Books & Books

The book making process was an interesting one that stimulated me to create another after we were first showed how to build them. I felt as though the first book was more like an experiment, so I wanted to make another that used the book form more appropriately. The structure of the book is mimicking the many crevaces and interior spaces of the Catacombs. By using some images that cross over multiple pages and some that are individual compositions, I feel the book itself creates a sense of depth of the location depicted.

Found Drawings-- decay

Paris itself is a center of history and culture, seperated entirely from the US, and even some European countries. Because of this deep rooted history, I was interested by all of the decay that surrounded it. By decay I mean more of the scratches, breaks, graffiti, paint fragments, or anything that could imply that a structure was aged. On my trip out to Versailles, and even in first arriving in Paris, the city was imerged in this decay that contributes to its beauty.

Red Ladybug

So many more things are red then most people would note. In the Wanderlust reading, it briefly describes the colors and textures of Paris- and red does not come to mind. Many man-made objects seemed to be red to grab the attention and stand out from the subtle pallet of the city streets and buildings. I enjoyed finding the most subtle of those, such as the red ticket stub contrasted against the green grass and the red spray paint on the black starcase guide. It was inderesting that red is often an indicator for a wide variety of signage.

(I apologize for some of the inverted orientations on these but it was the easiest way for them to all fit.)

Monet gardens

At the Musee D'Orsay I was really inspired by some of the graphic work exhibited in the museum. In particular, the work of Toulouse Lautrec's drawings helped me to observe the working of the foreground and background simultaneously, and exercise defining the subject of the work. I did one garden 'memory' or a piece I produced from memory of what some of the flowers looked like. 

(Posted for a reference of what I was interested in.)

collage & following stages

The bits and pieces of aspects of the trip assembled into one.

I am interested in the texture the typography in some of the collages creates.

Walking and Sketching Through Paris

'En plein air' sketching, the practice of artists painting outdoors occurred throughout the day. The length of time of the sketches, about 5-10 minutes made me focus on filling the page with a composition and slowly developing the details.

This really reminded me of Monet's garden and the Impressionists because of the fact that this is exactly as they worked. It made the places we sketched more real, and I feel more confident in my interpretations of them rather then a photo to depict them.

Metro Jerks

The constant jerks of the metro help to create an interesting line moment on paper. This is a new concept for me to allow myself to be controlled by an outside source to produce marks. I would be more interested to see more trips then one on each page, for example, the green marks is a trip to a location and back from the same location (one in pencil and one in marker.)

The layering overtime would be a more interesting indicator of where stops are, where the jerkiest parts of the metro are. Another interesting project would be to use these moment and overlay them to scale with a metro map and see if there is any correlation to the movements of the metro and where you are headed to.

Dans Le Noir reflection

Walking in had to be the most frightening part because your line of sight slowly merged from a faint glow in the background behind you to total darkness. Although your senses are heightened, there is really no way to adjust to the total darkness, eyes will keep searching for the faintest light. 

The tastes were really altogether unmanageable to decipher- a person usually correlates taste to an image, or image to taste, (at least when eating) and when that connection is broken, it makes things that are familiar, unfamiliar. 

Rodin Museum

The forms at the museum are very impressive when seen in person. Rodin's sculptures really accentuate the form and shape of the human body. In the contour drawings I concentrated on the line and mass created by the movement of the figures. His sculptures often felt like they were trapping a moment of time.