Day Twenty-Five: The Final Push

MY COVER!

It has been a crazy 4 weeks. Through the many different drawing exercises, lessons in design, and long hours of hard work, my magazine is finally printed. What a great relief. I stayed up so late last night and I woke up early this morning to come to the computer lab to work on my layout. One of the biggest things that I have learned from creating this magazine in In Design is that nothing is ever set in stone. I rearranged the components of my magazine many many times, and I'm glad I did. Although they created a lot of stress and headache for me, I'm really happy with my design. Especially for being a newbie to Photoshop and In Design, I am really proud of my work. This program has been absolutely amazing. I can't believe it's over. I don't want it to be over. :(

Super big thank yous to Paul, Frank, and Rafael. Without their help, I'm sure that I would have thrown a computer out of the window already. I probably would have destroyed more than one, actually. They helped me just trust in the process of design, and sweat the little details and glitches less. This is our last "real" class. WHAT?

Day Twenty-Four: Adobe is Evil

djfalkasjdf. I feel like I've been beat up by a computer program. I never realized how difficult working in In Design is. Not to metion photoshop. Paul. Frank, and Raphael did their best to help us all finish laying our and editting all of our photos today. There are so many tools in photoshop, it's really overwhelming to figure out what is the best option to fix a problem. I think if I played around enough, I would get the hang of it, but I'm so focused on getting all the little details that I start to freak myself out. I'm almost done with the first draft of the thing, but we have to print it tomorrow, so I don't really have much time. I worked on the computer for over 10 hours today. I have a huge respect for graphic designers now. Even though designs might look simple (like my magazine) they easily could have taken hours upon hours of work. That's crazy. I don't know if I could do it - sitting in front of a computer all day is frustrating (and it makes me want to eat all the time). Tomorrow is the the last real day of class. I can't believe that my program at Parsons is basically over. That is absolutely crazy. I just don't understand.

another photo from the photoshoot. Gabby certainly is enjoying her
Mr. Frosty

Day Twenty-Three: Graphic Designers Have it Rough

During the school year, I work really hard on my school yearbook, because frankly, nobody else cares. I use open source photo editors and the yearbook publisher's online program, but using Adobe to create this magazine publication is way beyond my skills. It's hard. There's so much information to take in. I know it is just going to take practice, so I'm going to have to stay after school a lot and just mess around with the programs. We were supposed to finish laying out our magazines today (we spent the whole day in the computer lab doing that), but I still have 4 pages left. I think I'm going to go back and revise the cover because I'm not quite happy with it yet. When I look at my spreads, it seems like it doesn't look right because there isn't enough writing or text, like most magazines have. But most magazines that I read are commercial magazines - not high fashion ones. Paul said that I should minimized the text and let the photos and artwork shine through. 

This is the photo that I chose for my cover shot

Day Twenty-Two: The First Day of the Last Week? WHAT?

Another photo from the photoshoot

Honestly, this program has gone past way too fast. Three weeks has passed by so quickly; soon, Friday and the exhibition will be here, and I will be leaving the next day.

Paul told us that this morning was our last drawing class of the program. For the rest of the week, we're going to be working digitally to create our magazines. I'm really sad about that. I really enjoyed drawing class. Not only do I feel like I learned a lot, but I just really like to draw and paint. Despite my rocky relationship with gouache, I am a lot more adept with it right now than I was three weeks ago.

In the afternoon, we met Frank in the computer lab, where his partner, Raphael, taught us how to use InDesign. Adobe InDesign is like Microsoft Publisher on crack. We uploaded the photos from the photoshoot and began learning the basics.

There are so many functions, buttons, and adjustment dials. Listening to all the directions made my head spin - much less trying to execute them. My inproficiency with Macs and Adobe programs in general (including photoshop) worries me, because we have so little time to format, proof, and print our publications. I think tomorrow we're going to be working on retouching photos. Hopefully, I'll be a little better at that.

Day Nineteen: Ready... Set... Paint!

Composition of dresses (Gouache)

Nothing particularly notable happened today. Seeing that the photoshoot was completed yesterday afternoon, we had the entire morning AND afternoon classes to paint a full-sized gouache painting of our dresses. Though I am not a big fan of gouche, and the tast seemed especially daunting, I finished before class ended and actually quite like my piece. The axonometric drawings on due on Monday, and I assume that we're going to be starting our magazine designs then too. 

The first week of my Parson's experience dragged along, not in a bad way, but in a very overwhelming way. I thought that all the work would weigh me down tremendously; but now, the final 7 days of my time as a resident of Manhattan is coming to an end, and I'm wondering where the past three weeks have gone. Whoa.

Day Eighteen: Just Glue Me Into It

It's been a long day, but one of the best of the program. The day of our fashion shoot! We spent the morning completing our axometric drawings from last week, but I was so nervous thinking about the photo shoot that I didn't finish it class. Granted, my drawing was too small and had to be enlarged, and I had some structural kinks to work out. Paul instructed us to choose the colors for our drawing/painting with value in mind, to show the dimensions of the shape as well as possible.

Gabby, Sami, and I planned to finish the dress during lunch, to allow a maximum amount of time to do hair and makeup, but unfortunately, we had a lunch-time lecture. I enjoyed the previous two presentations, but I didn't find this one particularly interesting. To be honest, I found it kind of annoying how the presenter had a rising intonation at the end of her sentences. The constant "question" tone of her voice was a little difficult to listen to. The recent graduate showed us her senior thesis project, the "blank" furniture collection. I actually really like that concept, and would love to see it in my dorm room. All the furniture looks so bland, and her designs are intentionally customizable.

When 1 o'clock finally rolled around, we were all flying around Frank's design room. At first, we thought that we had a lot of time to complete the dress, and have me go through hair and makeup. My hair was complex (Gabby did an upside down French braid), so it took a long time. The initial bun at the top of my head was too small, even, so I had to sacrifice the socks I was wearing in order to make a sock bun. By the time we were in the elevator, we were already a few minutes late. 

At first, the fashion shoot felt really awkward. I didnt really know what to do with myself. I wanted to show off the dress and not make a fool of myself. Frank helped out a lot - he made me feel more relaxed and it was really fun! After shooting in the school lobby, we ventured out to Union Square and viscinity to take more pictures, but the stifling heat quickly herded us back indoors. A lot of people complimented our creation during our short excursion though. I can't wait to see all the photos and begin our magazine!

Day Seventeen: Museum Mile

Claude Monet

The stretch of fifth avenue which borders central park, intersecting with 84th, 85th, 86th, and etc. streets is home to buildings which house hundreds of billions of dollars of precious art. In the Metropolitan Museum itself, the pieces on show are worth more than my life many times over. It's been made abundantly clear by the location of the Met, the Guggenheim, and the Whitney just a few streets over, in the Upper East Side of Manhattan that these museums are prestigious and costly to upkeep. Even the street vendors in the area charge more than their counterparts in the East Village, around the Parson's campus. My experience at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum this morning did not wholly live up to my expectations. After our previous class field trips to the Met and the MoMA, I expected to be blown away by the size, skill, and detail of the museum. Though the pieces on show were beautiful, and more than several pastel drawings and oil paintings intrigued me, I felt that the architecture of the building, heavily touted as one-of-a-kind and breathtaking, to be claustrophobic and dark. Perhaps this was the fault of a current show, which featured the spiral center of the building bathed in changing colored light. Unfortunately, this "exhibit" triggered the removal of many works off the walls of the spiral walkway, and a result, visitors missed out on a lot of art. I appreciate the effort of the Guggenheim with providing an artistic and cultural learning environment for tourists, but I think that the high student-ticket price of $12 in combination with the lack of intrigue ranks it much lower in my esteem than it's neighbors on Museum Mile.

