The Tessellated Triangle Task

In honor of our fabulous Valentine's day, I decided to create a composition with the tessellated triangle shapes in the shape of a flower.

Using two different types of cardstock (basically one purple pearlescent sheet and one printed sheet), I created a tessellated flower shape with the printed piece at the center and the purple pearlescent shapes functioning as the flower petals, as per the instructions given on the UMA design class blog. I initially pasted the pieces onto a piece of 11"x14" paper, but found that my composition hung off the page slightly. Once the glue dried, I corrected this by cutting around the edges of the paper and pasted the composition onto a new piece of paper.

I chose the jagged edges to function as the hinge where the petals were attached to the center. This allowed the rounded flower-shaped edges to smooth out the outer edges of the composition (since flower petals are generally smooth).

Perspective!

Since we recently talked about perspective in class, and are currently working on it in greater detail in my drawing class, I thought that this little bit from the Wins section on FailBlog was very fitting.

http://wins.failblog.org/2011/02/08/epic-win-photos-perspective-win-2/

It's basically a picture of a room where, when photographed from the proper angle, appears to be taped in the room's entry frame in the shape of a rectangle with an X through it perfectly. But, when photographed straight on, you see that the tape is in entirely different locations in the space of the room behind it.

It's a fun reminder that things are not always the way we see them. :)

The Van de Graaf Canon Caper

The Concept
There's a few different shapes I love more than toast itself. Hearts are one of them. I decided to choose a simple heart-shaped pattern, with a few variations. The left design features a smaller set of hearts with the larger heart from the right hand side at a golden point, while the right design features the larger set of hearts all over.


The Process
First, I created the Van de Graaf canon on the papers, as per these instructions, and calculated the golden points using the unit squares method. Then, I had the major fun of trying to create a decent ink-holding stamp out of various materials I had scattered in my craft boxes. I found that cardboard by itself was no good at holding ink. I thought that maybe if I attached a cloth that could hold ink well to the cardboard I would achieve better results. I then hot-glued some felt scraps to cut pieces of cardboard, and stuck corn cob skewers into the tops of the cardboard pieces to make handling a bit less messy. Those cardboard pieces held ink like nothing else. Finally, I moved my paper to a safe place to dry, away from my psychotic cats (who use anything and everything as a bed).

 

The Concept

Simplicity reigns supreme here. I opted for a simple juxtaposition between vertical and horizontal in these images. The circles of jagged lines represent the golden points on these two pages. In hindsight, even though those were drawn as circles, I can definitely see how they could be construed as hexagons in both designs. 

The Process

I used the same methods mentioned previously to create the two page divisions and to calculate the golden points in each of these. Then, I measured and created the lines with roughly 1/4 inch separations in between them in pencil initially. I drew same sized circles around the golden points to create the area where I was going to divide the lines into those zigzags you see in the image. The zigzags were created and were the first areas to be drawn over in ink. After I inked those over, I drew over the lines very carefully in ink using my ruler as a guide.

Concept Music/Visual Art Crossover: Coheed and Cambria's "The Amory Wars" Saga

(The following is a pretty silly tale about how I think silly things about things and these silly things get turned around by other silly things. Although it was a fairly silly adventure, it was a life experience that, in the end, turned out to be more worthwhile than silly.)


My crazy fangirlism for progressive rock band Coheed and Cambria started in 2004, when one of my high school friends had introduced me to a variety of random music while I gave her rides home from work. At first I was completely put off by lead singer and mastermind Claudio Sanchez's unique singing voice and songwriting style, but then it started to grow on me. Yes, I became quite addicted to this music. I had never really felt any sort of attachment to anything fictional prior to this. Yet, this music, and the storyline within, held something of more significance than just words and sounds juxtaposed together into something recognizable.

I simply had to find out more.

One day, I decided to venture forth on an epic journey through the vast reaches of the Internet to gather more information on the wonders of the music of Coheed and Cambria. It was then I confirmed my suspicions about Coheed and Cambria's music. This music was more than just music; it was also the basis for a science-fiction storyline that was to be published as a series of comic books and novels.

Claudio Sanchez is a flipping genius, I thought to myself.

Prior to this I had never imagined anyone who could successfully translate a story, and more importantly a concept of a universe, from a musical-based format to a graphic-based one. (Of course, I was young then, and didn't understand the workings of the world. Maybe if I had a bit more imagination and like, thirty times more faith in the minds of modern artists...) The barriers that previously existed in my mind had shattered at that moment, and I would never look at music the same again.

From what I had gathered, each album corresponds to either a series of comics (for example, Second Stage Turbine Blade), or with a novel (Year of the Black Rainbow). I'm not going to bore anyone with the gritty details regarding the entire plot, but the musical, written, and graphic forms detail the trials of the Kilgannon family and the other denizens of the fictional universe of Heaven's Fence. It's an adventure that goes beyond the music and into the depths of the imagination. If you're looking for a different twist of science-fiction, you definitely won't regret checking this out.

If I've piqued anyone's curiosity, I'm fairly certain you can satisfy that by visiting:

http://theamorywars.com
http://coheedandcambria.com