Week 07&08 - Final Project ( Visual Analysis )

February 25, 2022

Week 07&08 - Final Project ( Visual Analysis )

Week 07 - 15.02.2022~17.02.2022

Len Hoi Yee ( 0353430 ) / Bachelor of Design (Hons) in Creative Media

Design Principle

Visual Analysis

Lecture

This day, Dr. Charles brief us about our final project - Visual Analysis. we have got to complete our project - Visual Analysis worth 30% and final blog along with final reflection worth 10%.

So, Dr. Charles showed us 2 youtube videos about how professionals do visual analysis on videos or films. One of the examples he shared with us was " Allusion & Symbolism << Batman vs Superman>>". Dr Charles told us that Zack Snyder observe the video by putting himself in the shoes of critiques and trying to understand what the other critics didn't like.

Dr. Charles also introduced HR Giger's artwork. His artworks are phenomenal and amazing. Dr. Charles liked the way he used colour tones and his theme of art, very bioorganic parts. He majors in designing creatures.

Dr. Charles advised us that never judge an artwork unless when it comes to commision work and if there are requirements. When it comes to self- expression or specific express of a design, never judge. Everyone is judgemental but when comes to a designer, looking at HR Giger's artwork, it involves a lot of biomechanical.

Observation: overall is in a darker tone, the colour makes it seems like made out of stone, some solid material, bone-like structure. Make observations based on what you are looking at.

Analysis: Skulls are all positioned at the top of the head with 4 skulls on each side giving an equal balance. Nevertheless, it might have some dissimilar elements from each side but quite balance. The purity of the centra part, its face has a bright tone to bring some sense of spirituality, something sacred, othe things play a supportive role to it.

For this project, The artwork can be something you really like the most but must be relevant to what we want to do in response to we have learnt from the existing artwork.

Then, Dr.Charles also showed us some examples of what the seniors did as guidance for us.

Visual Analysis

From Dr.JinChi's lecture video, visual analysis is a method of understanding design that focuses on the visual elements and principles. In detail, it is a description and explanation of visual structure for its own sake. However, the visual analysis also recognise the choices that a designer made in creating the design, as well as to better understand the content, meaning, and properties used in that design.

Visual Analysis consists of three parts: observation, analysis, and interpretation.

Figure 1: Don't Mess With Mother Nature by Jim Warren

Observation:

"Don't Mess With Mother Nature" is a piece of artwork done by Jim Warren. It is in a portrait format and focuses on mother nature piece of work. It has clouds, thunder, mountains, rocks, and water in between the mountains, a boy with one knee on the ground with a broom sweeping some empty cans, boxes, glass bottles, plastics into the water. Other than that, there are water waves which can be assumed as the sea, water waves hitting the rock causing splash effect, notice that the boy holding the seawater as if it is a carpet that can hide things underneath. Most importantly in this artwork is the boy's action is seen by a pair of eyes in the sky in the middle of this artwork. The main colours used are green, blue, purple, white, orange, beige, brown, red and yellow.

Analysis:

From this piece of work, i can see that the artist used the idea of colour Contrast. He did not use cold, dark colours instead a bright green and blue contrasting each other creates a picture that easily captures viewers' attention from afar. The pair of eyes on top in the clouds shows Emphasis as it is too bizarre to exist in real life, causing viewers' to move their attention to it. I feel that the mountains have equal amount on both sides, the artist put it in a way that both sides do not overpower each other and there's Balance on both sides. Besides, this artwork shows a strong sense of grouping which shows Unity. The stronger the grouping, the more united they are. There are many varieties and it's amazing how they harmoniously unite with each other's existence where viewers' would not feel uneasy when looking at it, especially the bizarre part like the boy is holding the seawater in hand and the eyes in between the clouds. The water waves from the sea show a strong Movement that is coming towards the boy by the shore. In my opinion, the boy that is holding a broom and the prints left on the sand suggests Rhythm which also creates Movement, like the boy is sweeping the rubbish in a direction towards the sea.

