Intro to GIC - Semester Portfolio Covers

At the end of the semester, we put together a small, spiral-bound portfolio of all the work we had completed in the Intro to GIC class. These are a few of my composition studies for the cover image, including Weight, Width, and Space:

 

And my final composition: 

Painting I - Portrait

For this assignment, we had to paint a portrait of someone we had only seen once. It could be someone we had walked past on the street or sat with in a room, but not someone we knew personally. I chose to take a very abstract approach on painting a portrait of someone based on the shape of their face, the curve of their jaw... even the jewelry and clothing they had on that day, but I didn't want to paint their image directly. Each of the four canvases is about 3' square and depicts a different aspect of my subject's appearance.

I started out with a few layers of acrylic to set up the overall composition:

 

And the final painting:

 

Ringling purchased the top two canvases. My favorite is the top-right:

Intro to GIC - Political Composition

Here is some work from my GIC class that introduced us to Photoshop. We started by collecting images of people places and things. We organized these into categories based on popular subjects in politics (environmentalism, women's rights, etc). My final subject choice was environmentalism:

 

Next, we added political figures, shapes, and our final color pallet choice.

And here's my final political composition:

Intro to GIC - Typographic Self Portrait

One of my favorite projects for this class, we started with a photo of ourselves and vectored it with simple type forms.

 

Here's my original photo and the initial tracings that helped to define where the shapes go - from largest to smallest.

  

 

Here's the next step: we took the image and applied it to a 3D cube. The tricky part came when the edges had to match up based on positive and negative space.

3D Design - Toy Project

For my toy project, I created a model of Danny Ocean from Ocean's 11. My final toy has been lost since moving around so many times each year, but I have images from the box design.

Here's an in-progress shot of Danny, prior to baking and painting:

Here are images of the box design in Illustrator and fully constructed (complete with Mylar front) :

Painting I - 15 Layers

For my painting class with Peg Trezevant, we were assigned to paint something at least 4' x 4' and have at least 15 layers of paint on it. I started by creating a collage of flat images of hair, cut from magazines, mixed with scrap satin fabric. I pinned the pieces together on foam core and sat the piece on top of my canvases while I painted. I built 3 canvases to create a triptych about 5' x 8' and translated the collage to the canvas, first using acrylic paint for the largest shapes.

Next came the oil paint. And more paint. And some more paint. Until I had almost all 15 layers.

The finished painting with a final layer of oil paint:

3D Design - Self Portrait

My self portrait for 3D Design was a red tiger, complete with a circus car (cause I go to Ringling, ha). I started with a wire frame and paper mache for the tiger. I collected paint chip samples from Home Depot and cut them into tiny triangles. I applied them one-by-one with tweezers and glue, which took hours...

 

The circus car is made out of cardboard, 4" nails, sample paint chips, spray paint, and a toy car kit (for the axle).

I designed posters for the ends of the car in Photoshop.

      

Intro to GIC - Jazz Icons

Intro to GIC was one of my favorite classes. Here's one of our first projects, including process work, that resulted in a set of stamp designs.

We started out with a few sheets of paper with shapes printed on them, like circles, triangles, and squares. We had to draw around those shapes to create images we saw in every day life. From those pages, we decided on a theme for our final selection. Mine was Jazz, so the final shapes I chose dealt with musical instruments.

 

From there, we took our sketches to Illustrator and created two styles based on simple forms and classic Gestalt principles.

Plane:

 

Line:

Form & Communication - Signs and Nesting/Networking

Here's some work from my first semester at Ringling. I was lucky enough to take Advertising classes right from the start. This first image is from a sign project where we had to create unconventional road signs. Mine were: Animal Shelter, Inclement Weather, Cooking School, and Circus.

 

We had another project in David's class involving the influence of texture, color, pattern, etc. I think I strayed from the assignment and stuck to textures, much to David's frustration. But I liked the project and end result.

Networking:

Nesting:

USF Work

Looking back at my work from USF, I've got a few pieces worth remembering...

The first few are from various drawing courses. First, an in-class sketch of my teacher's hands, measuring 18" x 24", charcoal on newsprint.

 

 This was an odd assignment where we were each given a small seashell and had to depict it multiple ways. This depiction was my favorite. About 8" x 11" in pastel and charcoal on paper.

 

This next piece used printer transfers and pastels on heavy blotter paper and measured about 16" x 20".

 

 This is a quick portrait of my dog, a chihuahua puppy, in ink and watercolor on paper.

 

 This is a painting of some weeds from the Botanical Gardens on USF's campus in Tampa. The image was tiny, but the oil painting measures about 18" x 24"

 

 My ceramics class was a lot of fun. This project required each of us to construct a huge vase out of coils and design a face for the front. I thought about my grandfather mostly, so the face turned out very long and thin.

 

After firing, I painted it dark blue with the Milky Way splashed across the front to make him a sort of Father Time figure. 

 

Our final project involved realism, so I recreated a hand towel out of clay. I shaped the initial structure from slabs and piped on individual fibers with slip in a plastic bag. The process was extensive, but the result was pretty convincing. I even carved a hole in the back of the piece so it could be hung on a wall and look like a real towel. The original is red and my copy is orange.