Project 2

Movement

I was debating between whether to put this image in movement or balance. In the end, this image seemed to have more movement than balance. I wanted to interpret the scene when Dorothy's house was being blown away by the tornado. Inspired by Alexander Rodchenko I wanted to  use text throughout my pieces. I remembered that i used to draw tornadoes in elementary school by scribbling throughout my notebook and I though it'd be interesting to use that same technique through blocks since i was focusing on stripes and lines. 

Balance

When designing this piece, I wanted to focus on Alexander Rodchenko's technique of using a prominent image in the foreground. Though I did not completely center the image, I wanted to make the ruby slippers pop out of the image and in a sense make a statement. Keeping the theme of the ruby slippers from The Wizard of Oz I used the wicked witch's striped socks to incorporate the stripes that are visible throughout all my pieces. I balanced the stripes from the socks with what I tried to make as blue birds flying over the rainbow. By going in and out of shoes, the rainbow gives a sense of movement but in this case I felt it was more obvious that the stripes were balancing off the socks. 

Repetition

When creating this piece, I definitely had Rodchenko's poster pieces in mind. I wanted it to seem like the tinman was speaking. However, instead of covering the piece with text, I combined his techniques by incorporating the stripes into the piece. The background obviously became unified repetition as I tried to make the stripes as even as possible. I tried to incorporate lines in every way possible whether it was the tinman himself or the way he was speaking and especially the background. I tried to use different thicknesses of lines to make some parts stand out more than others. This piece was a way for me to be obvious in every form. It was obviously repetition and it was obviously from The Wizard of Oz.

Emphasis and Economy

While doodling I thought of the hourglass from The Wizard of Oz. I though that it'd be interesting to focus on the point when time shifts from one point to the other. When thinking of how to interpret the grains of sand, I thought the point of shifting should be interpreted to everything pointing to that point. I used the disintegrating stripes to also form an arrow pointing towards that one point when one point in time becomes another. I also tried to offset the evenness of the piece through the heavy black block at the top of the hourglass. 

Inspiration

My inspiration came from the artist Alexander Rodchenko. When I first looked up his pieces, I immediately noticed that he used  a lot black and white photography. He focused on the use of stripes and grids. I thought, especially for a project that could only be in black and white, that the use of his techniques would be interesting. He also made posters that made statements. For example, he took an image of a girl seemingly screaming or talking and used colorful words coming from her mouth so that her motion was implied. He made sure that his figures were the prominent image regardless of the busyness of his background. My theme was The Wizard of Oz and I incorporated his techniques through different scenes from the movie.