On a happier note, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, though even grander, larger, and featuring more shows than the Guggenheim, has only "suggested fees". Each of my classmates and I paid a dollar to get in. Paul led us around the 19th and 20th century painters, and introduced us to the ages of expressionism, cubism, modernism, and post-modernism. We viewed the masterpieces of Dega, Picasso, and Monet. Upon straying our attention into more modern contemporary art, I was struck by the large masterpieces created by Chuck Close. His color blocked portraits, which incorporated tones of green into skin, used a power of the human eye called "optical mixing". When standing some ten feet away, I saw a face. However, upon closer inspection, I saw that the painting was composed of thousands of small squares, each with concentric blobs of different colors. Close was able to use his knowledge of color theory to combine colors in such a way that, from far away, he could depict a human face. Another piece that caught my eye was a series of ten or twelve canvases, taller and wider than myself, each painted a different hue by Ellsworth Kelly. To the average pedestrian scanning past the artwork, it might have simply looked like a glorified rainbow, amplified to an enormous size. However, since suffering through the gray scale and color wheel exercises in my morning drawing class, I sympathize with the difficulties that artist must have gone through in mixing his paints, for each of the hues was of the exact same value. The yellow panel was the most saturated, as yellow has the lightest intrinsic value and thus was the most true to its hue. By comparison, the purple became heavily tinted, more like a lilac. The actual painting of the canvas must have been a piece of cake compared to the many hours spent preparing the copious amounds of same-value, different-hue paints that comprised the piece.

I love museum mile.

Day Sixteen: The Rainbow Kicked My Ass Today

The product of my morning and homework.

Unfortunately, I have yet to acquire the fine eye for color and value diffrentiation that Paul has mastered over his many years of painting. I am quite amazed by Paul's ability, actually, because while he flew around the room assisting my classmates with their colors, I sat on my stool for the majority of the morning squinting. I'm sure my squint face is beautiful - not. It's a good thing that I'm in this class, otherwise I don't think anybody could teach me this level of color control.

Though domino-effect caused by finding an inacurate middle gray was lessened in the creation of the color wheel as compared to the grayscale, it still proved to be a painstaking process. I never before realized the amount of work that would go into creating a color spectrum, and how inacurate many hues (with the exception of yellow) are straight out of the tube.Though I enjoy figure drawing/painting exercises more than those involving theory, my difficulty with these challenges is exactly why I must grit my teeth and bear it, and hopefully, I will improve :)

After lunch, Gabby, Sami, and I continued working on our dress. The majority of the skirt is done, in addition to the bodice. We decided that with the time on our hands, that we would create extra accessories. We plan on making a clutch handbag, an arm cuff, and a bracelet. We chose photoshoot timeslots, and our group will be staging our photos on Thursday. That's only two days away! I'm so excited!

Day Fifteen: The Home-Stretch of Dress Construction

This morning, with Paul, we painted a model in high contrasting black and white tones. The only paint we were allowed was black gouache, which was not to be diluted to form any variations of gray. The challenge was to really look, analyze the scene, and determine of the values we were seeing fell in the white-49% gray range, or the 51%-black range. In doing this, we were able to reduce and compress the model and his surroundings into shapes of black on white paper. I found this exercise challenging, but not tedious like the gray-scale project. While looking at the past blog posts made by previous year's students, I nervously anticipated this painting because I thought that it would be difficult and that I would not succeed. Though the technique is a little difficult to master, I really like the graphic contrast in the final result, and the process of analyzing the model made me thoroughly consider the use of my paint, because once it was applied, there was no going back.

In the afternoon, Sami and I continued to fold endless paper chains while Gabby worked on the hoop of the skirt. Although we thought that we had folded plenty of paper, we still lacked enough to cover the bodice. Though it drove us to the brink of insanity, we finished the bodice at the end of class, and Gabby began draping the blue fused trashbags over the frame. The dress is really coming together. I can't wait until the photoshoot on Thursday.

Day Twelve: Five Hours for Rain is Way too Long

I've already mentioned that field trip days are the best day. Like last Friday, Paul and Frank led us into the abyss of the New York subway and we visited a museum to look, learn, and sketch. The location of the week: The Museum of Modern Art. I hadn't been the MoMA in years, and was very excited to see the exhibitions. Armed with my sketchbook in hand, and pencils tucked behind our ears, and pens in our back pockets we saw the drawings, paintings, sculptures, and even architectural models of Claes Oldenburg and Le Corbusier. I found my sketches from the MoMA to be very different from the Met. While visiting the Met last week, my drawings focused mainly on shading and precision of my line-work. I wanted to create an image on my paper as I saw it behind the glass case; I used penci to avoid messy mistakes. However, today at the MoMA, I used black pen, sketchy lines, and many words. I think that the artwork at the MoMA is more conceptual, while the areas that I visited at the Met (I wasn't able to see everything) were very historical and cultural. I really like both museums, and I hope that we visit the Guggenheim and the Whitney in the next two weeks.

At the end of class, Paul let us do as we please, whether that be to follow him back dowtown, continue to look through the museum, or to take our chances waiting in line for the rain room. It sounds so cool. It would be amazing to experience rain without getting wet like that - but the line to get in was 5+ hours. That's crazy. I'll find a morning to wake up early and get in line first before the end of the month instead. 5 hours is just a little overkill.

Day Eleven: M.C Escher Style

Today was a really low-key day. In Paul's class, we learned about axonometric drawings, which are used to draw 3-d figures. They are aesthetically similar to 2-point persepective drawings, but instead of lines coming out from the horizon,  the lines of an axonometric drawing are paralled. Paul asked us to start by drawing a box, then another one of the same size, then connect them. We practiced drawing protrusions, hollow areas, and different shapes. I really enjoyed this project and can't wait to color mine.

Frank's class was another construction day. We have until next Wednesday to finish, and will be conducting our photoshoots of Thursday and Friday. Nothing particularly notable happened. Sami and I continued to fold (endless) paper chains and Gabby worked on the hoop. Because we ran out of vinyl for the waist section of the bodice, Gabby ran out to RiteAid and bought a Disney Princess bag, which I cut into strips to fill in the missing section. The three of us are going to meet up on Sunday to finish it.

PROGRESS!

Day Ten: The Simplest of Things are Often the Hardest

Bodice in the making...

The task of creating  grayscale to an artist is familiar, but after my morning class with Paul this morning, I know that it is not easy. We were tasked with creating a 9-tone grayscale from scratch. With only black and white to start with, the first step was to find "middle gray" (the gray smack dab in the middle of black and white). Although this gray is sometimes referred to as a 50% gray, mixing equal parts of black and white would result in a paint too dark, because of black's strong tinting power compared to white. Finding middle gray was painstaking. Due to the large range of tones that mixing different amounts of black and white can make, there was a lot of room for error. After finding middle gray, we then found "quarter grays" in between middle gray and white and middle gray and black. Mixing, and testing swatches, and mixing again was very frustrating. In the end, my scale was a little to heavy handed, and my tones became very bunched up towards the black end of the scale. I never realized how hard creating a gray scale was. My final product did not turn out as well as I'd hoped, so I plan to do it over and improve.

In the afternoon, we continued to build our dresses. After completing the bust portion of the dress, my group and I decided to fold paper chains to create additional texture - like the paper chains used to make candy wrapper purses. Gabby worked on the skirt hoop portion of the dress. We have a lot of work ahead of us, but I'm so excited!

Day Nine: Project Runway Style

My still-life homework for Paul's class tomorrow

What a blissful sleep it was last night, after toiling over my "Camo" painting. Though hesitant to wake up, the loud beacon of my morning alarm felt no symathy and startled me out of bed to class. The morning session with Paul consisted of a series of nude figure drawings done in charcoal on newsprint. Inspiration was drawn from the works of George Seurat, who created pieces in which the contours of shapes were pushed to the far wings of the stage, and value and volume took the spotlight. To introduce the concept of value into our class, this assignment sharply contrasted the black on (almost) white paper drawings of last week, when the focus fell on the accuracy of the shapes, with little to no shading. We explored techniques such as toning the ground, in which the entire paper is shaded a light gray; after which, charcoal can be added and erased to create shadows and highlights. Personally, I don't like the process of toning the ground (at least on newsprint) because the quality of newsprint paper is not suited towards erasing, and I found that restoring the paper to its original value to be quite difficult. Paul continued to stress the importance of using the entire ground space, and not creating the "t-shirt effect" when composing. In order to create more interesting compositions, I need to work on my planning and spacing prior to setting charcoal to newsprint rather than blindly guessing.

The beginnings of our dress!

