Today in our first proper lecture given by Miss Lisa, we were given an overview of the elements of design and a few principles of visual aesthetics. She then showed us a few popular western art movements, such as Romanticism, Impressionism, Pop Art and even Graffiti (I was personally surprised that it's considered an art movement, since it's still so new!).
Which led us to our first assignment: "Design a self portrait based on an art movement that you feel represents you best". In about one and a half hours, we had to come up with an A3 sized portrait of ourselves using the things around us, and as Miss Lisa says, "free stuff".
The style I chose to best represent myself was Constructivism. It is an art movement that started in Russia in 1919 that mainly used on propaganda posters in the war. I like this style because it's simple and bold, yet elegant. I also like the use of minimal colours in this movement, since I consider myself to be a bit of a minimalist too.
Some examples of Constructivism:
Some preliminary sketches I made:
And the final portrait:
I decided to use the sketch in the lower right corner. The final image is a portrait of me in profile view. The methods I used are drawing, gluing, and a bit of collage (the white flower was paster on). I tried to be different and didn't use flowers or leaves picked from the campus like most of my classmates did, instead I borrowed my friends markers to colour it in. I tried to emulate Russian writing by using blocky letters and writing the letter "N" in my name reversed. I chose a yellow background because it represented my outlook on life, which is mostly positive. The flower pasted on my head there also symbolizes a form of happiness. My shirt in the portrait is light blue simply because it's my favourite colour, and in the bottom right corner I wrote "Foundation in Design", because that is basically what represents me now; a student studying Foundation in Design at Taylor's Lakeside.
In our presentation, we were also asked to state why we were studying design. My answer was because I was always interested in design after being exposed to it ever since I was small thanks to my dad (he was an architect, who then became a designer!), and I wanted to pursue something that I truly liked.
Well there you have it, my first assignment. Here's to more posts in the future! :]
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