Inspiration

The first picture is from my inspiration folder on Pinterest, there I carefully select art that I really really like and that I could see myself incorporating in my style. This image reflects to me a patience and softness in lines that I would like to learn. I also tells a story in someway.

The second picture is a project I made by folding, cutting and then unfolding a piece of paper. I find the approach very different and the use of negative space truly interesting.

Name

Simple and fun first prompt, yet so many possibilities. I decided to use illustrator and push myself to learn more about the software. the theme of games has been with me for some semesters and I thought appropriate to incorporate it.

Editorial Risiko

From all the projects this one gave me most difficulties. I read the text countless times and understood what points of it I wanted to portray. The visualization of this prompt was clearly a one-page-comic for me but the elements to express this idea were very hard to find and to put into an illustration. Many times I thought that it could be the wrong medium but there was no more time to change plans. I would go out every day thinking about the text and in ways the main idea could be visualized in a simple illustration and write them down, at the end of the day they did not make sense anymore. I felt like this project would follow me forever, but I decided I would have to deal with the perfectionism and do at least one of the ideas…

Though I didnt finish it on time I will definitely keep working on it and load it on incom once it is finished. The illustration should remind the viewer of the classical tale of Little Red Riding Hood and how she behaves in a risky situation. In my illustration the idea is that Red ignores a stranger that warns her about the wolves in the woods and is in the end oblivious to the fact that her „granny“ is not who she thinks, being therefore a bigger risk.

I'll give Red a text bubble with the following dialogue:

„... So this stranger tried to talk to me about something with wolves in the woods but you know I don't like to talk with strangers.

...anyway Granny, you haven't touched your sandwich, are you not hungry?“

Buy Nothing Day

The first thing that came to me when I heard about „buy nothing day“ was of course consumerism and for me this goes hand in hand with images of United States propaganda from the 50's, when it seemed like resources were endless. So I approached this concept very simply by taking illustrations that already existed and putting some text in them. The end result resembled to todays memes and of course I wasn't very proud of taking someone else's work just like that. I came with another idea that resembled the art style without me having to learn to paint like that from scratch.

Open Project

This prompt was exciting but when one has too many possibilities it is specially hard to choose. So there was I struggling to find a good topic , something that I wanted to talk about, something were I wanted to put an opinion… but I couldn't concentrate, and in my search for news, discoveries, history and interesting topics it seemed that advertising was very aggressively trying to get my attention, purposefully distracting me at every chance, as „it is meant to be“. This was driving me absolutely crazy! AJÁ that is a topic I want to talk about; is this healthy advertising? what is this conglomeration of information doing to our cognitive functions? it definitely felt like some sort of abuse of our screen time. I know it is not world hunger or climate change but it was definitely something we don't talk enough about and I decided to make something about it. An interesting aspect I had not considered at the moment is how different is affects older generations in comparison to mine and after talking with my grandma I was way more convinced it was worth talking about this topic.

In my research I found many entries of people complaining about too much advertisement or asking if is there a thing such as  too much advertisement, but most interesting was this article from the Harvard Business Review that discussed a research and survey that looked into the relationship between happiness and advertising and how it makes us unhappy.

I was still thinking about vintage illustrations so I tried to visualize this „threat“ like a vintage movie poster and then I found a picture from Roy Lichtenstein which seemed appropriate for the feeling I wanted to convey.

Erschaffung eines Wesens

My approach for this prompt was different, I went in with a new energy and conviction a decided to go for a walk with a camera. In order to free my mind from distractions and allow myself to reflect and observe. I photographed mostly trees with personality and some figures formed by the branches. I also found some interestingly looking people that I would later redraw as a character. Even after this I was not so happy about the results and added some drawings and concepts into the mix. Too many ideas for the final presentation, the meeting made me realize that it doesn't help me polish one single idea till the end and I end up with many superficial concepts.

It is hard to think about non human characters.

I decided to finally allow myself to experiment for a bit and find a direction that I could really follow. I noticed how the pressure of time pushed me to decide on something on the spot and when I started working on it I would be filled with doubt and tried something different without giving a second thought. What I did at the and is different because I was consciously experimenting and finding out where it took me. This approach took a bit of extra time but also nudge me into a concentrated work environment. 

For the final piece I took some of the previous ideas I tried and some new inspiration. It was a mix of a fish and a humming bird that I first painted with acrylics. Because of the bad quality of the paper I decided to take it a step further and do it with a more geometrical style and collage.

Project: "Essen"

The inspiration for this project was a blog essay I found called „Cultural Appropriation and Gastronomic Colonialism“ by Ken Albala which talks about the history and journey of food and how it belongs to everybody because we achieved the results we have now working together, indirectly, maybe, but together.

My idea was to make a little collection Zines about ingredients and recipes and how they have very similar brothers and sisters around the world. I started with the plantain because I am very familiar with it and its recipes in Ecuador. The illustrations are all handmade with Gouache paints on watercolor paper and then retouched digitally.

Druckversion

Poster

Fazit

I loved this course in its concept, but it was really demanding. It always felt like Thursdays were sneaking up on me and I had no idea what to do for the prompt. There was a lot of pressure to be fresh and creative; this thought me the importance of sketching all the time, bringing constantly ideas and concepts into paper. I learned a lot of thing about myself and which areas I have to work on. The fact that I am not as pleased with my work and the time + effort I could have put in the making makes me want to work harder and better. I want to find a better work structure and rhythm, I am searching for the balance between serious work and fun so I can be more creative. 

Another factor that might have come into play was of course isolation, and even though we met to discuss the concepts I was lacking something very important: working together, discussing from cero, motivating and inspiring each other. I know for a fact that I am most creative, resourceful and driven when working alongside other creatives because of the atmosphere it creates, and I am really missing that. 

I don't know how the course would have been without the corona situation but I would like to see more coworking in the future if possible.