Frank's after-lunch class was an exciting time; it marked day one of our dress construction. Gabby, Sami lacked the materials we needed (wire, plastic, electric tape), so we ventured down 14th street to Artie's Hardware shop. Alas, we returned to Parsons with the realization that in order to work with wire, we would need wire cutters. Oh well. So we began building the bodice with strips of vinyl swatches that we found in the Green Supply Center. Though an arduous process to remove from Lola, our dress form, due to the gobs of hot glue that oozed out from between the strips of vinyl. We have approximately 5 more days to build this dress from start to finish. It's daunting.

Day Eight: 6 Freaking Hours

Today was a really challenging day - a test of endurance, if you will. The project in Paul's class was to paint a model in guache, surrounded by several different camoflauge prints. The shapes of the pattern combined with the drapery was especially difficult. Not to mention that I don't have a speacil affinity to gouache (I actually really really really hate it. I came home from class, and started painting my piece (which I had already started painting a little bit in class) at 4pm. I finished about ten minutes ago. Thats 6 hours. I think I've crossed the edge of insanity.

In Frank's class, we presented our mood boards and finalized our designs. Frank said that we're going to start constructing our garments tomorrow, so I'm really excited. 

Although the painting project took a lot out of me today, I think that I've grown as an artists. Sometimes, you just have to sit there and finish. There isn't anything you can do about it. I guess that was today's lesson (besides the usual "look more than you draw", "use negative spaces" and "measure")

Day Five: Field Trip Days are the Best Days

Sentani house post figure. Used as
decorations in the dwellings of chiefs

Both sections of Paul and Frank's classes took a trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art today. The beauty of the NY metro is that although the Met is eighty blocks uptown, it only takes ten minutes and three subway stops to get there. It's so convenient, I would like to go again. In fact, I have to go again. The Met is just so big. The size of the collections, and the many wings of the museum is stunning. Losing yourself in the Met is all too easy. Not only is remembering the location of the many different exhibitions a challenge, but all of the works are so beautiful that you could spend weeks there without becoming bored. I think museums like the Met should sell tickets like theme parks do - offering multiple-day passes so that visitors can appreciate all the attractions. Nonetheless, a student ticket is only $12, so I'm sure I'll go back.

Marble statue of a youthful Hercules
(AD 68-98)

We spent the day in four main parts of the museum. When we arrived, Paul led us straight the travelling exhibition, which featured punk fashion and highlighted its influence on couture fashion. The exhibition focused a lot on the designs of Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm Mclaren. Their designs centered around anarchy, violence, and sex. Punk's used a lot of destruction, graffitti (spray paint) art, and use of hardware to create their attire. Even more interesting than punks' choice to diverge from the path of fashion and culture norms was that their movement in the 70s served and still serves as inspiration for (very famous) fashion houses. The "historical" punk fashion from the 20th century stood alongside the modern renditions of the statement pieces. Big names like Givenchy, Prada, and McQueen featured in the exhibit. I was blown away with the scale and ingenuity of the dresses and separates. After seeing the exhibit, I've found a lot of inspiration for my group's design project, and aspire to create something as beautiful, unique, and thought-provoking as those seen in the exhibition.

The rest of the day was filled with drawing in several locations within the museum. We drew in the Roman/Greek art gallery, the Medieval armor gallery, and the Island/Pacific art gallery. This was my favorite part of the entire day. All we did was sit, and look, and draw. It was great. I found that a lot of my pieces were too complex, and that I didn't have the time to shade them as I liked. Though Paul dismissed class at 3, I decided to stay later to finish my drawings. Eventually, I stayed until 5 and I managed to completely shade 2/3 drawings. It's interesting to draw in a museum, because other visitors are always so interested in your work. There were several people who took pictures of me drawing, which was strange, but flattering. It's nice to know that your art is appreciated by other people.

On the subway ride back to Union Square, I stuck my admission sticker into my sketchbook, and I really like the way it looks. I want to fill my sketchbook more with drawings like the ones that I did today, because  I really enjoyed the process as well as the product.

