Wed 09.02.20
Right around 6:30 pm is a busy time in Houston, even in residential neighborhoods. Numerous people have just gotten off work or have been stuck in traffic on the freeway for nearly an hour and are close to their final destination — their homes. The intersection at Burney Rd and West Airport Blvd connects several residential neighborhoods. When standing at this intersection I can see numerous homes and even two separate neighborhoods: each with their own parks, lakes, and people, yet this intersection is what connects them.
After standing there for 15 minutes, all I remember hearing were cars and the occasional horn, yet, it was relatively peaceful. The sound of the cars were predictable. Every few seconds, the crunching of gravel and roaring sound indicated that the light had turned green, and when the light was red, the quiet humming of vehicles echoed across the street.
Being that it was a more residential area I expected more people to be walking their dogs, going on a run, or biking, but for the short time that I was there, there was not a single person who wasn’t in their car. This made me feel like everyone in their cars were looking at me since I was the only one on the street, but I’m sure that wasn’t the case, although I did feel pretty safe walking the streets alone.
Sat 09.05.20
After class last Thursday, I realized that the intersection I had chosen did not have a lot to work with. The area was pretty flat everywhere and there wasn’t a lot to look at besides trees and streetlights. Because of this, I decided to change intersections to one that I think has more information around it and could better capture the vibes of the neighborhoods that I am familiar with and one that was closer to my house so if we did have to visit it again, it would be closer than the intersection I had previously chosen.
Though this intersection is closer to my home, I had not been to it before. What caught my attention was the color blocking store front for an auto glass replacement store. Because this caught my attention as I was driving, I decided to stop and study the area. I first noticed that there was much less traffic than the intersection I chosen the other day. This made it easier for me to walk around and view the area from more points of views. Another reason that I chose this intersection in particular was because the streets were narrower, meaning that more information such as the buildings and street could be seen from closer and everything wouldn’t be smaller when I captured a photo.
This part of the street is not very walker friendly because it is a main street, so there wasn’t anyone walking. The main features that I noticed were the apartment building, the glass replacement shop, and the road .The road was not smooth and there was a lot of cracks and bumps which is different from the first intersection I had chosen.
Wed 09.09.20
I decided to choose this composition because it incorporates both natural and artificial elements. On one side there are trees which provide an organic shape and on the other, there are two human made buildings which has more structure, and having both of these elements in one frame creates a contrast that I think is important to show. I didn’t choose the other two photographs to use because both showed too much of either nature or human made and I wanted to create a composition that had a balance of those two things.
For the relief, I first started by tracing everything from the photograph but after I finished, I realized that this level of detail would be impossible to cut out so I scraped it. Then, I traced everything again but this time focusing on more basic shapes. However, this was problematic because it was difficult for me to understand what objects should be cut out first and how to layer the pieces, so I took a new piece of tracing paper and only traced the background which would be this first layer that I would glue down to my 6" x 8" card stock. I continued this 2 more times to create a middle ground and foreground.
To cut the layers, I mainly used two techniques. In the beginning, I placed card stock behind the tracing paper and cut through both layers. This allowed me to line up my tracing paper with the 6" x 8" card stock and glue the piece exactly into place. After cutting the first layer, the pieces of tracing paper that were cut made it difficult for me to see where each piece should go so I moved onto a second approach. For the remainder of the craft, I drew each layer on separate pieces of tracing paper and flipped it onto the card stock so that the pencil side was touching the paper, then I retraced the lines again to get a light imprint of the object. Then I proceeded to cut it out and glue the piece onto the larger card stock using the tracing paper as a guideline.
Overall, I learned how to isolate objects into layers based on their position within the composition, but I also think that I can improve on knowing the order in which I layer things so that I don’t have to unglue pieces. I also think that I can work on craftsmanship because in some areas there are pieces of glue that leave unwanted dark spots. Additionally I think that I should switch to a sharper blade to get cleaner cuts and make the overall relief look neater with straighter and cleaner edges.
Fri 09.11.20
After class on Thursday, I realized that there were some improvements that I could make on my relief to make it better and I wanted to redo it to practice my cutting skills and to make everything neater and more accurate. In the new one, I tried to balance between making the relief authentic of the space while also making everything look more intentional. For example, the lines on the street in real life were crooked but I couldn’t cut them in that way because then it would seem like it was a mistake and that I didn’t know how to use a ruler.
