Jabriya's Visual Studies

I had some difficulties with this exercise. It's not exactly what I was going for, but I don't hate it.

By far my favorite street artists are the Spanish duo Pichi and Avo.   I absolutely adore the way they combine the chaotic, edgy feel of graffiti with the elegance and form of classical art. The work they put into it is just phenomenal. It blows my mind every time. More at http://www.pichiavo.com/graffiti/

My theme for the blog identity posts is going to be steps. The idea stems from the fact that my personal sketchbook is very process oriented. My plan though, is to twist the idea of steps as part of a process into physical representations of steps. Someone I used to be very close with was always fond of steps and I definitely think I adopted part of that fondness as well. Like practicing any skill, there's something fantastic about the repetition that leads to new places and new heights. I want all these steps to be relevant to my life and interests. I took this picture on my field trip to the National Gallery of Art recently. It's been quite a while since I'd been to this museum. I love the reflections from the glass and the diamond pattern :)

Graduating from a high school with an equal balance of art and academics, our sketchbooks were a vital part of the completion of our artwork. We were taught to record all steps in our process from the first brainstorming ideas to the final journal response. Despite the seemingly excessive amount of work we had to put into our sketchbooks, it was a good foundation that helped me realize what aspects were most important to me and the making of my art. This being said, a lot of the ideas that come to mind when I consider my personal sketchbook are words like: Process Practice Test Experiment Record Remember Growth Learn Steps Plan Evolve I think I'm going to base my blog identity posts on either the idea of growth or steps. 

I considered a few different locations in my brainstorming. I like sending letters so I thought about making something cute to put on a mailbox. I thought about maybe an owl with a pun somewhere on campus, or something silly on a street sign. I did some sketches, but I wasn't getting any ideas I felt very strongly about. I went through my old sketchbook to see if there were any ideas I'd written down that might be helpful. Towards the end of that sketchbook I'd asked a couple of my friends to give me random topics to sketch to use up the last of my pages (my personal favorite was the sketches I did of Christmas lemurs). Another creative suggestion I got was homeless birds. Looking at these sketches again, I considered using one of these drawings for my project. It's hard to resist feeding little birds and homelessness is definitely a problem in Philadelphia. I think it might be an interesting statement to take something like birds that are usually so adorable and have

      Looking back on the process of making this project, I think it went fairly well. After I chose from my idea sketches, I made a more detailed sketch and then a final one midway through the project with some minor changes. I had some difficulty with the exposure of different objects in the image and the clone tool was tricky at points as well. Overall I think started getting a little easier towards the end, though.      I thought the group brainstorming and project critique days were productive. I liked that we could potentially help make each other's art more successful. I appreciate the ideas and comments I got about my designs and final product. It gives you more to think about for future projects than just getting a letter grade. Plus you get to everyone else's art, which is neat.      When I first finished the composite I was just kind of like "Well, I guess it's done now", but then when I got my print, I looked at it, and I realized I'm actu