Procrastinator? I think not...

I'm usually a procrastinator. The whole "I work better under pressure" statement is usually my motto. But for the first time in I don't know how long, I did not procrastinate and I finished early. I usually still somehow end up finishing barely on time when I don't procrastinate because I start early and then linger and take my time and then I'm practically late. Does the lingering count as procrastinating. Let's just say it doesn't this one time. Anywhoooo... so last week I was able to finish my final project for the elements of design class. I went to class last week even though it was optional mostly because my TA scared us with a sort of threatening email in regards to going if we were at all unsure about our project and how we would be spared on grading. Luckily only 7 of us took it seriously so we got out early. Anyway, it turns out I didn't need to go to class and my teacher looked at me like I was sort of dumb for coming since I didn't really need any help, at least not in comparison to others. I guess it was sort of true but I did get reassurance. Anyway, here it is! It's a hanging art mobile that evolved from my sculpture project. I'm sort of excited over it. I sort of thought it was lame but I really enjoyed making it and sort of got into the concept of abstract art and what not. I really like that it spins. I'm actually thinking of keeping it around after my class. Besides the enjoyment of making it, getting carpal tunnel from cutting it, and only bleeding twice. I was super excited that I finished it last Thursday and it's not even due until tomorrow night. Usually I'm really working up until that point. Let's just hope nothing happens to it between now and tomorrow night.

Next up on the finals list is my design communication portfolio. So I finished my last homework yesterday and even managed to start putting my portfolio together. That sort of meant going back and re-doing and adding any final touches to past homework. I actually pushed through (and by that i mean work until 3am) and got a lot done last night. Then I finished it up today and since I had minor changes to the last homework, I was able to finish tonight. I had even planned on working on it a bit tomorrow morning but now I don't even have to do that. So proud of myself =) Anyway, getting to previous projects that I haven't updated the blog over:
This is week 7, an orthographic projection and elevation of a bedroom.
Week 8: One point perspective of one side of a bedroom. I actually re-did this project because I made a bunch of mistakes but this was essentially the project. I'm too lazy to photograph the final for my portfolio but essentially I failed to make a few things 3D... oops.
Week 9 was actually some 2 point perspective exercises that weren't too exciting so I'm not posting them. This was week 10 though. It's a 2 point perspective interior. I know... a bit bland. But for my final I added a few extra things in it. So lets just say this was the basic version.
This was week 11: a 2 point exterior. I finished this over the weekend and it was a pretty good end to the course. The only thing I reworked was that tree to the right. I thought it would be ok per the professor's instruction but it was suggested I make to more interesting than just a cutout.

So that's it! Tomorrow I take my portfolio for design communication to get reprinted so I can drop it off before my final presentation for elements of design. Yay! And portfolios aren't even due until 6/28. But I'm actually getting back from Chicago that day and I don't really want to lug all this stuff to Chicago to work on it and then mail it in. So yay for not procrastinating and yay I'm done! That means tomorrow I can actually take some time to clean my room and pack and just relax before I leave.

Update: Weeks 2-6 Elements of Design II Projects

So my elements of design class has been a huge struggle this quarter. It's really tested my creativity and pretty much confirmed I lack a lot of it. But luckily work can always be re-submitted so thankfully I won't be failing this class. Case in point, week 2's project below. So after planing with those folded notecards put together from week 1, we were to add a secondary material to our "sculpture." So I thought paperclips would be fun. Apparently not. I thought it looked okay at first but then class proved that I could have chosen something better. It just didn't go with the sculpture right.
So I went home after class about to cry and thought about it some more. Then I came up with jacks as a secondary material and it turned out soooo much better. I'm really excited because went I went to Target to find jacks, I thought I wouldn't be able to find them and then I was surely screwed but luckily I found some in the party section and they were perfect because they were all the same color.
So week 3 was to create a drawing of the sculpture with the secondary material. We could do it any way we wanted as long as it tied to our project. I knewww everyone in our class would go abstract (and I was practically correct) but I'm really not an abstract sort of person so I went with a literal translation and my teacher loved it. It's graphite pencil with gauche (paint) on bristol paper. So that made me happy.
For the week after our homework was to create a 3D cube and tetrahedron. Yeah, I was like wth is a tetrahedron as well. Well, a cube is a six sided square so then a tetrahedron is a four sided triangle (ohhhh). Then the week after we were to create two sculptures using one piece of paper and making cuts and folds to it but no pieces of paper were to be removed or added. So essentially I should be able to undo-it and it would go back to one piece of paper. So this is what I came up with.
My second sculpture was not good so I'm not posting it. It was ok but needed help. I think I'm abandoning it so I'll have to redo it sometime this week. But this is what I'll be using for my final project. Last week we turned in a few sketch ideas for our final and someone suggested what will be my final project but for now it'll be a secret. I'll be honest and say that I'm only sort of excited for it. It's not a chandelier, and as cool as that would be, a few other people are doing chandeliers and no one's doing what I'm doing (not to say no one ever has so don't get too excited). Oh I can probably say what the final is supposed to be, it's a model based off our sculpture. Most people turn it into a building or a sculpture for a park and make a model out of foam board but I'm doing something a little different. No foam board for me. Guess I should get excited for it (I sort of am but I have "it's almost summer even though I'll have summer school"-itis)

