Blog 2 - Modernism.

Book:

Winner of an International Architecture Book Award in the Related Arts Category from the American Institute of Architects in 1998, the book ‘Modernism’ showed, explored, and elaborated for the first time the modernist concept. ‘Modernism’ discusses the main ideas of visual arts, design, interiors, architecture and decorative arts in the modern range. Not only gives an insight about the modernism principles but also brilliantly tells the reader how it all came about. It is considered a must for those who intend on learning specifically about modern art.

Reference:
Weston, R. (1996). Modernism. London, England: Phaidon Press Limited.
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Journal Article:

Zhang Xiaogang, Wang Guangyi, Fang Lijun, Yue Minjun, Zhou Chunya, He Duoling, Zhang Peili and Wu Shanzhuan are considered to be the most important modernists of the 20^th century in China. They were responsible for transforming the country’s biggest city’s design style. Modern art then became popular in the market, however, these artists were never able to exhibit their work in their own country until 2007, when the government offered each of these artists their own personal museum, willing to spend a total of 13 million dollars. This article is relevant to get away a little bit from the U.S. and British modern art that are usually the ones approached.

Reference:

Barbosa, D. (2007). A Gift Offer for Artists in China: Museums. The New York Times. Retrieved from: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/25/arts/design/25muse.html?_r=2.
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Website:

 

Huntfor is a Canada based organisation that offers a whole insight in regards to the history of modernism as well as a place where anyone around the globe can purchase art pieces, recreations of old masters, murals on canvas, portraits and oil paintings by your own design or photograph. Any image chosen from their gallery is guaranteed to be 100% genuine and authentic hand-painted. Huntfor believes that the passion to collect art comes from appreciation, knowledge, and understanding. For this reason, they added an educational dimension to their website offering resources, lessons, and tutorials, mostly elaborated when it comes to modern art, making it a very important website in regards to the study of modernism.

Reference:
HuntFor. (2005). Modernism. Retrieved from: http://www.huntfor.com/arthistory/c19th/modernism.htm.
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Edited book:

In the book “Concepts of Modern Art”, Nikos Stangos (editor) puts together the third edition of several expanded and updated articles written by key artists and writers from the 20^th century. The book also contains a very important essay in regards to the understanding of modern art called ‘Postmodernism and the Art of identity’. This very essay explores the history of the modern art and brings it up to how we see it now-a-days. Not being it enough, it also focuses on the art that may have lost its meaning due to the common day-by-day use. It is a key book for better acknowledgement and understanding of the 20^th century art.

Reference:
Stangos, N. (1994). Concepts of Modern Art. London, England: Thames and Hudson Ltd.

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Image:

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was one of the most important modernists of all times. By designing mainly furniture, he would keep the essence of classical art in his modern work.  By designing the Barcelona Chair for the King and Queen of Spain (image above), he uses the object as a representation of his “less is more” concept of as well as of a pure and perfectionist work.

Reference:
Fig. 1 Mies, L. (1953). The Mies Barcelona Chair, [furniture]. Retrieved March 30, 2012 from Minimalissimo: http://minimalissimo.com/2010/09/the-mies-barcelona-chair.

Project One - Identity

Alright, the first task we got for DSDN 101 was to pick five objects out of our bags, compose and draw them into a grid in a top view. For that I picked two sets of sunglasses, a rubik's cube, a poker chip, and a necklace.

Real objects:

Here is my development:

Then a better sketch on a normal A4 paper:

On this iteration I was planning how to paint the necklace with black ink and still keep the curve effect it has.

Painted it once to see how it could look like:

And finally finished my Final drawing swaping between black and white to have a notion of shadowing within the objects and get that positive and negative effect. The way the glasses were sitting made my composition much more complex and for that reason I also used white to translate a lighting effect into the drawing.

That's the first one!

Project One - Hatch

For the Hatch exercise we had to split an A4 paper into 24 squares. I picked equal sizing in order to be able to clearly show the gain of darkness across the page, and also to be able to relate one hatch/texture to another, have a constrast of black and white between them and also have connection lines between some of them.

First I made a small sketch:

In my final drawing I demonstrated the gain of darkness accross the page from the bottom to the top, which is quite clear. I did my best to have different line densitiy and weight.

