At the beginning of October 2018, I started my second module of freshman year at Cornish, called Image and Text. This module's theme was as it sounds; we explored the many relationships between image and text, not just in art but in the world. To my surprise, we spent most of the first two weeks practicing making letterforms and learning the beginnings of Illustrator. Each week we had a small exercise due. We had to write our name with two pencils rubberbanded together as the most straightforward method for drawing bubble letters for the first one. We took our bubble-lettered name and scanned it into Illustrator. We would trace and track the lines of the drawing into one complete digital outline of the name.
Then we started our image collection assignment; we had to take 75 photos. Some were representing things that are important in our lives. Some were images we liked aesthetically. Some were of the images that nicely incorporate text. Some would be sticky notes with words that describe/represent you somehow. This assignment was significantly loose and didn't feel like a proper project. Still, I got to go out with my camera and take pictures of things I usually wouldn't or pay attention to. I also took this opportunity to take my first long exposure picture of the Seattle skyline at night from my friend's apartment the night before it was due. That night I learned the painful realities of corrupted raw image files and retaking the same difficult to achieve photo for hours. The final result was still a little blurry. After all, I didn't have a tripod, so I heavily relied on the ledge to hold my camera correctly. The next day we brought contact sheets with our images to cut up and play a game. We would make accurate groupings of our images with the words we chose to represent ourselves with. The game felt like a pointless conclusion to all this work, in my opinion, but I'm still glad we did the project, and I got some new perspective from the project.
Below is a slideshow of my image collection contact sheets:
Below is my best long exposure photo:
The second weekly exercise was to take black and white sheets of paper and play with positive-negative space to create letterforms through cutouts. We were supposed to put our letters on the wall with everyone else's to make a crossword of words. I made a P, I, and two Z's to make the word "pizza" with someone else's A. In week three, we had to make our alphabet on Illustrator with the shape tool, which was the most complex and annoying to figure out the weekly exercises. I'm not as proud of this one, as it was pretty rushed. The fourth exercise was to write something in a creative font and overlay it into a picture with photoshop. For this one, I chose one of my old pictures from the beach at Seaside Oregon of seaweed that washed up on the sand in the shape of a heart. I had been practicing my Hebrew writing lately. I thought a modified version of the word beach in Hebrew could look fantastic and be more interesting than just making another font. I like adding Hebrew to pieces because it adds an element that represents me to a piece. Since it is also seldom understood by everyone who reads it, it adds an aspect of mystery. The final weekly exercise was to create a monogram icon in Illustrator. This icon was supposed to represent us in a minimal and efficient image. I was screwing around in my sketchbook, and I drew a Hebrew "B" and then turned to the bottom stroke of the letter into a fish fin and drew a fish under the letter. This representing my love for sea creatures and animals in general. I kept it black and white and played with simplistic shading by way of shapes.
All the exercises are at the top:
Our next project was to make a decorative monogram with the initials of our names intertwined. We also needed to blend them into what we drew so the letters would be barely noticeable. We would be turning the monograms into prints by way of plastic plate etching. My initials are "BW," I drew the middle arch of the W coming through the bottom hole of the B. With the shape backward that made my initial starting place, I thought the W made a good base for the shape of a Hamsa Hand, so I went with that idea. The Hamsa Hand is a symbol in different religions and primarily middle eastern cultures that represent the hand of God as a symbol of protection. This symbol became essential to me through the Sephardic Jewish side of my family. They are usually beautiful and elaborately designed; some even tell a story, making them fun and meaningful to create. At the time, I had never drawn one before, but I was excited to try it. I drew an eye near the bottom of the palm, which is often included on a Hamsa Hand. I made the top hole in the B a sun with a small crescent moon in the middle and drew random intricate patterns to fill up the surrounding space. I wish, looking back now, that I had added more detail to the sun and moon or some more shading. Still, it was my first plate, and I was afraid of messing it up by adding anything besides hard lines. I decided to print the plate in blue because it's my favorite color. We only made one print each which is odd now, having taken print classes where I was required to make at least four for each project. The whole point and beauty of printmaking are making multiple prints, but my first and only print of that plate turned out well.
