Exercise: Too many carrier bags

Analyse the brief. What's the problem: an amount of discarded carrier bags at a beauty spot. Local businesses are worried about the implication for their trade. They want to fix the problem.

What research I need to do? Somebody has already tried to solve that problem. How? Which media he/she/they used? What was the result?

As a first google research, I found this: 4-ways-to-reduce-the-waste-of-plastic-bags .
1. Decline the bag
2. Bring your reusable bags instead.
3. Recycle the plastic bags.
4. Re-use the plastic bags.

Second, great article about the problem with bags and its Plastic-bag-problem.

It is not easy to persuade people to get the used bag back to a recycling centre! Only 3% of the total. It does not work. The big problem, bag in marine and in the air are flooding our planet.

Next, plastic-bag-for-life-recycling

"45% of shoppers bought a reusable bag but only 12% use them regularly. if we use reusable cloth bags, we could save up to 25.000 plastic bags in an average lifetime. 
Many large supermarkets already offer loyalty points when we use our own bags, which is a good start. Instead of criticising those who use reusables, shouldn't we be doing more to educate those who still use single-use plastic bags?

An interesting information for the global solution: mutant-enzyme-that-eats-plastic-bottles

Rebbeca Hosking: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/apr/16/plastic-bags-activism

My process record:

Having more time I would like to make some posters.

Anyway, the great thing was to doing research around the carrier bags. It helped me a lot to get "quickly" directions on how to address the problem. 

The brief: it was great to notice that local businesses are worried. It should not be hard to get them involved and persuaded them to think differently.  

Make the bang: I am still thinking about a statue made by carrier bags. Maybe a tree covered by those bags in the central square make a point which can appeal to residents.  Put questions etc.

And yes, I love Tom Eckersley's keep the Britain Tidy. That style I would like to use for the design to get people informed about the problem.

Exercise: One hundred and one

I like how many ideas with a dead cat we can see in the series. I was not so successful. For the best way was to draw it. I completely forgot to use a creative tool like a mind map. Anyway, some of the ideas were funny (trap) some of them could work (camera obscura, flower pot). I should back and make more broaden.

New aqua colours White night

I bought new Russian colours and was playing with them (I have never used the watercolour before).

I do not why I was stuck to dominant colour, maybe the inspired painting by MIRO. It did not work to me. 

I changed the dominant colour to bright blue: I have noticed that monochromatic structure looks good .............

............... till I added the lemon yellow and the circle shape.

And it looked awful when I add Scarlet red.

So I played again, just with scratched and the result did look childish and for me in this time balanced. Tomorrow I will buy more colours and I will keep playing with them.

Accent colour

I remember a tutor comment about choosing colours for a piece. He wrote that he would like to hear how I will work with an accent colour in future.

What is an accent colour:

research:

https://www.johnlovett.com/accent-color

60/30/10 rule
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbGTirgNOZY

"most, some and a bit" rule
https://www.artistsnetwork.com/art-mediums/watercolor/great-color-composition/

I tried according to rule "most, some and a bit" some pieces:

I tried watercolour and some pastel. Just to play with yellow, blue and red as an accent colour. Not so satisfied with the first drawing but I need to try more. One of them was inspired by MIRO painting.

When playing I realized, that there must be taken the background on the mind, the white is one colour as well :-).

I came back to Photoshop after the small trial to draw by hand. I do not want to give up to use colour in hand drawing but I need some skills. I made a simple piece. I used the wheel colour and choose the colour in a triad and monochromatic palette. I made a yellow background on it I put some dirties because it looks better than just monotone colour. As a next step, I added some colour by splash brushes. The final step was to put a bit of red colour. The result looks better than my hand drawing trials. I need to think where is the difference, It looks more compact, it is not childish appearance, the splash has a good shape. I need to improve my hand drawing for sure.

Colour workbooks

I found in my library this pile of books around colour. It is enough reading about colour.

Exercise: Visual play

I like how just chaotic juxtaposition, in the beginning, led to the clean design when I played with the cuts in the exercise Visual grunge. The design is more attractive than the design where I tried to express what kind of design I like. I think the experimental approach would help me to produce several pieces which show me an ideal result. No doubt.

Overall, I always have a bad feeling in the beginning process when the canvas is empty. The helplessness in these first execices was the big problem for me to overcome. I really did not know how to go through it.

The next problem was to take the right colours. Even I use the colour wheel still I am not sure the colours fit together.

I decided to rework the beginning exercise Areas of practices.

Here is the original picture. Really I did this? :-)

I used the shapes from exercise Visual grunge. I liked the circles and fitted them in my best opinion they could work in this piece. But, somehow the text was disturbing, so I put it away.

I played with shape and their position.

Now, is it was time to change the colours. I used the Adobe CC library and chose the first I liked. The colour palette was nice for the first glance but the result in the piece was not I expected.

So, I choose another one and it turned out it is more captivated. I was satisfied.

Anyway, there was something missing. I wanted to use black colour and add a shape.

This shape fits better than the previous :-).

I added the text. It really looks enhanced.

And final touch. I must say it really looks better than the original piece.

This exercise showed me that playing with shapes completely changed the design. What looked like a boring design (I can say awful), in the beginning, the original one, showed as a "mature" design at the end. 

Still, I am not sure about the use of colour and its combinations. 

Exersice: Visual grunge

I used my old collection from previous course Graphic Design. I made a photocopy and tried to use these images for this exercise: images.

I decided to use typeface Bodoni.

I made several shapes and digitally I put them together. I have noticed that the kissing girls were the most captivating object to me.

The whole piece looked too shady. I tried to put there a contrast.

I played with the juxtaposition. The head is looking toward the kissing girl. The piece looks chaotic.

I wanted to have a frame and the black background helped it. But still, there are too many objects.

I made a glasses, I used 8 number, and it helps but not enough.

I like it how it is clean. The first impression of the girls is clear here. I like it.

One layer can change the space but still, it remains clean and clear.

I really love how the shapes will create interesting cutouts. The playing with them can create many options. I really enjoyed this exercise.

Recommended books

The recommended books arrived: