WEEK 05: Design Principles Lectures & Project 1

   DESIGN PRINCIPLES

WEEK 5: Lectures

NAME: Adeline Wong Chyn Nee

I.D: 0344017

COURSE: Bachelors of Design in Creative Media

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It's the fifth week of the Design Principle lecture and we learned about what is a self-portrait and how other people describe one.

LECTURE NOTE 6

In week 5, we learned about Self Portrait.

Self Portrait is a self-representation in the form of a drawing/ painting/ sculpture/ design. It is a visual depiction of the self.

A self-portrait artwork represents the designer/ artists, how one sees themselves, what are they feeling, and how they want to be seen by others. It is not necessarily about creating a realistic image of yourself; instead, it's often an exercise for self-exploration.

To start, we are recommended to create a mindmap.

The ways we see ourselves versus the way others see us are different, like family and friends, however, the only side of ourselves that we know is our true face. If we were to visualize it, we would have to split them into groups like these:

1. How I see myself (physical traits and personality)
2. How others see me (physical traits and personality)
3. My interest
4. My thoughts
5. My experience

We were then showed a video of Art and Design students describing what a self-portrait is to them:

These are my conclusions of what the students mentioned in the video:

• A piece of work you make which represents who you are as a person
• It doesn't have to have your face in it
• The more you abstract, the more it becomes you
• Think about the feature and what it can be
• It is what we see out there and what we experience informs the creative process and who we are
• It doesn't matter whether it's beauty or spirit

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INSTRUCTIONS (Project 1)

• Create a portrait of yourself by applying the various principles that you had learned through these weeks.
• Select visuals that you find relevant and interesting to you, which you can
• translate into a design work to create a portrait of yourself.
• Progress is to be shown to and discuss with the lecturer during practical class.
• Any choice of material can be used.

Contemplate your life experiences, which include your culture, your family, your friends, your school days, your favorite hangouts, your favorite music, food, musician, etc. Observe your surroundings, people, vehicles, buildings, plants, signages, nature, and act. The progress and final work must be uploaded to our blog, specifically:

• Visual research
• Idea exploration and description
• Final outcome in PDF and short rationale
• Feedback by the lecturer
• Reflection on the particular exercise

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VISUAL RESEARCH (Self-portrait)

IDEA 1

To start my research, I head onto Pinterest to explore ideas that suit my style and liking. Since it is a project about self-portrait, I went ahead and explore ways to represent myself by using a faceless self-portrait. One of the reasons being, I feel that elements representing a person can express their personality better than their face itself.

Fig. 1.1 Idea 1 (Source: Pinterest)

In the images above, both subjects are faceless however the one on the right involves other elements that are able to tell a story about the individual. The idea I picked up from this is to incorporate and design my experiences and observations of my life into that one self-portrait, making it subjective and personal.

IDEA 2

For my second research, I explored an idea from one of my favorite Pixar animations, Inside Out. The movie portrayed 5 different characters representing the emotions of the protagonist, Riley. They all live inside her mind and controls her emotions throughout the day.

Fig. 1.2 Idea 2 (Inside Out)

In the images above, we can see the emotions of the different characters from Inside Out, The idea I picked up from this is to create a self-portrait that shows the different emotions I face daily, with the colors representing each emotion.

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SKETCHES (Self-portrait)

Upon choosing an idea for my self-portrait which is idea 2, I started to form ideas on how to show different emotions in a single portrait, and the thought came to me, "I don't have to restrict myself into drawing only one face, right?".

So that is when I came up with this idea of having 4 faces showing emotions such as sadness, anger, disgust, and joy.

Fig. 1.3 Sketch to decide placement

I have decided to create a portrait orientation and stack each of my heads with a left and right alternate order. My intention here is to also join each of the heads together and hopefully create harmony and rhythm.

Fig. 1.5 Reference photos for facial expressions

Next, I started searching for reference photos that I have taken in order to draw my facial expressions. Below are two rotated views of my detailed sketch.

Fig. 1.4 Sketch with details 

Fig. 1.4 First color

After I was done with the details, I started adding colors to each of my faces and also my hair and upper body which I have all combined to create a solid color, this creates a negative space between the white background which puts the focus onto my faces of emotion. 

Fig. 1.5 Colouring and corrections

In order to get opinions, I asked the people closest to me, my family, who happens to be artsy people like me! After asking my family members for their comment on the previous colors, they think that the solid blue color that surrounds my faces are too light that it takes attention away from the faces, they suggested I turn the blue into a navy blue and increase the tint of the faces slightly.

Fig. 1.6 Finishing touches

For the final step, I added a canvas-like texture to both the navy blue color and a more detailed texture to my face.

Fig. 1.7 "Accepting me" Final Self-Portrait PDF

Mediums:

Digital painting (pen tool in Adobe Illustrator)

Approach:

Different emotions an individual portrays daily

Concept:

In my self-portrait called "Accepting me", the different sides of myself portray a message of not needing to hide even the worst emotions that only we see ourselves, whether it be anger, sadness, disgust, fear, envy, or even grief. Some of us may even think that problems can be solved with suppressed emotions, which is not the case most of the time.

In my self-portrait, 4 versions of myself (top to bottom: joy, disgust, anger, and sadness) are seen combined side-by-side. In a crack, these emotions coexist in our minds, and suppressing even one of these emotions may lead to piled-up complications and/ or emotional dilemmas in the future. So, perhaps we should destroy the idea that suppressing emotions is a sign of strength and accept that every aspect of our emotions matters.

Design Elements and Principles:

Harmony: Different colored faces but in unity

Rhythm: Top to bottom flow

Contrast: Between subject and background

Texture: canvas-like texture 

Space: Negative space created between subject and background

Line: On facial details and lines of navy blue color, creating a clear space for the subjects.  

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REFLECTION

Through this Self-Portrait project, I have discovered that my facial expressions do not always show on my face when I am taking pictures of myself. For instance, in some of the pictures where I am smiling, I was not feeling happy but the same goes for those where I had the 'no expression' face on but was feeling fairly great at that moment of time. These are the things I myself never really focus on, let alone visualizing them and creating a self-portrait to express that feeling.

Not only that but in order to create something the viewers would be interested to look at, I utilized the design principles which we learned and applied in the previous weeks into this self-portrait, so it not only allowed me to express something personal but also express it creatively and effectively.

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QUICK LINKS

link to lectures 1.2 & 1.2 and exercise 1

link to lectures 2 & 3 and exercise 2

link to lectures 4 & 5 and exercise 3