Project One - Draw

For the Draw exercise we had to pick an object and draw it in at least four different views. I found that everyone was picking objects that had fixed sizes and measurements. For this reason I decided to pick my hat, which would be quite a challenge since it's so malleable. I carefully sketched it with pencil many times until I was able to get the essence of the hat, the lines that give it that little realistic touch.

Real object:

Sketch:

Played around with the black and white so I could do it comfortly on my final.

I did my best to make it accurate, however, a hat is always changing it's sizes in some parts, therefore, I represented it the way it would look if it was being worn. For the detailed part I used the fading os the sides because I wanted to add an effect, to give that feeling as if the drawing was continuing.

Project One - Section

For the section excerise I picked a Wii controller. I drew it as if I cut it right in the middle and pulled the buttons, chip, batteries and everything else out of it. I composed the pieces in a way that the buttons, even though pulled out of it, still seemed to relate to the other parts.

Concept:

Sketch:

I did my utmost to make the section as accurate as possible. I did look up how a Wii controller looks like on the inside to have a general idea, however, most of the interior parts I invented myself.

Project One - Touch and Draw

The object I picked for this exercise was my shoe. I wanted to express my use of the shoe throughout a day and also how often I step into my untied shoe laces (I am always too lazy to tie them). The black thik lines represent the shoe laces and the starting point of the footprints being the same as the ending point represents my trajectory during the day.

Again, I used black and white to be effective. I added the positive and negative effect and also used white as the shadowing of black.

I really enjoyed drawing this one, I liked how the chosen object is hidden behind this abstract geometry and requires some reflection or even a storyline to have a better understanding.

I started with the idea of drawing the sole of my shoe and the laces randomly positioned on the page.

After some tutor advice from Ally, I decided to stretch the laces to the right and left sides of the page to have it more abstract.

Then I had the awesome idea of doing footprints all over the page walking through the laces.

Played around with the black and white to gain comfort when painting my final.

Final:

Project One - Individual Work

Why did I find the drawing style so different?

I have always been inspired by the many different car designs out there. I think that they have an unique and most developed machinery design on the outside and the best engineering on the inside, which is also what gives them such capital and social value. Ferdinand Porsche has been my fountain of inspiration for a while with his outstanding use of curves in his creations. Main designer and engineer of the very first versions of the Porsche, the Beetle, and the Mercedes-Benz. By focusing more on the Porsche, I related his use of curves to my hat drawing from the DRAW exercise, and created The Car-Hat!

[107 words]

Design Precedents:

Played around with the curves drawing different shapes but still trying to keep essence of the Porsche.

Comparing an old-style shape-shifted Porsche to a modern one.

Concept of the Car-Hat:

The first sketch:

The second and last sketch:

Final:

DSDN 171 - Design In Context.

JULIO! Why the hell did you choose to do Design?

Answer:

Blood, computers and interaction are the three words that I mostly relate to my designs, but not just any design; they are the reason I chose to design and program computer applications as well as mobile ones. Whenever I am designing something that includes some sort of interaction with the user, I feel as if it was my mission to keep the user entertained for as long as I possibly can. I find that a very effective way of achieving this is to just add colour and texture to make it look as if there was blood involved (a rather generalized opinion, but still valid). I hadn’t realized this until I started studying design last year.

A few years ago, back in high school, I learned how to design websites using HTML language, and while most of the class just found it hard and boring, I was having fun doing the assignments as well as the homework. This was the first time that I realized that schoolwork could actually turn out to be interesting. After our websites were completed and the assignment was finished, I continued designing websites using HTML on my own. For this reason I made the choice of going to design school and developing my skills so I could work doing what I enjoy.

After taking DSDN 104 (Creative Coding), I saw a whole new world of programing, which includes several different programing languages, such as Processing, C++, Javascript, HTML 5, Flashscript, etc. And even though it involves a lot of logic and it is, in my opinion, very hard, the outcome of my work always makes it worth the while. So I have considered my options and I have decided that I want to be able to program and design mobile applications in the future.

DSDN 101 - Design Visualisation

Quote I got from the Helvetica film:

"You're always a child of your time, and you cannot step out of that."

I thought it was pretty cool how he used this analogy to explain that time changes the general design concept that is mostly accepted within the people that lived in a certain "time" (decade or more), and as design develops, most of those people still keep their same ideals.