Category: Student Posts

(This is theoretically not a sketch–I used paint because I thought it works better for creating a sky–I hope it’s not breaking the rule)

My inspiration of this assignment came from the breakfast I had this morning. I tried the neon-looking pickled radish on the plate alone with the rest of my breakfast items and I ABSOLUTELY hated it (I’ve had it for dinner and it was fine). I wanted my “Sunday Sketch” to be related to this slice of pickled-radish because it symbolized a terrible start of my Sunday. My initial thought was to paint an ordinary sky with the radish on top representing the sun, but then I had a better idea: painting a night sky and let the radish represents the moon, which symbolizes nighttime/dinner, instead of the sun, which symbolizes daytime/breakfast. The message I was trying to deliver here is that pickled radish tastes better when being eaten at dinner, but definitely not breakfast.

I had a lot of fun with coming up with this idea and during the process of creating the background. The only thing I am worrying about is that the item I’m trying to incorporate into the drawing being too simple and boring because it is supposed to be the star of the show and harmonizes with the sketch.

My roommate recently got sick. Therefore, when I was hunting down something small enough to fit in an A4 paper to create an illustration, a thermometer popped into my sight. The idea that pulling out the old school thermometer from its case is similar to pulling the sword from its sheath has been in my mind since I was young.

With this idea in my mind, I searched illustrations online, try to mimic its stance on the paper. Finally, I referred to the image below. Unable to find an ideal color pencil to create the blending effect, I tried to use the eyebrow pencil. Playing the make-up on a piece of paper instead of a face is a novel experience. Though the final illusion is not as good as I expected, creating “Sunday Sketches” is still enjoyable, which encourages me to think more creatively about the rather everyday stuff in life.

Reference: http://www.sucaidaren.com/sucai/4263787.html

The process of creating my “Sunday sketch” was not as easy as I originally imagined. I began the process of choosing what I was going to use by going into my room and looking through each of my drawers and objects on my desk. After a few minutes, I found a box of thumbtacks and knew it would work well as a three-dimensional object with paper. I took out one thumbtack and placed it in the sheet of paper at different angles until I thought of an idea. The thumbtack is shaped very similar to a beach umbrella, so I turned the thumbtack into an umbrella. People use these umbrellas at the beach to block out the sun, so I recreated a scene on the beach during a hot summer afternoon. The sun is behind the thumbtack so the person is protected from the sun by the umbrella. In front of the chair is a starfish and a sand bucket placed on top of the sand so people can make sand castles. The man is looking out at the ocean in the distance which is represented by the blue lines. In the ocean there is a sailboat and there are fish swimming.

I enjoyed this sidequest assignment because it forced me to be creative and consider all options around me. Although my drawing turned out to be much larger than I expected, it ended up looking just as good as I pictured. My drawing skills are very weak, so being able to teach myself how to draw a beach chair, a sailboat, and all of the other objects was challenging. However, I am very proud of the final result and the decision I made to use the thumbtack as a beach umbrella above a beach chair.

Link to post: https://eng101s20.davidmorgen.org/quests/side-quests/side-quest-5-sunday-sketches/

Although I have seen fireworks many times and have heard the sounds of explosions from my house, I have only gone once to a place where people see fireworks. Fireworks are called as 花火 (pronounced as Hanabi) in Japanese, meaning fire flowers. In this quest, I drew out a group of people standing on a sandy beach, watching fireworks. Instead of drawing fireworks, I placed artificial flowers to show the beauty of fireworks. After taking a photo of the art piece, I understood the reason why Japanese ancestors named fireworks as fire flowers. In real fireworks, viewers, with excitement and hope, wait until the powder to explode. However, the beautiful explosion does not last long; it just disappears in the sky in a few seconds. Flowers prepare many months just to bloom for a month or two. Then, they just become wilted forever. This way of life may have reminded the Japanese of fireworks.

#sq5

My little valentine monkey

I was sitting in the living room, scrolling through the various “Sunday Sketches” by Christopher Niemann. After the tiny valentine’s party at my brother’s preschool, he came back with plastic hearts and confections galore. Some leftovers were in his tiny hands, and he excitedly gave me a heart-shaped capsule.

Some ideas I came up with was a peach, an apple or some fish, but I went with the most obvious : the butt. The gorilla headphones combo photo by Christopher Niemann actually inspired me of the mammal and I knew that the baboon would have the largest butt to fit this heart capsule. After looking through some reference photos, I settled on this one, because I was not familiar with the anatomy of a baboon.