Above is a picture of the final print:
The plates we were given were shaved down at an angle on each side, creating the thick outline you see around the image. This technique is done so that when the press rolls over the plate, it creates grail pressure because sudden pressure can cause the plate to move or the paper to rip.
Finally, the last two weeks of the class were dedicated to making a book cover. In our anthropology class, our final paper was to write an autoethnography about something in our lives that we do every day. Autoethnography is a research paper structured around the author's personal experiences connecting the facts to broader cultural conclusions. I decided to write mine about makeup and beauty standards in the U.S. I come from a family of women that wore makeup pretty regularly. I learned a lot from them, especially with my grandma and aunt, who had gone to beauty school. I modeled and followed fashion and beauty trends; I wanted to be just like these beautiful, confident women. Doing your makeup also has an artistic element, allowing me to "paint" and "draw" on my face each day. However, in my paper, I mainly addressed the insecurities behind my makeup routine, and how for most of that time, I would wear makeup because I felt I needed to. It wasn't until recent years that I started wearing it to have fun and feel confident for the right reasons. The book cover project was to make a book cover for our papers as if they were full fletched books. From my painful experiences working with Illustrator, I knew that I would want to take an approach that would allow me to do everything mainly by hand. I started by going to this book store by Pike Place, looking for inspiration. I found this section of books related to my research topic and bought a couple, but one book I bought would be the main driving force of my project. A book called "Me, My Hair, and I" was autoethnography in itself about 27 different women and their personal stories about the relationships they have with their hair. They are asked to reflect on their obsessions with their hair and the cultural connotations that built that obsession.
I definitely recommend this book to any interested in this subject. I decided to take large artboards and cut up this book into small sections of my favorite excerpts from the book. I collaged the excerpts together to make the background for my book cover images. I created a self-portrait with makeup using mainly Sumi ink and some watercolor pencils for the front. I decided on the title of "The Painted Mask" since I would mainly use makeup to cover up all the things I didn't like about my appearance for many years. I wanted my face and what was "natural" about me to appear as black and white and understated. While all pops of color represent the makeup, I'm putting on my face to bring more color to my appearance. I had my hair wave off into the corner, creating a chunk of the board that was solid black. This section was a perfect place to put the title on Illustrator using a font that looks like chalk or a lightly loaded paintbrush. We were supposed to include an excerpt from our paper for the back cover, so I needed a blacked-out section to showcase that excerpt the way I did on the front cover. I drew two closed eyes with colorful makeup in the style that I would apply to my face, also using Sumi ink and watercolor pencil. I had the ink from the eyeliner and mascara portion of the makeup look like it was dripping down as it would if I was crying. I was having it pool down into this drippy black blob where I put in the excerpt on Illustrator.
I just used my opening paragraph for my excerpt, which was pretty concise and featured my hook and thesis. I made a third smaller artboard last where I designed the art for the spine of the cover and the inner flaps. I just did another black blob that looked painted and a solid black rectangle at the bottom for the spine. The rectangle on the bottom featured my monogram icon from the fifth weekly exercise as a publishing stamp. I drew a Sumi ink makeup brush for one inner flap, and for the other, I drew a Sumi ink and watercolor pencil lipstick. To finish the cover and bring it all together, I scanned each of the artboards into Illustrator. I added my text and resized the elements to fit an old journal because we had to display the final product on an actual book for critique. I enjoyed this project and was, for the most part, happy with how the final product turned out. This module helped me experiment with Illustrator, which no longer felt so intimidating to use. I was happy that I figured out good ways to blend my love for handcrafted into digital art and design, opening many new possibilities into my work.
Above are my final pictures of the book cover printed and in use:
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