VISUAL RESEARCH
The first stage of this project was documentation of ordinary environments and scenes in our daily lives. I took photos, made rubbings, drew, and collected for my documentation. I then reviewed all of my visual research and located the color that occurred the least since the focus of this project is the overlooked and hidden.
BRAINSTORMING
After picking the blue color from one of the photos, I started writing down everything the color reminded me of and all of its associations. Since the photo was a graveyard and had a “dead end” sign, I played off of the death and sadness vibes when coming up with my idea. I made some sketches trying to explore different directions, but I had trouble picking just one, so I decided to make all of them on a small scale.
PLANNING & SKETCHES
I measured all of the boxes so that I could have proper dimensions to create the digital artwork. I made practice sketches to plan what I could put on each of the boxes. I drew from my brainstorming ideas to create each box. I cut out some of my sketches and glued them onto the boxes like a collage.
FINAL PROJECT
I chose to use vertical skinny boxes to represent tombstones, and all together, the piece represents a graveyard. This is a reference to the original image where I took the blue color from, which was a “dead end” sign next to a graveyard. All of the boxes have blue imagery referencing sadness, death, or a dead end. I looked up the color code for blue pen ink to get the right shade of blue for my digital drawings.
BOX NO.1
The writing on this box is a poem written by Billy Collins titled “The Art of Drowning.” I typed it out in a cursive font as the background of the box pattern so that it was still present but not the main focus of the box. I drew the girl in blue pen drowning to reflect the poem and the theme of death. The photographs and film strips represent life flashing before your eyes, which is mentioned in the poem. The film strips also represent seaweed, as the girl is drowning underwater.
BOX NO.2
I created a water drop pattern on Adobe Illustrator and printed it out to represent rain. I cut out drawings of clouds and glued them onto the box as a collage. I drew a person in blue pen in my sketchbook with clouds for eyes and rain for tears to echo the pattern on the box, and I cut the drawing out of my sketchbook to add to the box.
BOX NO.3
I drew a dying rose in pen. I then created a version of the same drawing in Illustrator. I also scanned the drawing and turned it into solid blue. I cut them all out and glued them to the box. I kept them all at the same size.
BOX NO.4 & NO.5
I created a water drop on Adobe Illustrator that I used for the basis of my other patterns. I also created a gradient water drop pattern for the back of the box. The water is from the blue color, but it can also be sadness and tears. The box to the right is completely covered in a variation of the water drop pattern.
BOX NO.6
I made multiple color and sizes of the same standing figure, and then Printed them out. I drew cliffs on the box with blue pen and then glued on all of the figures individually. The differences in color and size represent atmospheric perspective. The “Dead End” sign shows how all of the figures are trapped. On the other side of the box, I took a photo of a maze and turned it blue. and black. I also added the words “Dead End” again to emphasize how you can get trapped in a maze because there are so many dead ends.
BOX NO.7
The front of the box is the actual picture where the blue color originated. I turned the entire photo blue using Photoshop. The back of the box repeats “Dead End” over and over with different font colors and sizes.
BOX NO.8
The final box is all drawn in blue pen. The drawing is a tombstone that has become overgrown with weeds and wines. Just how this project focuses on colors that are overlooked and forgotten, this tombstone has become forgotten and overlooked. I purposefully made it small as a hint that all of the boxes collectively represent tombstones in a graveyard.
