what i want to achieve. he has also experimented across media type where he produces tattoos from imagery that he creates. some very exciting work and i think if i were to have a tattoo it woul look something like this and possibly be a bird of some kind

On Line

whist in paris i came across an exhibition piece which excited me greatly, based on an idea of a cave an artist has created an installation piece in the modern paris gallery. its was amazing its like you are wandering into a stripped down version of a cave, no colour, no texture just simple vector imagery running throughout the cave almost as if it were constructed from paper of was on a topographical map. it felt clean and santitised not like a real cave which would be damp, cold and rough and yet you almost felt like you were in a real cave witht the structure of the cave making elegant shadows in the darkness as you embark into the cave. fascinating truly. The piece was done by an artist, Jean Duhuffet, 'le jardin d'hiver' it was called (i love the french language by the way its so sexy and brilliant and just has a flow about it i could listen to for hours.) The construction of this jubilantly, enigmatic jigsaw construction started in 1962 and the circumvoluted line and areas of sombre colour that make the cave , or canvas, dance with life. it has been described as a garden that has no greenery but shares greatly the resembelance of a grotto or cave withsimple black lines to emphasize the structural parts. The construction is complex with the walls and floor taking a bumpy and uneven effect which is underscored by the simplicity of the white and black. overall this piece insired me greatly and showed the nature of line as a 3d piece and less like it had to drawn onto a piece of paper. i looked more at imagery of the parisian streets from this, the maps and the structure of architecture for inspiration into lines.

after looking briefly at dot to dot i thought that the first thing that i should do should be to actually produce one, a sample if you will to help start the process off a bit and what more of a starting point is better than looking at something on a huge scale. looking at the concept of dot to dot i took an images and enlarged it massively to over an a2 size and from there i started drawing a dot to dot taking a massive 900 dots in total. a pretty magnificent feat if you will for a starting point into this idea of line. potential lines if you will. i really like how from a distance the dots actually merge to produce line which is quite fascinating maybe this could become a play on idea looking singular point which from a distance or agle produce line. possibly like the work done for the channel 4 advertisements where the parts making up the channel 4 logo join up to produce an image of the logo at certain angles. maybe this could be an idea to play on and how points can incidently produce line, maybe optical illusions could be quite fascinating. anyways here are a few images of the dot to dot that i produce taking a massive 5 hours to complete and i think if i were to do this again i would definetly work on a smaller scale.
aside from producing a dot to dot as astarting point i felt it necessary to get some useful primary research and what better use of line than the neubauwelt book. it does indeed fascinate me. after seeing fred hold one up in colllege it was indeed one of those implusive buys that you just have to have, a collectors item, just looking through you become mesmerised at the exquisiteness of some of these illustrations and it makes you want to view more and more. the book also comes with a cd which i havn't sample yet but i contains a sample of illustrations taken from the book which you can use yourself. The simple vector based imagery of this book is truly fascinating, who would have thought such recognisability would be achievable through simple line and colour (which is gorgeous). taking on this idea of using line to create imagery ive had thoughts about creating imagery from these and interpreting this style in the form of dot to dot. how good would that be a simple book that could be used to pass the time by connecting dot on different drawings, definitly something that would go down well by the pool whilst on holiday. i would like to produce a couple of these to see where this takes me in the mean time i have couple of ideas to play on. see imagery of the book below aswell as some sample dot to dots which i created, see if you can recognise them and mentally join the dots.

Direction

so from the initial starting point looking at a way to document the objects people or places i have finally come across a good concept to which i can build upon. starting initially at the start back in November o had ideas of working with the play on idea of dot to dots. however to my dismay my colleagues disapproved of this ideas considering that i had no subject the idea of working with something in dot to dot had no context, what was it trying to achieve by using this kind of method to create lines? i needed a subject to work with it was great that i had targeted a specific area to work with but it lacked the content, i needed subject not styling at this point which would really help my exploration. i looked at several of these and even looked at a dot to dot tattoo which when assembling the dot differently produces different images. this could have been really interesting but i lacked the will power after getting shot down in the crit. maybe i could have worked with this idea a bit more creating subliminal imagery out of simple forms, this could have been really interesting and would have tackled what is a line on a direct manner. but i was everly put off thinking about what subject could be interesting.

from there i struggled to find a subject areas that would be compatible with the kind of styling i was trying to achieve. i slowly drifted and ran completely out of ideas and i had to simply start looking for a new way of interpreting what is a line? this initial confusion made me very hesitant to start looking again and because of the crit feedback i had received this did not help boost my confidence in achieving anything at all. from here the subject went very dry, having my elective also did not help the situation and so for about 2 months visual language was a thing t do on a Tuesday afternoon and not at any other point. i also feel strongly at this point that not enough importance was put onto the brief. to get fully emerged into what is a line i feel it would have helped greatly f i had a strong idea of what it is we we supposed to produce, examples of work would helpful, what subjects, media type any guidance would have been greatly received. were we to work on this project in a more direct manner actually utilising line instead of metaphorical lines? question questions questions? it seemed there was no guidance or rules.