The first thing that I changed was my mindset. The first relief was started on Tuesday, the day before it was due, and my attitude was to finish it as fast as possible and because of that, it looked rushed and messy. On Friday however, I knew that I could finish it within 3–4 hours so I set that amount of time in my schedule and just worked on it, paying closer attention to detail and just overall feeling calmer, without feeling rushed. The second thing I changed was my blade. The first one was just dull which meant that my cuts weren’t as clean, so this time around, I switched to a new blade so I wouldn’t have to add so much pressure when cutting and lose control.
The last thing that I changed was my method in cutting and placing the pieces of paper. This time, I printed out two 6" x 8" photographs: one was printed with the normal photo, and the other was the photo but mirrored. I then used tracing paper to completely trace everything from the normal photo and set that aside. Then, I used a pencil to completely cover the back of the paper of the mirrored photo, flipped the paper around, and traced the outline onto pieces of card stock. This time I used a ruler to make my cuts straighter and continued to cut out every single piece before gluing. The first mistake I made the first round was that I glued the pieces down as I cut them which made my fingers messy and caused glue to smear the composition making it look messy, so this time I made sure to cut out all the pieces first then glue them down all at once which would reduce the mess that the glue caused.
To make sure that the pieces aligned accurately with the photo, I taped the piece of tracing paper that I outlined the objects on in the beginning to the 6" x 8" piece of card stock and used it as a stencil to glue the pieces into place. I also made sure to extend the objects off the page so in the end I could cut it all at once to create a clean edge.
Overall, I think that redoing the relief was a good idea because it allowed me to learn how to make my cuts neater and how to strike a balance between making the relief look clean and neat, as well as keeping the authenticity of the intersection. I think that it will also make creating my grayscale composition go much smoother and faster because I now know how to do this efficiently.
Mon 09.14.20
To understand what tone of paper I should use for each object in my composition, I first used Copic markers and sketched the composition in different tones.
I decided to make the objects that were closer should be black and the objects near the background should be lighter in color. When experimenting and sketching, I wanted objects that were closer to catch the eye and using lighter paper would make the objects in the background stand out more.
The process I used to create the composition was the same as my second attempt at the relief but instead of using graphite to transfer the outline onto the card stock, I used a white colored pencil because pencil had a difficult time showing up on darker paper and I wanted my cuts to be as precise as possible. After cutting out all of the pieces, I used a tracing of the original image to put them into place.
I think that the exercise of using the markers to just see values and tones helped me to break down the composition into even simpler shapes. I’m not sure if it was just because I was first looking at it when creating the relief, but seeing the same photograph and objects for multiple days, over and over again, I began to see less details and more shapes when crafting my grayscale composition. Drawing it a couple times before cutting also helped me to see the intersection in a different viewpoint and it forced me to draw only the most basic components that were accurate of the intersection, instead of focusing on the details that didn’t contribute much to the overall storytelling of the intersection.
Wed 09.16.20
After class on Tuesday, I wanted to experiment with how to show information with the absence of paper and deduction. To try this out without having to redo the composition again, I went into Photoshop and changed the color of different shapes. The critique I got from the breakout session was that they were not convinced that the crosswalk was on top of the street because I had inverted the colors: making the lines dark and street light, while in real life it was the other way around. I decided that I should make the street a light gray and cut the lines out to expose white and make it appear that the lines were on top of the street. Another thing that I changed was making the traffic pole black to create more emphasis and indicate that it was closer to the front.
After creating the very rough idea in Photoshop to visually see what I should change, I redid the grayscale composition.
I then had to decide what color to use and what objects to make that color. My though process was that because my intersection has elements of human made objects and of the natural world, I wanted to emphasize the organic shapes of nature.
I tried experimenting with the colors of the sky using lighter colors that weren’t so harsh on the eyes like light purple and blue, however I found that because it was such a large area, it drew too much attention to itself. Because of this, I decided to focus on using color on different natural elements of the intersection.
I didn’t want to use a natural color that would emphasize the grass and trees too much and cause the viewer to focus only on the natural elements and ignore the buildings, so I chose to use the orange yellow color. Other colors like red or pink would have been too jarring and yellow is a much more peaceful and quiet color which is how I would describe my intersection.
Overall, I learned how to see objects in real life as simple shapes. I’ve never analyzed and deconstructed an intersection before so seeing how spaces and objects in real life can be boiled down to and communicated through shapes was very eye opening. This was the first real project I’ve done since school ended in March so in the beginning it was difficult to get into the swing of things and develop a work flow, however, throughout these past weeks I learned that doing things a few times though it may seem tedious, is very beneficial and will help me to save time in the future.
