ABORIGINAL ART ANALYSIS

           Androgyny is the name of one in many beautiful paintings by the famous Ojibwa artist, Norval Morrisseau. Created in 1983, the artwork is 366cm x 610cm in size. Like all of his other works, he painted using mostly acrylic for this one too. Androgyny is filled with natural aspects resulting to a very busy and compact effect. There is a hill right on the bottom center with a hole inside filled with fish swimming to the left. While, the hill itself has a lot of animals that are connected with thin lines and a human lying against the tunnel. A snake's tail is seen half wrapped around the human’s head. However the snake’s head was faced to the center of the painting, poking halfway out of the hill.

On top of the hill, there are three humans on each side of the painting walking to the middle. Following the humans, there are ducks, and bird type creatures. Surrounding the animals there are colourful butterflies and flowers, mostly pink, red, blue and orange to create a busier feel to the artwork. A hole appears in the middle center, which is right on top of the bottom tunnel. In the center a big eagle with its wings out flying, is painted there. The eagle is made up with blue and red colours, which contrast with the yellow background and once again the lines, are very squiggly but smooth. Humans stood underneath the eagle and were painted brown with red circles floating in the air, specifically in the eagle’s hole. The painting overall caught my eye because of the bright contrast and unique choice of colours. 

The very first thing that drew my attention when looking at the picture was of course the eagle in the center. All of the animals, humans, butterflies, flowers and etc. were headed to the center where the eagle was. Lines and shapes were almost as if it was directly pointing your eyes to the image, making it clear to look in the middle where all of the others were heading. Not only did the lines and shapes guide the eyes, this artist made the rest of the picture busy while he left the middle a lot less busy to pull the eye to the middle. Using a brighter yellow for the background of the eagle also helped with the guide, I'm sure that most of the people who had seen this art would have looked at the eagle first and I must say the artist did a great job projecting people to the main character of the painting. 

Looking at this art, I see it as people, animals, plants and basically everything on earth is bowing down to the ruler or creator. They are shown to be very focused on the eagle, paying close attention while the big bird is in the air spreading its wings majestically stating that it is in a higher ranking than the others. This is most likely a representation of life, the world’s ruler that connects everyone and everything together. The artist went with a very natural way of presenting the art adding more effect to what I think the meaning is behind this piece of painting. Since I had done some research about the eagle and aboriginal people, the eagle represented love and is known to be the closest to communicate with the creator because eagles can fly up the highest. I think the artist is trying to get the audience to interpret the painting this way. However this is just my way of seeing the art, many others have different perspective like this artwork may mean something else, with a whole different meaning to it. 

At first glance I would describe this artwork as a busy piece of art, but taking a closer look I think the painting gives off a happy, positive and united feeling. The artwork overall is very detailed and there are many hidden messages making it something inspirational. I really like inspiring or any art with a deep meaning behind it. It gives off something even more special when there's a hidden important lesson in the artwork, which this painting has. All in all, I feel really attracted to the united and feeling as if everything is together as one in the painting. 

          

ART ASSIGNMENT

For our art class, we are to work with our assigned partner to create a watercolour painting using ink and the watercolour technique that we have learn throughout the classes.

We had to pick from a box that had the "Seven Grandfather Teachings" options inside. my partner and I chose the eagle which represents love.

EAGLE- LOVE

Short Film Festival Trip

     Today we went on a field trip downtown to participate in the mini festival. There were many short films there, some were interesting and some were bland but the one that caught my eye the most was "In the Rubbish Tin". Although the film was short and there were limited time, I was able to grasp the characters and the little meanings that were shown. 

     "In the Rubbish Tin", the story was about a young girl abandoned on her birthday, a special day that had gone bad. Right from the morning, no one was found home and all the little girl had was her teddy bear, it was her only toy. This showed how the parents didn't care about her safety, her life and if she is even alive. She walked alone down the lonely neighborhood to create herself a cake. The cake was made out of trash like a broken beer bottle and a wheel stating that she doesn't know what is dangerous since she plays with broken glass or that since her parents drank it she thought it was appropriate thing to play with. The teddy bear would represent herself,  abused and yelled at for doing nothing, the teddy bear was the forgotten little girl. 

     I had always enjoyed anything that have deep meanings behind what the thing really was. In this film, like I said there were plenty of hints showing a deeper message in the scene and the character was described well during a short period of time. 

This is a picture of "In the Rubbish Tin"

Logo Assignment PRINT

     The last part of our assignment is to write an analysis on our logo that we created. The analysis must include how the personality and company intertwine with our logo design. 