mid-February and i had planned to visit Paris as a break from the stresses of graphic deign living. Paris is a beautiful place to visit and exciting to get away and not have to think about what work i had to finish, thankfully at this time i had finished the current module and i had also finished my elective in print which i had thoroughly enjoyed but not so much the assembly of the sketchbook or the impending deadline. Paris indeed was a fantastic and huge capital and consequently i ended up looking at the maps over and over again which did get confusing at times. the map of Paris that we received was a brilliant example of instructional and organised architecture and street plans. and from this i started looking at lines again inspired with the structure of the Parisian streets i produced examples of these and looked briefly at the rose line which was interesting in itself but very limited to what i could look at. i only ended up finding one of the Arago plates which was altogether disappointing.

from here emerged onto looking at my existence taking inspiration from Chloe's book based on her 100 ways of documenting her existence, the first step into looking forward to a concept that i think could be successful. i like the idea of doing something such as this which is personal to me not only because the information is about me be because the vast majority of information that is used comes directly from myself, like a library, but far easier to get exactly to get what your looking for. From looking at the book that Chloe produced it seemed clear to me that i would be requiring a nature a nature of craft to produce something that is so personal and beautiful.

having now established what it s i am trying to communcate then next stage will obviously to put the design into practioce. but i don't really have an idea of how to represent such large quantities of information or even what kind of scale can be achievable within the time that is available.

Maps

after looking at the map of paris which showed a rather interesting gridding system and looking briefly at the rose line i came across this deisgners work. simon evan's hand made style of working is something that appeals to me very much, looking at the book, Vitamin D, i came across one of his works looking at a map that he created looking at the world (2003). not typically what is expected as the world is normally represented by a sphere, simon looks at the world in his own perspective, placing things in a seemingly random yet thought out and opinionated manner. his use of the handmade style emphasizes his works feeling of opinions and the use of collage gives his work a distinct feel. i find it really interesting the amount f detail he has managed to put into this map and i guess in some ways by tackling such a large subject area such the world you could probably keep on going adding limitless detail to the map.

i would definitely like to do something like this obviously choosing a different subject matter maybe something to do with me personally, maybe documenting part of my existence could be interesting, feelings people that i have met, categorize then and order then in groups ordered by time, opinions hair colour the list could go on and on. i would love to look at people that i have met within my life, put it all down in perspective, reminisce and get in touch with old friends could be quite fun and interesting to document. this would most definitely relate well to the subject of line, the idea being a line or lines of people that i meet and interact with not just acquaintances or people i know of. i have a crit next week and so i will find out what people think of my idea, i feel confident about this idea but will other people?

Rose Line

the rose line brought famous by the author dan brown in the da vinci code can also be referred to as the the paris meridian. The Paris Meridian being a meridian line running through the paris observatory in paris, france - now longitude 2°20′14.025″ east. It was a long-standing rival to greenwich as the prime meridian of the world, as was the antwerp meridian in flanders, a geographical region located in parts of present-day belgium.
visiting paris over the weekend i decided to lookinto it it was quite a shame i didn't get to see it before whilst i was there, never mind. paris was a beautiful city.
i thought this was quite an interesting line, after looking at dot to dt i realised that the rose line was made up of dots, plaques embedded onto the floor. In 1994 the arago association and the city of Paris commissioned a dutch conceptual artist, jan dibbets, to create a memorial to arago, François Jean Dominique Arago catalan: Francesc Joan Dominic Aragó, who was a historic french catalan mathematician, physicist, astronomer and politician. Dibbets came up with the idea of setting 135 bronze medallions (although interestingly only 121 of which are documented) into the ground along the Paris Meridian between the northern and southern limits of Paris: a total distance of 9.2 kilometres/5.7 miles. Each medallion is 12 cm in diameter and marked with the name ARAGO plus N and S pointers.
Another project, the so-called Green Meridian, aims to establish a plantation of trees along the entire length of the meridian in France. quite a big dot to dot i'd say and i think this is something that i would like to look at in more detail. i would like to look at maps next.
the parisian streets are indeed fascinating lines as themselves. mapped out in such a thought out and planned manner there seems no room for error in these perfect looking streets. they are deisgned in such a way it is incredibly easy to get around and are perfect for seeing all the monuments.
the map that i used to get around demonstrates this really well. i'm quite interested in the idea of maps. however i'm sure i have done this before. i looked last year on my foundation course at the application of line and i produced several drawings of the leeds urban landscape. not necessarily mapping but i can see this going down a similar road which isn't nwhere i want to go. never the less i think i'll skim over it just a little bit as it could take me somewhere else.
i intend from here to looks at maps and representations of landscapes which i think could lead me down an interesting road. at this point i'll also try and look at photography and i would like to look at the process of manual photography and see if i can produce any interesting line results.

