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: