Weekly IP Blog#14

What I did

Sat. 1/21/12: About an hour redoing my tornado’s line quality and style

Sun. 1/22/12: 3 hours finalizing my tornado and sketching out a new hurricane composition.

Mon. 1/23/12: About 1.5 hours recreating my hurricane and composition

Tues. 1/24/12: 4.5 hours working on my new hurricane draft.

Weds. 1/25/12: 4 hours and 25min on reworking my hurricane.


Thurs 1/26/12: small group critique, reflected and wrote up my blog for about 1 hour and 45min.

What I accomplished/discovered/encountered

This week was a bit difficult, I was sick and my laptop had a lot of technical issues that are holding up my working process. I’ve done everything I could do get my laptop problems fixed, purchased new computer stuff, spent time getting it looked at by different technicians, and tired working on the schools computers. My laptop still lags right now, especially when I make a file more complex but I am doing my best in moving forward with my project. Due to my lagging laptop, my hurricane is not where I had planned for it being this week. I wanted to explore more compositions with the eye of a hurricane coming out or at the viewers, but I go too caught up in fixing my laptop and getting a good draft done of my hurricane. I discovered that I should spend my energy on planning out the vantage point before fully painting digitally and not get as anxious to getting digital drafts done.

I managed to do some more research this week by stumbling upon Geoffrey Short’s photographs of explosions from New Zealand. He created this work using fuels, gunpowder, and special film effects, for “exploring the relationship between terror and the sublime”. This was very relative to my work and how I’m attempting to capture the terror and beauty found in nature and the sublime. What captured me right away were his eerie yet mystical clouds that reminded me a lot of my tornado! I had no idea what the work was about until later, but I loved the awe effect it had in drawing me in. That is something I want my work to do both on screen and printed. 

Another inspirational thing I found this week was this whale illustrations website one of my friends sent me. I really liked the simplicity of water waves and comical terror the element of water was given, in contrast to the realistic imagery I’ve been seeing. Stephanie also shared with me Mary Hambleton’s work, it really hinted to the unknown and awe that color and composition can have.  I especially liked “Blue with Yellow Stripes” because of the vibrations the overlapping blues and yellows created, it hinted to the aspects of water or the sea in an abstract way.  

Mary Hambleton Blue with Yellow Stripes 2007 

Thursday’s small group critique was also very helpful. I learned that the original color palette I had for my hurricane was more successful in having more earth tone colors that dirtied the water. The eye of my hurricane needs to be improved and worked with to create a better vantage point. My digital clouds and water effects are interesting, but I need to crate more of eerie calm feeling in my work that’s more terrifying than what I have now. I am a lot happier with my tornado and the feedback I keep getting is good. The lady at Kinkos really liked how it had so much energy and how it immersed her well enough that she had to ask me how I made it. This was encouraging, but my hurricane and volcano still need to be brought to that level.        

What I think I should do next

I am currently waiting on my Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard CD update in the mail. I am hoping that’s the last thing I need to get my laptop at normal working speed. In the meantime I will be working on getting better compositions rendered or sketched out for my hurricane to get the best immersive composition to work with. I’ve got some ideas in my head and need to get them down and somewhat rendered out to see what parts work the best for my hurricane. I’m hoping next week will go a lot more smoothly in getting more digital explorations and work done. I also have some ideas for my volcano and would like to play around with some effects or compositions if I can get my hurricane in a good place.