nathan p.

iterations

culture

i wanted to keep the cozy feel of all of my pieces going, so the idea of a picnic/viewing under a cherry/plum blossom tree (or ginkgo tree) at sunset inspired me to compile these images together as a basis for my final creation. i also wanted to incorporate things that made it feel more warm and cozy, like the sunset. i hope the final piece conveys that calm, comforting feeling that kind of drives my personal aesthetic overall.

theory

imaging: using technology to create a visual representation of a subject

for these iterations i wanted to originally create the entire piece from scratch using solely vectors, but ended up compiling some images to create a base guide for my final piece. this resulted in a completely new image representing what i combined the original images to look like.

empathy: the capacity to recognize emotions experienced by another being

i wanted to focus on the feeling of being at ease, or comfortable when looking a this piece. the idea of sitting under a beautiful tree and watching the sunset really projecting that cozy feeling one experiences when feeling safe or at peace.

creativity: the ability to purposefully bring something new into existence

although there are probably many images like my final piece out there, this one was a creative experience of making an art piece solely out of vectors. this was my first time making an entire piece (not including the aesthetics section) from vectors, so it really had me using my creative side (so many circles combined into complex shapes!!)

practice

photo collection and compilation complete 12/4; preliminary sketch completed 12/8; overall digital creation of vectors complete or fully complete by 12/18. began with compilation of images in photoshop, took the collage into procreate to create a sketch to work from. took the sketch into illustrator and began making vector image. started with the tree (took me so long) and petals falling. lots of pathfinding. so much merging. next worked on the hill, and then the gradient in background. also took forever, gradients suck, i now hate gradients. then moved on to the clouds, not too hard, just a lot of circle merging; inner glow took longer than it should have. finally worked on the two people, lots of everything above mentioned. used the pencil tool a decent amount... anyway, took a very long time, should've just done one iteration lol

feedback

some suggestions i received on my first iteration and sketch were to incorporate falling petals, sticking with my proposal of a warm earthy palette, and potentially adding a patterned background instead of the sunset/landscape if i bit off more than i could chew/if i end up getting frustrated with illustrator. i definitely planned to add falling petals so that was a very nice suggestion to hear from classmates. also, i wasn't sure whether to use a pastel palette to match the pink of the plum blossoms, or to stick with my aesthetic of an earth-toned palette. classmates suggested i stick with the warm, but i decided to do two artboards of the same image with both color palettes, and changing the tree from the cherry/plum blossom to a ginkgo for the second artboard.

aesthetics

inspiration

iterations

culture

i chose this digital creative because i wanted to try creating four little icons with the tools in illustrator. i wanted to do a japanese-snack themed set so i found this creator who had quite a bit of references and options!

i like the aesthetic of japanese culture and wanted to follow that aesthetic for my own creations. food is a big comfort for people, and i like to have a little emotional support drink here and there. this kind of fits into my aesthetic statement of having that cozy aspect to things, and the japanese bit plays into the idea of the cherry blossom trees blooming in the spring time.

theory

icon: sign that perceptually resembles the signified

this critical concept fits both my digital creative and my own work because it was somewhat the main focus of my creations altogether. i wanted to create a type of set of icons, so i used an open source icon website (flaticon) to find my digital creative! i looked on flaticon for japanese snack-themed icons and came across these skewer/senbei/snack icons shown above. i then chose some snacks that i personally like and decided to work on those for my own creations. i like the idea of simplifying the food down to minimal, flat colors to give them that emoji/icon style look that make them easily identifiable.

decode: audience’s ability to interpret and analyze meaning of a creative work

i feel that this concept fits because if the western audience is not familiar with these cultural snacks, they might not recognize what the icons represent. you might be able to surmise what the others are, based on the combination of the ramen and the cup of matcha, since they are more popular in western media.

practice

for these iterations i focused mainly on what i mentioned previously, the flat colors and simplification of the real world objects into emoji-style icons. my digital creative used minimal detailing, and kept the colors to a minimum, emphasizing the cartoonish aspect of the pieces. i tried to mimic this by starting with a base color for each individual shape/object, and then adding a second solid color sliver to the outer right edges of each. a difference between my digital creative's and my own work is the implementation of the patterned circles in my final iteration. for this i researched a popular japanese-style pattern that was very few shapes, and used that to make my own illustrator pattern. this pattern helped tie the icons together so they seem cohesive instead of just separate creations.

feedback

some feedback i received included adding more shading to the ramen bowl, as well as maybe adding plates underneath the snacks. i tried to add a few plates but i'm still not sure if they look right/ended up liking the illustrations better without them. i also had originally used an additional line on the bottom of the ramen bowl but i took it out because i felt it looked better without. someone also suggested i add some bubbles/foam to the top of the matcha to make it appear less flat but i think i spent a little too much time trying out the plate idea to incorporate this!