I then applied some markers and pencil to add color. Truthfully, I wanted to draw the baboon in a more stylized, simplified style with marker, but I decided it would not look good. The marker around the baboon was added for color. I also put a filter on the photo, because I did not like the white, neutral sheen of the paper.

Reference photo: “Baboon Butt” by Thegillman9 https://imgur.com/gallery/hxhZSLd

LINK TO PROMPT SQ5: https://eng101s20.davidmorgen.org/quests/side-quests/side-quest-5-sunday-sketches/

As you can see, I decided to combine a pair of scissors and a few red peppers together for my combo photo. When I first started the assignment and started looking for images, I had little idea of what I wanted to do and I knew the CC options for images were limited, so I went with the easier idea of looking up images of buildings with a plan to add some goofy figure on top of the building. However, I decided that would be too easy to accomplish, so I started thinking of more unique ways I could combine things. After a bit of thinking I got the idea of combining scissors with a pair of things that extended outwards, matching the shape of scissors. I found a pair of red scissors I though worked well, so I came up with the idea that red peppers would be a perfect match. After a bit of searching, I found a pair of peppers that were somewhat skinny and extended outward just like I wanted.

Once I had my images, using pixlr wasn’t too difficult. The main difficulty was in the beginning figuring out how to add a 2nd image by using the layering option. Every time I had an issue I couldn’t figure out (such as cutting out the peppers or stretching them out) I would struggle for a few minutes before simply looking up how to do it on Google, which never failed me.

The image turned out alright in my opinion. I thought my combination was an interesting concept I just don’t think I executed it very well: it looks a little bit off to me. I think most of this “offness” is due to the images I picked; the pixels for the pepper are much more crisp while the background of the scissors is blurry. I think the final image conveys a flawed, yet imaginative image nonetheless.

I chose the two images I combined because I originally wanted to do something with birds turning into dinosaurs because they share a common ancestry. At first, I was thinking about maybe combining a bird claw with a dinosaur hand, but that didn’t seem like it would follow the same style as Atlanta artist Stephen Mcmennamy’s “combophotos.” But I was still motivated to include hands or claws in my combophoto. So I thought to myself: What creature has really defined claws? A lobster came straight to my mind. And how cool would it be to have a claw coming out of a human hand? I searched for images for human arms and lobster claws on Flickr and I ended up finding two that fit well together. Some challenges I faced as I created my combophoto were figuring out how to morph the two images together using Photoshop. I am very new to this software, so it took many tries and lots of experimentation to finally get the two images perfectly lined up. Another challenge that I ultimately was unable to resolve was that the backgrounds of the two images are not very similar to each other, so the images do not transfer seamlessly into each other. Perhaps I can find a way to isolate one of the images and add in my own background so the images flow together better. I think my final image conveys the potential violence each person has. The original photo of the arm had a delicate, soft hand at the end of it: A hand that looked capable of no harm. However, my combophoto surprises the viewer by showing a hand that is sharp and known to hurt others. Through my combophoto, I aim to portray the potential of violence each of us has within. But it’s up to each and every individual to choose if they wish to unleash it. 

The way that I chose the two photos came from thinking about what two things go together. I began with simple things but they all seemed too boring. Combining species was a weird and funny thought that came to mind. I decided to combine a Tyrannosaurus Rex and a chicken due to the chicken being the closest relative to the dinosaur. Creating the combophoto was challenging in the sense that I had to find a free picture of a T-rex and chicken that were facing the same way for the most part. I also had a difficult time shaping the chickens head to fit on the body of the T-rex. This was a tool I had never used before. The final image conveys a combination of relatives for a glimpse of what evolution could have created if worldly events happened differently.

“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day.”
— Albert Einstein, 1955

Some of the people I look up to the most are grown-up babies. Well, every adult is, but these people’s character is the physical manifestation of the same thing found on a cat’s autopsy notes. I wanted to represent true intelligence as a product of curiosity and drive through a culturally recognizable image. Einstein’s famous tongue-out picture is one of the more relevant images of genius while ice cream is associated with youth. Through merging the photos, the intense relationship between curiosity and success is suggested.

As I created my combo-photo, I difficult challenges were two-fold. First, the image of Einstein was only available in black an white and the colorized versions looked terrible. Consequently, I had to figure out a way to alter a second photo to be monochrome. I achieved this through the mac’s photo editor where you can copy and image in Greyscale (mac version of black and white). Second, Einstein’s tongue is uniquely contorted and finding a child attacking an ice cream cone at a 19.55 degree angle was time consuming.

#sq4