Interpretation:

From what i see, the boy's action is seen by the pair of eyes in the sky. The boy is sweeping rubbish into the sea and the act of the boy's hand holding up the seawater as if a person can lift the seawater gives me the idea of a suspicious person is hiding something from people. At the same time, the boy's face is looking at the eyes in the sky, showing that his action is seen by someone as if he's caught doing something illegal or bad. The contrasting colours of the mountains and sea used by the artist beautifully illustrate the beauty of mother nature as its name says it, " Do not mess with Mother Nature".

Basically, this art is saying that the boy is sweeping trash into the sea and caught by someone in the sky, meaning that what he is doing is bad and wrong, and someone knows. I see it this way, the eyes in the sky should be God and there's thunder in between clouds, so the boy can be any human being on Earth that acts like what the boy is doing, throwing trash into the sea, karma(thunder) will get them in return just like the name says, " Do not mess with Mother Nature". The word " Do Not " implies a strict warning to people.

The title "Do not mess with Mother Nature" shows that God is strictly warning everyone to not destroy or disturb mother nature or else karma will get them and that God is watching everyone.

It's amazing how this artwork was beautifully done and illustrates the meaning of the all-time saying "God watches us all the time".

Visual research

During the lecture class, Dr.Charles showed us some artwork done based on the surrealism concept and it interests me to find out more about it. Hence, i looked it up on the internet and found some amazing pieces, and even triggered me to work on that concept. One of the examples Dr. Charles showed was this artwork below done by Salvador Dali, a famous surrealist artist.

No one has ambiguous feelings about Dali. The whole point of Dali's work is to dredge up viewers' feelings, causing them to question why would they have the reaction they are feeling, and of course, this is also the purpose of surrealist art, the difficulty in articulating feelings.

Over the years, Surrealism has resulted in a fascinating collection of artwork ranging from mythical landscapes, to obscure sculpture arrangements, to intriguing depictions of people and animals.

Surrealism was an avant-garde artistic and literary movement that emerged in the early 20th century. It focused on deep emotional expression through artistic creation and free association.

Surrealism aims to revolutionise human experience.It balances a rational vision of life with one that asserts the power of the unconscious and dreams.

Many surrealist artists have used automatic drawing or writing to unlock ideas and images from their unconscious minds. Surrealist artists have also drawn inspiration from mysticism, ancient cultures and Indigenous art and knowledge as a way of imagining alternative realities.

The work of major Surrealist painters is too diverse to be summarized categorically. Each artist sought his or her own means of self-exploration.

Surrealist artists—like Joan Miró, Salvador Dalí, Pablo Picasso, or Michael Cheval, among many others—seek to explore the unconscious mind as a way of creating art, resulting in dreamlike, sometimes bizarre imagery across endless mediums.

Surrealist art is slightly harder to do compared to other creative movements, which can be characterized by themes of imagery, color choices, or techniques. The drawing has an elephant body with a tuba instrument as the head, which looks bizarre at the same time fascinating at how it just harmoniously fits in. From here, we can also see that artists creatively bring music into art.

Surrealism is important as it gives artists the opportunity to escape from reality and to explore what we truly are feeling, what is hidden inside us, be it bizarre, scary, or joyful images in our minds. There is no limitation in surrealism, more like self-expression and exploration in our own fantasy world.

Idea Exploration and Description

Firstly, after deciding on going for surrealism, I have got inspired by a few artworks done by famous artists, like Jim Warren.

The picture below has a huge ax that its body is connected to the tree stump and has caught my attention, trees that are chopped off, dried-up trees, small humans moving tree trunks that are chopped off together, and a beautiful sky in the background. I got the idea of illegal deforestation, which is harmful to mother nature.

From this artwork, i got the idea of draught. Dried-up trees, dried-up land, a killer whale in a glass bottle trying to imply the importance of water, they need water to survive as well.

The artist drew a woman's face beautifully merged together with the mountains and waterfall, and the one with sunset and the sea. These two pieces have truly implied the beauty of mother nature

After brainstorming about what i should do for my artwork by using the surrealism concept, i decided to go with the polluted ocean. Chemical and trash marine pollution are common to see in this era, however human tend to ignore the problems that arise from having marine pollution which is extremely harmful to marine life. Polluted oceans such as trash in the ocean, oil spilled at oceans, industrial waste, and many more. At this point, social awareness to the public is crucial in order for everyone to take good care of marine life. Therefore, this has triggered me to create an artwork about marine life.