remediation

inspiration

iterations

culture

for my digital creative, aryasakti, i wanted to find someone who did anime-style illustrator artworks, as well as flat color illustrations. i went with this digital creative because they had a very large portfolio, lots of fully rendered images, lots of line work pieces, and also some outline portraits as well. a lot of their works have the '90s aesthetic to them which isn't necessarily my personal aesthetic, but i thought it would be nice to try something like that out in the future. i focused mostly on the flat color pieces from this artist to recreate my iteration of the coffee mugs above.

for my iterations, i am still sticking to that warm-palette, cozy home item feel that really encompasses my aesthetic. i have a multitude of coffee mugs at my house and i saw a lot of coffee-themed pieces in the hallway outside the classroom, so i wanted to incorporate that warm-cup feel into my iteration. i like to stick to natural tones as well so i kept on brand with my neutrals and warm reds for color selection.

theory

creativity: the ability to purposefully bring something new into existence

for my digital creative, aryasakti creates characters, as well as spaces and images that might not actually exist, therefore creating their own entities. they also create lots of stickers/logos/emojis/icons, which leads to innovative ideas for using these in other works.

for my own works, i like to keep things mostly realistic, but with a lot of entities that were previously present. my first few line art attempts i excluded some of the mugs (mostly because i was feeling the carpal tunnel kick in) and kept the ones i liked the most.

remediation: incorporation or representation of one medium in another medium

new media transform older media (and vice versa), Hypermediacy: constantly reminds viewer of medium

my digital creative for this portion makes a lot of photo-real creations which i liked about their work. they make a lot of portraits with illustrator, which mimics the older medium of photography. also, a lot of the flat color and icon creations remind me a lot of printmaking concepts.

i like printmaking so i wanted to do something flat color as opposed to the more photo-inspired creations. for my first line art and live paint iteration, i stuck to the idea of making a print with flat colors. for my remaining iterations, i wanted to make them look more photo-realistic and went with many more colors than compared to my flat color one.

practice

for my first iteration i focused mainly on outlining as many mugs as i could, as well as the wooden shelf behind them. i used a thicker stroke for the shelving and a slightly thinner one for the mugs and hooks attached to the wood.

for the second iteration, i used the sampled colors from the original image to live paint inside the mugs that i had done the line art for, and then removed the stroke entirely, to give it the flat color feel that aryasakti's flat color pieces have to them.

for the third and fourth iterations, i used the image trace function to get two different photo-realistic drawings of the original image. the sepia-toned image was the 3-color image trace selection that kept the brown coffee theme going throughout the whole creation. i went through and removed some vectors that i didn't like, and added the solid brown backdrop. i eventually got fed up with the colors and decided to do my fourth iteration instead. for the fourth iteration, i did the image trace function, but this time with i believe the 16-color option. i liked how this one ended up looking a lot more, so i spent more time getting rid of the background vectors to really isolate the subject of mugs and shelves. i wanted this one to have a transparent background so i had to make sure to go back through with the eraser tool to disconnect some portions of vectors from each other.

feedback

n/a

remix

inspiration

iterations

culture

for myth & remix, a lot of the work was going to be very prominent-subject focused, which i did not have a lot of in my archive. the digital artist i chose for this assignment is teddy tavan, who i found through pexels. teddy's work was very people/subject focused, and did minimal editing to the surroundings so they still had that realistic aspect to them, which i feel fit my own personal aesthetic.

i definitely went out of my comfort zone with myth & remix, as i typically don't like images that stray too far from reality. i liked how the warmth of the final iteration turned out, it fits my overall aesthetic palette and tones preferences. i also liked the umbrella being a splash of color to keep from everything getting too washed out. the vintage feel of the grain filter also has the aged-feel--similar to the brick's natural color wash--that fits my aesthetic when it comes to photography.

theory

remix culture: a tendency to copy, transform, and combine creations

for typical remix culture, the artist i chose--teddy--does minimal editing to his images while still making it known that they have been digitally edited. for some of his images, he adds gradient backgrounds, removes color from specific parts of images, and adds motion/brush overlays to add a subtle edited effect.

i ended up combining three separate elements to create my final iteration, which is a basic bit of remix culture itself. i took three separate artists' works and combined them to make one final piece. combining the subjects of these images and altering them while still retaining traces of the originals is the basis of remix culture.

connotation: cultural meanings associated with a word, object, image, sound, etc.

for my digital creative, teddy is based out of nairobi, kenya--lots of his images have subjects in culturally appropriate garments, as well as in the local cityscape/nature-scape. one can assume from his images that his subjects are representative of the local culture of his homeplace in nairobi based on their facepaint and dress. this can add emotion to his photographs as viewers will likely associate the subjects to their environment.

for my iteration, i chose the people as the main subject because of their very '90s forward attire, and overall "vibe" of the original image. i wanted to give the iteration that "vintage" feel that people associate with america/cities like new york in the '60s/'70s/'80s/'90s. the vintage/'90s culture itself has become more popular in recent times once again so i wanted to make that the apparent feature, which adding the orange-tone/sepia hue and grain overlay to mimic a film camera came into play.

