four principles go punk rock

For project two, my four pieces had the theme of punk rock, and were influenced by the style of art nouveau. Coming up with a theme was one of the hardest parts of the brainstorming process. (Note: I say this now, but I will take it back very soon.) At first I thought of circles or eyes, but that got boring after about six boxes. Then I decided to do something that I’m more interested in—rock music. As for deciding a style, I had researched a bunch of styles and picked out several I liked, but was able to choose one or two that I thought would be the most complimentary with punk rock. I decided on art nouveau after looking at a bunch of posters in books and online.
Once I decided on my theme and style, the images and research I did had me going over the top. I was renting books by the armfuls from the library and downloading way too many pictures to my laptop. This made the next part of the design process even harder…the dreaded 200 squares. This, was one of the hardest experiences of my life. I went 3 days non stop on these squares…NOT NECESSARY! My body has never been more sleep deprived or cracked out on coffee in my life. But I couldn’t find any other way of going about it. I had so much material to look at and I was so obsessed with coming up with a complete picture, I ended up spending 20-30 minutes per square instead of per page. Now I know for next time…But I guess it was a good creative/brainstorming experience, and it left me with plenty of options for the final sketches, which we can now move onto…

Emphasis & Economy:
For my emphasis and economy piece, I used the image of a converse sneaker, but kept the lines to a minimum, not shading in the fabric of the shoe, but using enough lines to show that there is material there. I could have used designs in the background, as I did for a lot of my sketches because I was so focused on the art nouveau style, but then I realized a lot of art nouveau was also simple, more natural lines. So the lines of the shoe aren’t exactly as you would have them with a real converse, but instead have more animated/natural lines.



Balance:
For balance, I have an image of the side of a skull, the eye socket filled with a design inspired from a French art nouveau poster, as well as the word “punk” tracing along the side of the skull, the letters inspired by an art nouveau-type Pink Floyd poster. I created balance in this image with the contrast between the stark white skull bone in the top right corner, and the black background in the bottom left. The piece is further balanced with both spaces containing designs within them of opposite values. Though the sides are not perfectly symmetrical, there is still a balance between the two spaces.


Repetition:
Repetition was by far the easiest principle to handle. My image is a close up of one of the Ramones’ leather jacket and striped shirt, repetition already occurring within the striped shirt and zipper teeth. The curved lines on the shirt repeat, though they are not all going the same way, and the zipper occurs more than once, though in two different ways, with one a closed, full zipper and the other the open half that can be seen, which also does not continue in one direction but changes. So though the lines are similar, there is still a little bit of variety within the repetition.


Movement:
For movement, I had to do a bit of reconstruction with a couple of squares I had. Each had some movement within them, but also had some major problems with diagonals or some parts staying too static. By combining the image of the rocker with the downward lines of one square, and incorporating an electric like shock design from another, I was able to create a sense of motion, originating from the player and his guitar. The lines don’t all go in one direction, but move in all directions, intensifying the image and the sense of electricity coming off the player.