16: My Art

Rebellihen

Rebellihen is a vibrant, creative design about a rebellious egg riding a motorcycle. This unique art style begins with the line quality: a thick, rough brush which adds a subtle texture to the drawing despite no patterned-textures. This is paired with the rough, dynamic and quirky shapes which makes it feel like a 'real' hand-drawn painting, only a little smoother - it's simplistic and stylistic. These lines and shapes are coloured vibrantly - emphasising the egg/chicken yellow colours, the lush grass, or the clear sky (and the little neon-blue eye - a reference to the indie game Undertale). It is composed simply with a rule-of-three layout and a horizontal-but-also-curved direction to hint at speed and wildness. These elements come together to create a lively, vibrant and story-creative piece of art.

Reach For Freedom

A design that puts focus on its metaphorical meaning. It is of different art style than Rebellihen, with its thin lines, distinct shapes - this line and shape style was chosen to suit the darker meaning that wanted to portray. While these distinct lines and shapes play a big role in the seriousness of the image (because thicker lines are associated with more light-hearted scenarios), the colour and arrangement team up to play another big portion. This artwork wanted to convey the idea of 'you being the only person who can, and have the opportunity to let yourself out of the cage' - so a sense of loneliness and emphasis on the person was needed. The sense of loneliness was created with the arrangement of the background: there's a great deal of negative space with the dark, unsaturated gradient background. This draws attention to the accent colours of white and gold in the foreground - the cage which appears to be in a lonely pocket of space - where the viewer will notice the person inside the cage (extra note: the cage has a figure of wings at the top symbolising freedom and release). Using the power of direction, the viewer will follow the person's eyes to see the small key lying down on the floor. A key, a cage with a person inside of it - they will ideally devise an interpretation along the lines of: freedom, letting yourself out of the cage, etc.)

Over The Mountaintop

A simplistic watercolour-pen digital design that works out as a sticker because of its compact composition. It uses thick lines that will stand out as a small object (a sticker), and the smoothness of them contrast well with the smoothness of the watercolour texture in the background. This smoothness is further carried on as the colours of the background are a monochromatic gradient: one that fades well into contrast with the muted yellow Sun and plain white and grey of the mountains. The arrangement makes sense, too: it's neat where the Sun is in the corner, and the mountains are centred and balance well with the sky. Over The Mountaintop is a clean, semi-minimalist design that suits any item that needs a simple composition, thus it would look the best as a sticker.

Kaori

A simplistic digital drawing that has its charm. It's in a similar art style to Rebellihen, where it uses thick, rough lines and is coloured with a solid colour. In terms of forms, I used an animated-style body shape for the girl: thin limbs, small face, long body, long hair. Her clothes were done to suit a satisfying balance: high-rise shirt and stockings with a crop shirt and tie - these proportions work to make her legs appear longer (making her appear taller, thinner on the legs - more satisfying body proportions). Additionally, she was made to pose in a carefree way to extrude her confidence. When it came to colouring, this was a quick drawing, so when it came to choices it was simple and intuitive. For example, colour choice was quick but effective, so the colour palette is monochromatic. Despite being a spontaneous drawing, it turned out to look well coloured, lined and proportioned - a simple but effective art.

Georgia (1993)

This was likely one my first designs that I felt proud of when it came to graphic design - Georgia (1993) is a contemporary informational poster about the Georgia typeface. The few dominating elements that stand out are: shapes, typography, colour and arrangement. Starting with the element that was prioritised first: typography and arrangement. The Georgia typeface title was placed based on the rule of three, and emphasis was used on the 'g' for two reasons: to highlight the unique 'g' shape that the typeface has, and to balance out with the right-skewed body text. The body text was also placed based on the the rule of three. Placed around the text was a number of minimalist and geometric shapes and symbols to fill the negative space. These shapes have a horizontal direction, which compliments the large amounts of text and its reading. In terms of colour, a modern colour scheme was used: one that utilises white and black, conveying some sort of balance and professionalism, as well as the complimentary light pink and blue to add accent colours - these accent colours denote a sort of elegance because of the brightness contrast. Overall a very elegant but contemporary design that utilises a fair balance of visual interest at every point of the design.