practice

for iteration one, i originally began with an image of a cat and added a sort of rainbow-gradient background. it ended up not really fitting my aesthetic overall so i restarted with this image of the couple(?) in front of a store and cut that out, placing it over a similar green-and-black gradient background. the edges were a little tough to refine but i ended up using a filter in iteration two that helped smooth that out.

for iteration two, the image i had made still didn't quite fit my aesthetic since it seemed too unrealistic. i wanted to add an additional image in the background instead of just having a flat/solid/gradient color. the digital creative i chose had a few examples of a black and white background which drew focus to the colorful subjects, so i tried to recreate that in my second iteration. it still felt too empty with the background so i added a cutout of the umbrella. i also wanted to add some movement like the digital creative i referenced does, so i placed a motion blur on the edges of the people.

for the third iteration i took the suggestions from critique and recolored the brick background because it just ended up looking better overall. i also enlarged all the items overall to make the umbrella appear over the people's heads more. in addition, i added a drop shadow to the people and umbrella, and a grain/noise filter to give the image some more depth.

feedback

some suggestions during the critique that i received were: adding a shadow to the umbrella and people for depth, recoloring the bricks and flipping it so there would be less white space on the left of the image, swapping the umbrella to the left side, adding more of an orange tone to match the color of the original people image, moving the umbrella so it covers the people more that they stand under it, and making the people slightly translucent to appear 'ghastly'/'ghost-like'

the suggestions that i actually ended up making were adding the drop shadows, recoloring the bricks from black and white to their original coloring, moving the umbrella slightly and adding an overall orange tone to both the umbrella and bricks to match the coloring of the people's original image tone. i ended up liking a lot of these suggestions which is why i chose to apply so many of them; i think it really helped improve the overall composition.

myth

inspiration

iterations

culture

the digital artist i selected was lisa fotios; i found her photography through pexels. i chose this artist because her photographs are very clean, comforting, and have that slice-of-life aspect to them. she also has many images of nature and food, things that i feel bring a soothing and naturalistic energy to the photos. the homey-aspect of these photos relates to my personal aesthetic quite closely. also, her works often feature her cats which is a big added plus.

for my iterations i focused on an image from within a coffee shop filled with plants. a coffee shop in general is the basic ideation of my aesthetic as a whole. the comforting vibe, warmth of a latte, and fresh smell of nature in the plant dirt bring everything that my aesthetic is into one still place. lisa fotios has much of this natural-warming energy to her photographs, so i played on the idea of warmer tones while still keeping that cool green in the plants.

theory

compassion: the decision to act upon empathetic experiences to create solutions

i feel this concept fits the work of the artist i chose, as well as my iterations because i feel the images selected bring a positive action/emotion to them. pictures of flowers, coffee, nature, cats; all these things bring a sense of comfort, a fuzzy, happy feeling that i experience when i look at them. in my iteration, i tried to bring out the brightness of the greens in the coffee shop, because when it is sunny, i feel happy. that sense of happiness that can be conveyed through imagery, thus invoking that empathetic attitude of compassion.

denotation: literal meaning of a word, object, image, sound, etc.

the images i select tend to be simple, basic object representations. sometimes they have abstract ideas and feelings to them, but a lot of the time i enjoy them just because they are what they are, you get what you see. for my digital artist's works, subjects like flowers, cats, etc. for my iteration, greener plants, solid blocks of color. well lit spaces, bright colors. things that can be built up to make a whole, or can be simplistic and on their own.

practice

for my first iteration, i focused mainly on brightening the image and upping the saturation. the main effect feature i used was the gaussian blur, which created an oil-painted texture to the image. i then applied a layer mask to apply the blur filter to only the plants.

for my second iteration, i took the brick texture from another image and used it to apply a rough-wall to the background above the coffee counter. i also duplicated one of the hanging lights to fill in some of the blank space at the top of the image. finally, i used two fill-blocks and applied different overlays to them to create the palette-esque overlapping of squares that are predominant in the image.

feedback

for the feedback i received, amelia suggested i use the marquee tool to create a color palette for my image. i liked this suggestion a lot and played on it in my practice area. i wasn't left much more feedback than this as i was not in the class session for the actual feedback portion, but luckily amelia was kind enough to lend me a few minutes of her time!

archive

personal aesthetic statement

my personal aesthetic embraces golden hour or when day is at its brightest, capturing the soft glow that transforms the present moment into a canvas of warmth and tranquility. I find beauty in earth tones and nature, drawing inspiration from the serene elegance of cherry blossoms in Japan during springtime. my style is a blend of maximalist charm and cozy comfort, reflecting a love for homey spaces like a front porch where cats purr contentedly. It’s a celebration of life’s simple pleasures and the natural world, creating a sanctuary that feels both vibrant and soothing.