Design Principles - Project 2

04/06/20 - 19/06/20 / Week 8 - Week 10

Ibrahim Fazal Ahmad / 0337423

Design Principles / Bachelor of Design (Hons) in Creative Media / Taylors University / Project 2 / Sense of Place

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For project 2, we have to do a piece based on a part of our house, or something we hold familiar and close to ourselves in our house. It could be a view from your window or a corner in your room. I was a little more confused on where to go for this piece because I'm not very used to draw landscapes and adding my own flair to it so it would be a newer experience. I ended up settling with my desk at home, I'm going to be moving from this home for good and this desk has so many knickknacks and memories from the 13 years I've lived here.

INSPIRATIONS:

Figure 1: Reference

Figure 1.1: Reference

Figure 1.2: Reference

Figure 1.3: Reference

I used these as my inspiration, I liked the very calm and melancholic vibe from these pieces. The colours were so pleasing to look at, very low contrast but also using complementary colours. I especially liked figure 1.1 for the angle and little ghosts around the main subject. I then took a few pictures of my room:

Figure 1.5: Room Reference

Figure 1.6: Room Reference

Figure 1.7: Room Reference

Figure 1.8: Room Reference

After using these pictures from my room and reference artworks I came up with this simple sketch of myself in my room:

Figure 1.9: Sketch

After sending this sketch to Ms Anis, it was good enough to proceed and to refine it down a bit more and add some details and experimenting with colour schemes. 

Figure 2: Colour Scheme 1

Figure 2.1: Colour Scheme 2

Figure 2.2: Colour Scheme 3

 Ms Anis said the Figure 2,1 (Colour Scheme 2) looks the most interesting and to add a gradient from dark to light (the dark being at the bottom and light at the top) I added a purple to orange gradient and used a blending layer to finish it off.

Figure 2.3: Final Colour Scheme + Gradient

After finishing the colour scheme and the gradient, I was able to continue adding details and shading on my own. I have a really colourful desk but I didn't want to ruin the atmosphere of the piece by adding bright colours in the back, so I toned everything down heavily. I also added a lot of details, such as lines on the wood and texture on the cork wall to really give it a realistic feel. Though it isn't meant to be extremely realistic.

Figure 2.4: Almost finished

Lastly, I added the 13 butterflies to signify my years of living in this house. I grew up in this house and since I'm leaving I felt butterflies would be appropriate because they are often used as a symbol of growth and moving on. 

Figure 2.5: Sense of Place Final Piece

REFLECTION: This was actually a pretty difficult assignment for me to work on, I was stuck for days just drawing on paper and staring at my desk not really sure what to do. I wanted to signify how I'm leaving the house but I also wanted to really capture a more calm and melancholic mood in the artwork. The experience in this project went from difficult to very fun once I got an idea I could roll with, once I finally landed on an idea I knew was good I had a really fun time working on this. It's a little emotional doing this piece to be honest, I'm extremely sad about leaving my home and being able to do this piece was like a final homage for when I go. I will always have the memory of my room through this piece in specific and will be reminded of the years that have passed by in this room. One observation I made was that a lot of artworks that involved desks or rooms often have very interesting angles or they have a very simple angle. Such as a direct view of the desk from the behind the person. A finding I made was that many artists use very melancholic colour schemes and low contrast to really change the mood of artwork. Overall I really really liked working on this, it ended up becoming one of my most unique and interesting pieces I have done.