The pictures attached below are the examples of polluted oceans :

Progress

First Outcome:

Firstly, i drew a blue whale in the middle and a pair of eyes on top of the whale, and the bottom part is a polluted ocean. At first i couldn't decide whether i should draw a face in the ocean or just a pair of eyes on top. However, i figured having the pair of eyes on top will be better since i already have drawn some small items at the bottom. So, leaving the items at the bottom as it is and remove the face, the whole piece of work will be clearer. I was also insecure about my result as i have never done surrealism before in my life and thankfully, Dr.Charles reassured me that i am on the right track, so i proceed with the colouring.

Feedback by Lecturer:

Surrealism gives you the freedom to create dream worlds. I think you are on the right track. Go with your instinct. I see things flying around and a whale below the eyes. So yes it looks surreal to me.

Second Outcome:

Before painting on the actual piece, i have done multiple trial and errors to avoid any mistakes.

First few trials did not turn out the result that i wanted, so i continued trying until i have achieved my desire result. My plan was to paint the whale dreamlike-ish, so i wanted to add some purple in it

After multiple attempts, i have finally gotten the result i want, which is similar to the ones above.

A more close-up picture of the result.

Third Outcome:

Now, it's time to paint the polluted ocean. So, i did a few trials and errors again.

First few attempts, i put too much black and it turned out to be a darker tone.

So, i added some royal blue shades to make it seem more blue-ish.

Thankfully, it turned out quite decent.

Fourth Outcome:

For the sky, i decided to go with colours that brings contrast, i decided to go with yellow which is the sunset.

In the end, i drew some clouds also, and i only left the eyes uncoloured.

Final Outcome:

Thankfully, i completed the work by filling the eye with green colour.

Final Outcome in PDF:

Mother Nature Seeks For Help

Rationale

Basically, the aim of this artwork, is to imply that polluted oceans are crucially in need of help as it causes huge damage to the environment and animals as well. Firstly, i drew a blue whale as the blue whale is the largest animal on Earth and it represents the ocean. A crying blue whale in the middle is to tell that its home, the ocean is getting destroyed, and it can't do anything mainly due to human's wrongdoing such as throwing rubbish into the ocean, disposing chemical waste into the ocean, as well as oil spilling. The dark layer that covers the ocean's surface is an oil layer.

In the ocean, there are dead fish, plastic bags, junk food packets, plastic straw and cup. These are examples of trash that humans throw into the sea, ocean, lake, river. Plastics are commonly used and that is why it is all over the places, even on land. The board that has "S.O.S" on it is to say that the ocean is in need of help, The marine life is suffering and dying, trying to seek for help.

The eyes on top is actually a woman's eye because i thought of mother nature, the word 'mother' , so i drew longer eyelashes on the eye to indicate as a woman's eye. This pair of eye is also saying that she is watching us, our actions are being watched by mother nature, the way we do things, how we destroy the environment, the animals, the habitats. The eyes are in green for a reason, it represents the green environment like trees, plants, basically living things on land.

For the top part (sky), i painted it in yellow with some darker yellow shades to create more sunset effect, and i painted the upper part blue with clouds. The clouds actually add on a dreamy, fantasy-like vibe to this piece of work.

Design principle applied:

Contrast

Emphasis

Unity

Balance

Reflection

Thanks to this project, i have learnt a lot about the surrealism concept and how to apply it in an artwork. To be honest, i really like the surrealism concept as it has its beauty and meaning which is expressed by the artist itself, which means the artists get to express their feelings and thoughts about something in an artwork through surrealism. Although it may seem bizarre, scary, weird and romantic but there is no limitation and rules when comes to art.

In my opinion, i feel especially for artists who hide their feelings and emotions to themselves are likely to create bizarre surreal artworks because the artwork that they create is weird and hard to interpret but somehow just looks fascinating in its way, in a way it is interesting for viewers to guess the meaning of the artwork. For me, I find it interesting to interpret the meaning of each detail in an artwork, i guess it's the satisfaction and how interesting it is once you found out the meaning behind every detail, and when i realise it, i will relook at the artwork and just "wow, it all makes sense now".