Second Quarter in Full Swing!

I'm deep in week two and loving it. Thought it was going to be more overwhelming but it hasn't been too bad so far. Here's a few pics from week one of my design communication class. Nothing too crazy. It's the first of three classes for architectural drafting essentially. Plus working on my artistic sketching ability.
It's all about the basics! This was just a piece on line quality in regards to light to dark weights and having good printing skills. Nothing crazy.

OK so I'm really not much of an artist. I was decent as a child, occasionally doing well in art class but I really haven't drawn much since I was oh, 10? So we had to do self portraits. I used a technique learned last quarter in elements of design to draw myself from a picture. I wouldn't consider it cheating but I would say rather it made me use more of the left side of my brain to create the picture side the right side of my brain is somewhat inadequate in comparison to others. Let's just say I hope I look better in person =). But my professor was pleased and had only a few remarks in regards to bettering it.

For my elements of design II class, we're focusing on 3D whereas last quarter was 2D work. So for project 1 we played around with some note cards and explored the beauty of folds. Essentially we made four groups of three cards: each card in the group having one fold in the first card, two folds in the second card, and three folds in the third card. Then we played around with the cards and took pictures of them from different angles. It's a bit complicated to describe but really simple to do. So instead of showing you all 57 pictures, I'll just show you one.
This was from the last group of pictures where we glued the three cards together in an interesting way and then did the same exact thing to two other sets and put them together to create this cute little sculpture. So my next few projects build upon this project which I'm sort of excited for. I was a bit intimidated the first day when our teacher showed up portfolios of the projects we will be doing this quarter. But I'm also excited because I know completing these projects successfully will feel really good too. =)

It's over!

What's over? My so-called life (omg do you remember that show? I was really little but I sort of do)? No. My relationship with boyfriend? No. My blog? It seems like it but no. My first quarter of interior architecture school? YES! I was beginning myself to not be sure if I'd make it. The last few weeks were really straining and I was just so emotionally tired and then busy with trying to finish up strong while making trips out to Chicago that I never really got to update the blog regarding my projects. So on my last day of Spring Break (I didn't really get a full week off. I finished last week and got like 3 days off) I vowed to update the blog on my last works while trying to download all my online lectures and what-not.

So this is my first project 5 on pattern. I say first because inevitably I will have to revise it. At this point I was really drained over school and just feeling like I didn't know what I wanted to do. Not feeling super inspired as others. And my first time working with gouache (as well as color for the class in general since everything up til now was black and white, well graphite pencil and black and white). Anyway, so basically the design problem was creating a pattern than would vary to create movement. I had to use a total of 4 colors, each design using only 3 colors. My original design did not pan out and since I was a little bit on a time crunch I just went with overlapping the pattern. My overlaps weren't drastic enough to create an effect and my color palette choice was fairly poor. But since I was on that time crunch again, I didn't have time for a re-do and was just banking on the ability to do a revise.
So after enduring the critique and feeling like a failure (OK i got a B but that was unacceptable to me), I went back and re-did the project using the same concept but varied the size rather than trying to go back to that overlapping thing. So below is the revised design. Sorry all these pictures were taken quickly for my sketchbook and its a little difficult to see the third color in the top design. Anyway, so I went with a purple, blue and gray for the top and yellow, blue and gray for the bottom. Switching the purple for the yellow really makes an impact on brightening the blue and gray which were the same colors up top, but seem different because the yellow is so much brighter/warmer than the purple. So revised mission accomplished (hehe) and I can continue living with an A.


I had similar issues with my Project 6, Four in One tile, which was also my final project. It seemed so easy, but really... not. Ok so the premise of make four different individual tiles, and connect them with a center tile/motif to create on tile that evokes a different design. So my first issue with this one was what the heck do I draw. I had taken inspiration pictures and my sketches were a bit more literal until she said not to be so literal so I kind of went back to this project for inspiration on how to do it. I wish I had learned a bit more from my color mistakes as during my critique, that was really my issue. I had a few ideas while I was actually doing the project and I think I just got a little crazy with trying to use so many different colors and it ruined my project. What I thought would be good color ideas just didn't come through and of course my time crunch was worse this time as I finished my project an hour before class but it needed to be mounted on mat board and then I had to do the write up in my car 20 minutes before class started (hmm some habits never die?). But luckily the design concept was so strong that it got me an A- despite the color choices which weren't horrible, just could have been better. Also, that star motif in the middle probably could have been bigger or maybe just more bolder to connect time stronger. Anyway, the final design:


And now on to my fundamentals class. For the final project we had to choice an architect/interior designer and write a paper on them and present a design inspiration board with a 2 minute speech. I decided to do Dorothy Draper (too bad so did like 6 other girls but that just made it much easier to present since the class had already heard it). She was really fascinating as she was the first person (and woman!) to professionalize interior decorating. She had fabulous style and loved using color and big bold furniture and prints.So below is the presentation board I made. The background is fabric that I thought she would use and the pictures are of hotels she has designed as well as furniture still produced today that she designed. Hopefully I end up with a good grade =)
So I survived my first quarter and I really am proud of myself. This was a really big change for me and something I wasn't too sure I could do. Hope I'm ready for next quarter!

Week/Weekend Recap

Sadly, I'm dragging myself to do this post. If I'm going to continue to procrastinate writing my paper, I might as well update my blog. I could this as being productive. So to recap my week I finished that design project with the magazine image. Here's the final product:

Not too bad. I was feeling really eh about it going into class. The drive up all I could think about was how much work it needed more and even if I had the time I feel like I couldn't do it. I just had a huge debbie downer moment over it. I was really happy with how some parts went but really unhappy with other parts. The point of the project wasn't to perfectly draw the image but more the get the graphite tones that correspond to the image correctl so that the colored image became a black and white photo (not drawing because those are 2D and we still wanted that 3D quality) which I guess I felt I did for the most part. So before critiques started my classmates were extremely impressed by my art work and even asked if I had art experience which really turned the night around. My critique wasn't too bad and I suppose I fared better than a lot of the class who had fabulous drawings but needed to majorly work on darkening their shading to give areas more of a 3D look, etc. I felt emotionally drained over this project so the rest of the week went really slow.

But last night was pretty much the highlight of my week. Urban Family dinner! Minus boyfriend for the first time. So once a month a few of us get together for dinner. It's always been with boyfriend, his old female dormmate and her boyfriend now fiance (!), his old female roommate, and various other guests we would bring along. Tonight's guest was fiance's friend! He was a fun addition and I hope he comes to more dinners... provided the girlies didn't scare him away. This was my first family dinner without boyfriend and first for the officially engaged couple which mad me a bit sad and made me miss boyfriend that much more. Weekends are hard with him being gone and I somehow manage to sadden myself each week and get just a bit teary-eyed (or more), but I know how important this is for him and want him to be there. Just wish it didn't involve him being in foreign countries, lying on beaches and sightseeing without me. IS THAT SO MUCH TO ASK? =) Anyway, on to our yummy dinner!
Kimchi pork, side dishes, and sauces galore! So delish!
Cooking the meat ourselves! Korean barbeque may be my most favorite food ever, but it's even better when you're eating with family. Because of the love and joy experienced? Yes, I suppose but really it's because we can then order more things (I'm a horrible person sometimes).

After we decided to do a little drinking at home and that meant also playing some video games so that the boys could have fun too... OK I had fun too (except when I'd lose). =)

Boyfriend's old roommate is one of the most amazing bakers ever! And I'm so glad to know her because then I get yummy treats when I see her. Like these:

Pumpkin scones! So delish. The glaze.. yummmmm and the scone... *drool*. I happen to love scones and these were exceptionally fabulous, very moist (for scones at least)! They even came in the most adorable box too. I'm going to be so fat after this weekend.

What's on the agenda for next week? My fundamentals paper on good design/bad design. Beginning Project 5 for design. I started it a bit since it involves looking for patterns but I will have to a little more work before any sneak previews.

One thing I'm looking forward to are boyfriend's next project is in the states! Things can always change last minute and he doesn't have specific instructions but hopefully they'll land him in norcal and that will be a super easy visit for both of us! Also, his PTO days in April were approved so we'll be in Sonoma one weekend and hopefully somewhere else (but maybe just Chicago) the last week for our 4 year!

Design Week 3

The second project for my design class relates to shape integration and exploring figure/ground relationships, positive and negative space, integration and equivocal space. I thought this project was going to be a bit easier than the first project because she demonstrated most of the project in class and we had a step by step instruction sheet. But it turned out harder in the sense it was difficult to execute. There was actually a lot of thought that had to go into the planning because you couldn't really just "go with it" since it had to achieve certain ideas.

So the first thing I did was choose a serif letter (letters that have feet, except i ended up cutting mine off so you have to give me the benefit of the doubt that it is a serif letter - my teacher did at least) and enlarge it to 10". Then I arranged and traced the letter onto a 6"x9" black piece of paper and cut it out and place it on a 6"x9" piece of bristol paper in the same orientation as it was on the black paper to get the panel 1(left). For panel 2 (right), I took the left over black pieces from the black paper that I cut the letter out of and cemented it to another piece of bristol, ensuring each piece retained its original shape (ie didn't overlap and create a new shape). This was hard because I had to think about how this arrangement would affect panel 3. If I didn't do it right, I wouldn't be able to show the right shape relationships.

To begin panel 3 I traced panel 1 and panel 2 onto the same piece of tracing paper. Looking at the composite (the traced panels), I determined which areas I would make white, black, light grey and dark grey to determine the shape relationships: interpenetration (transparent), overlap, and division.
To create panel 3, I used black, light grey and dark grey cover stock (its like construction paper) and trimmed each piece to the composite pieces. Each piece was cut individually and pieced together like a puzzle to look like panel 1 and panel 2 essentially overlapped each other.
And this is the final result on mat board. Panel 1 demonstrates figure/ground with a black figure on white background. Panel 2 is a figure/ground reversal in which you either see white on black or black on white (I always tend to see black on white but its fairly equal here). Panel 3 is equivocal in which its fairly ambiguous which is the figure and the background. It also demonstrates the shape relationships mentioned above. Can you see them?

BTW last week's project got and A and so did this one! Yay me! I'm not trying to brag but I'm just excited because I was sure I'd be so bad at this class.

Another rainy day and projects!

It's another rainy day in Orange County. 4 days of it and there's still another day to go. I actually enjoy it and find it nice since I'm indoors anyway. I could just do without the tornado and flood warnings. I know.. tornadoes? What are those? I can tell you about earthquakes and maybe about the tsunami signs (since I live be the beach), but tornadoes? Not so much. Anyway, here's the stuffed dachshund looking at the rain. The real one does the same thing but almost refuses to pose for pictures so this is her substitute that I bought in Hong Kong. I guess you could consider it the cheap knock off version of the real thing. Hehe.

So this week I've been working on my first Design 1 project. We had to design a piece using implied and inscribed lines to show disorder and chaos. The first thing I learned with this project is that I am not a very good artist. I also learned I over think things.
So here's the sketch preperation for my project. Exploring the use of different sized graphite pencils and black pens.

Exploration of graphite sticks. Similar to the pencils, just thicker.

Exploring ideas for my first project. I had no idea what I was doing.

These sketches are a bit better. My teacher thought the first sketch had potential but needed more emphasis on order and chaos so I worked it a bit more.


We also had to do a little research of artist's uses of line. I chose this piece by Picasso. Hopefully I was able to interpret his use of line ok.

Here is the final piece. It starts with an H graphite pencil and then moves to 2B, 4B, 6B, and then a 4B graphite stick. Hopefully you can see the movement of order to disorder.

Here's a preview of my color analysis project for my interior design class. It's only a preview because that's as far as I've gotten. =)