What is a line?: Statement of Intent

i intend to look at the mapping of objects, people and places. i plan to explore boundaries and dimensions through the use of points, gridding and mapping of various things within everyday life. my initial sources of information that i have looked at were through, dot to dot, the neubauwelt book containing vector imagery of random everyday objects and i plan to look at maps, particularly the way three dimensional landscapes are represented in topographical forms. i intend to explore drawing methods through looking at artists and graphical designers work and ways they capture forms through simple lines or dots.

Line

having not looked intently at this brief i decided to look at someting a bit different to start with. many others within the group had moved at documented all sorts of lines but i've had difficulties starting this project as i want to make something interesting. plus i have had very little time on my hands with the deadline for the module looming over my head. ok so not quite a line but the intention of a line is there so in a sense this could be considered a line. dot to dots are the quintessential, drawing, challenge, past-times of many children (and some adults) today. i thought its quite interesting how you already know what the image is even theough its just a series of dots. i think its quite possible that your mind automatically joins the dots in your head either consciously or subconsciously so you can see what the images is without even thinking it.




















i would really like to take this forward but the crit that recieved for the work that i was looking at told me that this was a way of producing line however it lacked subject matter. i havn't chosen something to document a line of which at this point is something i majorly lack. what lines could i document? i started thinking about maps and the dots on a map that maybe make up lines. chloe galea documented the places that she has been to in the book of 100 and that comprised of flags dotting the places she has been to throughout the world. i thought that was really nive and i liked the idea of documenting the movement of myself. hannah jackson documented movement in her bok of 100 which was a really interesting idea and will asken documented the same but categorised more formally in the form of data cars which could be interpreted through a cypher. all very good ideas of documenting places and movement but i don't want to make something that has been produced before. i do like the idea of dot to dot but where could i take it. something that needs a bit of thought and some inspiration. i thought his one was interesting by joining up the dots in a different manner as followed below a different image can be achieved. try it.

Start at: 5
Draw to: 53, 52, 51
Move to: 19
Draw to: 18, 11
Move to: 57
Draw to: 58, 68
Move to: 3
Draw to: 52
Move to: 8
Draw to: 4
Move to: 87
Draw to: 89
Move to: 53
Draw to: 55, 56, 57, 13, 11, 10, 9, 8, 24, 21, 19, 44, 42, 41, 21
Move to: 2
Draw to: 4, 6, 7, 5, 3, 1, 2, 26, 31, 34, 33, 36, 37, 32, 29, 30, 48, 51, 81, 74, 72, 71, 106, 105, 104, 103, 101, 97, 90, 89, 65, 59, 66, 88, 87, 79, 68, 66, 67
Move to: 81
Draw to: 78, 108, 107, 86, 90

Story-telling

the art of instructional design. pointing someone in the right direction has been this weeks visual language sesh. using icons we were to narrate a series of events within 6-7 images i really enjoyed this little brief it was a lot harder than it sounds, i ended up trying to narrate a headshot scene in COD5 it didn't quite pan out... i'm not the best of illustrators. anyways on the idea of icons i started looking at books in the library on instructional design and i found a couple, i like this one 'Pictograms Icons & Signs' i found it quite good to look at, it contained all the basic signage we see in the modern work today such as computer icons and road signage aswell as a few others. i like the ones that we produced in black and white and i do want to finish them i like these ones that i found and i think i might vectorize them on the computer. i think that next week we will be looking at producing the same type of images again so in the mean time i will start my research into a series of event of something that i can use.

Light

yes, lighting. moving on from The previous photography workshop today we were looking at the impact of light on our photographs. having looked at this last week i felt confident of producing some good photographs utilizing the lighting effects.

today we were using just the one light, a spotlight. this gave us extremly stark photos with a high contrast which isn't

 always flattering.

 We were using a wall backdrop this time and ended up using a shutter speed of 1/200 with 8 Iso which gave us an optimum of 22 aperture. the first couple of photographs came out really well with little motion blur and great colouring. we then tried a couple of effects such as using a long shutter speed and manipulating the 

light. some of the effects came out really nicely. i would have liked to have stayed around a bit longer and worked with the proper lighting equipment rather than just working with a single light. i think it could have been a lot better if we had two. maybe next time.