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     I decided to go with a bunny as an animal that represents me. My company would represent my cute and bubbly personality. And the clothes are mainly going to be designed for girls who don’t like showing their skin. Appropriate clothing, but they still want to keep up with the fashion trend. Bunnies are vulnerable and sensitive which reminds me a lot about me, I get hurt easily by words especially from the people who are close to me. Just by saying something a little off than usual, I would over think and become hurt. Not only do bunnies remind me of myself, they also represent love and romance was always something that I fantasized about. They tend to have a shy personality and are like the symbolization of innocent, I guess I am innocent and for shyness, once I'm around older people, I automatically become shy.

From the picture, I wanted people to see that although the crown may be small, there's a huge effect and without it, the picture wouldn't be the same. It gives off a dark feel from the black but with the hot burning pink, bright light shines through, representing a human with bunny like personalities or features. The crown on the other hand is simple but important representing the personality. Everyone have different ways of showing themselves and for this logo, since it is a fashion company, I’m talking about fashion. Clothes doesn’t have to be revealing or complicated, just simple and you can still be yourself.

My combination colour design has a black bunny positioned in the center standing up, facing up to its right. On top of the bunny there is a floating hot pink crown tilted a little bit to its left, complimenting the plain bunny. Instead of the hot pink crown popping out, it balances and attracts the eyes to the bunny. Black is a plain colour without much fun or bright feel but once hot pink comes into the picture, black is no longer a boring dark colour but an interesting combination, just like plain macaroni without cheese and with cheese. Outlined with smooth and connected lines, the black bunny looks natural and relaxed. Below the bunny, I placed the typography in line with the bunny's width. Hot pink like the crown, the word and crown forms an equal picture something like a sandwich pink, black and pink again. Words were simple, hot pink with a black shadow, thin but tall. On the two ends of the word, there are wings, cute and simple white wings that bring more originality to the typography. The wings weren’t sharped edges and clean cut but rather spirally, smooth and connected. Overall the design gives off a very girly but fashionable look. The bunny itself is already a generic animal for “cute” girls and the hot pink crown adds the trendy and royal feel.

For the grey scale everything stays the same except the colour of the bunny, crown and letters are now grey. I decided to choose the grey scale over the black/white for my second version because I think with a wide range of colour choses; the logo design will have more feel than before. The bunny as well as the crown is filled in with a dark grey, light enough that you can feel the difference between just black and this colour. The dark grey is meant to be simple, not dark or light or bright, straightforward and up to the point. Although it is simple I find the colour and the design more comfortable in the grey version.

             In the end, I would go for my colour design. I feel as if this one attracts attention more because of its bright little crown on top the black bunny. The feel is just as I want it to be, simple however a touch of girly, fashionable and classy. The grey version doesn’t describe as much as it does with the colour version and the feel is a little bit too bland. Although I chose the colour bunny as the best one, I’m not 100% satisfied with my final choice. When we first received the assignment I was ready, I had ideas and was following along with the class’ progression smoothly but my flow stopped for a bit which made me fall behind. My first design was too complicated and not flexible but by the time I was told it was too late. I spend an entire class trying out different positions of the bunny, different ways to present my company with the logo. Since my first one was too complicated my final one was too simple in my opinion. I fell behind on the typography resulting for me not being able to find my favourite one in time. There wasn’t much time left so I decided with the best one out of my choices that I had created. I still think it matches most of the criteria but I know I can do better with the typography. I’ve learned my lesson, I need to consult with the teacher a lot more to know exactly what I’m doing and if I’m doing it the right way.

     

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(FINAL COMBINATION) 

*the hot pink crown is my final choice*

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(ROUGH COMBINATION)

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(FINAL PICTOGRAPHIC)

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(ROUGH PICTOGRAPHIC)

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(FINAL TYPOGRAPHIC)

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(ROUGH TYPOGRAPHIC)

(ORIGINAL PICTURE)

Video Commentary

For this post, I'll be talking about a video that we had to watch in class. Basically, the clip talks about logo design and how to organize your thoughts when you are given an assignment to create a logo for a company. 

After watching, I found out another way to play around with the letters, you can use shapes for giving life to the straight and rectangular letters, and mess up with the rhythm. Before doing anything, I had to draw multiple sketches as the video states, but I didn't get to do it until I actually saw the process and noticed how effective the tool was. The guy created a very doable logo in just a few minutes, after sketching and putting his idea on the computer it looked great.

I learned that designs were meant to be simple, not too complicated, visible that is representable.

CANADIAN ABORIGINAL ART

ARTWORK'S NAME: Androgyny

ARTIST: Norval Morrisseau