Day Four: Independence and a Day Off

Happy Independence Day! I'm not a particularly zealous lover of the fourth of July, but I was so glad to have the break from classes today. The extra sleep was much needed. We had a barbecue on the patio of our dorm, courtesy of the Stuyvesant RAs. Regardless of the delayed grill time and long lines, the food was delicious. To put off doing my AP lit summer work, I went to the gym. While running on the treadmill, it struck me how many intersecting lines there are in gym equiptment, and what an interesting drawing my negative spaces assignment would be if I chose it as my model. So I sat in the gym while the runners there gave me weird looks in order to draw the equiptment. I'll probably paint it tomorrow - I'm not sure what color yet though. Some of my roommates went out to the west side to watch the fireworks, but to be honest, I'm not that interested. My class is going to the Metropolitan Museum of Art tomorrow, and I don't want to be tired for that.

Day Three: Focus on Negative Spaces

The reason that we draw negative spaces is because our minds don't have any stored preconceptions of these weird shapes, and if we have to draw them, it forces us to really look. That was the lesson of my morning class today. Like yesterday, we had a live model to draw, but instead of many short sketches, we focused on one long piece for the entire 3 hours. The goal of the piece was to draw only the negative spaces of the model (like between her legs) and the the background (like between the legs of the desks and chairs). It was really challenging because I found it difficult to find the major points on her body without drawing the whole shape. Interior negative spaces were much easier than the unconfined spaces surrounding her body. After finishing the pencil drawing, the negative spaces were filled in with black gouache. I really like the finish of dried gouache; it has a velvety texture that is beautiful. I really enjoyed this piece. I think it looks really interesting, but also, the practice of drawing the ground spaces to create the figure "exercised muscles" that I don't use often.

My negative/postive space drawing

During lunch, we had a lecture  a design professor from the Maryland Institute College of Art and a recent graduate from the Design and Communications program at Parsons. Ellen, the professor, talked a lot about the message and how much a simple geometric symbol needs to convey in order to be effective. Sofia, who graduated in May, told us about her senior thesis, the road to creating a design campaign, and what it's like to work as a graphic designer (at least as an intern). After hearing Sofia speak about her experiences, I think that I would really enjoy a career in graphic design and marketing. I asked her about the application process, and she told me that her portfolio was composed mainly of fine art pieces. I think studying graphic design and being able to apply my skills in a more accessible way is a really practical academic and future career move for me, especially because Parsons seems to have such an inclusive program.

Creating a color palette from an inspiration picture in
photoshop

In the afternoon, Frank (attempted) to teach us how to use photshop and adobe illustrator. I say attempted because honestly, I didn't really know what I was doing. I've never used either program before, and I also don't know how to use Macs very well. One thing that I did pick up was how to fix the exposure of photographs, and how to make the exposure level consistant throughout a series of pictures. I understood how that process worked, however, when we began using illustrator to "trace" and "expand" pictures, I lost the train of instruction a little bit. I suppose that digital design skills will come with practice; I just have to practice a lot while I'm here because photoshop is way out of budget and I don't plan on getting it on my personal laptop.

Tomorrow is the fourth of July, and I'm so glad that we have a day off. Friday's class is going to be really interesting too because we're going to the Met to draw.

Day Two: When the Work Really Starts to Kick In

You know it's going to be a crazy day when all you want to do is pull the covers over your head when the alarm sounds in the morning. I experienced my first classes with Paul and Frank today - drawing in the morning and design in the afternoon.

Some of the faster figure drawing sketches

Naturally anxious about tardiness and violating the strict attendance policy, I arrived to class very early and saw that we were to have a male model for our figure drawing class. I really enjoyed the nude figure drawing, because it's not something that I get to do often. I have done it twice, both times in the art studio where I take classes, but it is a special course that is a "treat". Of course, figure drawing isn't offered at all in my high school, so my experience was limited and I was anxious about how my drawings would turn out. Paul surprised me by announcing that instead of doing long and detailed pieces, we would focus on very short, quick sketches. Every thirty minutes, the model changed positions, so we had to work quickly and draw only a very general image. As the first session came to a close, we finished with longer, 10 minute drawings, but even then, it wasn't enough for me to finish. However, the sketches were really helpful to me, as I was able to practice measuring, drawing negatives spaces, and triangulating in order to find the locations of points in space. 

One of the ten minute long
sketches

Paul emphasized that our most important tool is not one that we can buy at Ultrecht - it's our vision. It's so important for us to really look at what we're trying to depict, and not rely on a prototype image that is stored in our minds. To emphasize this point, we spent some time doing blind contour line drawings. We were not allowed to look at our drawings as we went, and attempted to move our charcoal along the paper in sync with our eyes in order to create an outline of the model. These didn't turn out very pretty, and I got a little fidgety because I couldn't see my work, but blind contour line drawing made realize how many details can be missed when not focusing enough of my attention on the model. It was a really focused and intense morning.

Carrots from this perspective have
a really interesting texture

In the afternoon, my partners and I worked with Frank to brainstorm for our garment. He sent us back to the location that we chose yesterday to get texture and shape samples. The Union Square farmers market doesn't open on Tuesdays, so Gabby, Sami, and I ran into Whole Foods to draw and take pictures of the produce. After we returned to class, we created mental maps of everything we could think of that related to our initial inspiration (vegetables). Veggies make you think of health, health makes you think of organic, organic makes you think of local, and local makes you think of community (and so forth). He challenged us to not focus so much on the final product and what we wanted to look like, and free-think. The goal was to explore as many directions, images, and ideas as possible in order to have many choices when it came time to actually design and contruct the project. 

My afternoon design class with Frank

My 6/2/13 still life homework (charcoal on newsprint)

Lastly, homework was assigned. We are to draw one still life containing a soft object, a hard object, a transparent object, and an organic object (in charcoal) and one drawing of our non-dominant hand in graphite (for Paul) and to complete fashion sketch ideas and a mood board (for Frank). I just finished, and I am so tired. It's been a really long day, and we have 17 more working days to go. I feel like I have been at Parsons for so long, and have begun to refer to my dorm as "home". Summer Intensive Studies is no joke. (but i love it)

Day One: The Start of Summer Studies

The overcast blanket of clouds hanging over Manhattan this morning forbode of rain. Despite my warning to bring an umbrella, my suite-mates left without one, leaving three girls to fend for themselves against the fierce, pouring elements with just one form of protection. Nonetheless, we arrived at orientation saturated to the tips of our hair in water, but with one more New York adventure under our belts.

After repeated warnings of Parsons' strict attendance policy at orientation, my roommates and I used our DiningDollars for the first time in the Cafe at 55 West 13th St. With stomachs full of both of food and butterflies, we laborously climbed the stairs to our 8th and 11th floor classrooms in lieu of subjecting ourselves to the elevator traffic.

As first impressions go, I felt notably overwhelmed. In the spanse of 4 weeks, groups are to create from start to finish a magazine; fully furnished with the successes of our time at Parsons, it will feature a dress fabricated from an unusual material and be inspired from a self-taken photograph of NYC.

The leafy greens and the tiny, foreshortened dots of orange
provided a fresh, organic contrast to the otherwise geometric
lines of Union Square

My partner, Gabby, and I left the building before 4, as Paul dismissed us early to walk around, be inspired, and take pictures. My first class focused greatly on the many aspects of design within a composition (mainly photographs). I learned a lot about what to look for when finding our inspiration locations, and how to look for contrasting forms, colors, and textures in photographs. We took many shots, but fell in love with the textures of the Union Square farmers market. Especially considering the New School's pledge to become carbon neutral and promote sustainability, we believe that the use of organic materials will contribute to the life of our piece. Of course, the concern is that creating vegetable dress is a time sensitive project. Hopefully, we will be able to see our plan out through to the end and fulfill our vision without fear of it wilting.

There are so many components of this photo - the texture
of the stone, the bright contrast of the cone to the street,
and the accent of red in the ground of the composition.

Tomorrow, my morning session will consist of a three-hour figure drawing workshop. Something I learned today is that the human body is at the top of hierarchy drawing difficulty, with horses and trees following respectively. I can't help but feel nervous, but more importantly, excited for this experience; dry media are my favorite to work with and the blendability of charcoal lends itself to my needs. Despite having to carry my very heavy supplies to class, tomorrow will be a good day, because I will have pencil in hand and my focus on creation.

Highlight of the Day:

> I met some really cool fashion design students while buying supplies in the (endlessly long) line at Utrecht. Artists are definitely my kind of people.