Bridging the Gap: From Concept to Final Work Series 3

Despite a few hiccups, I have to say that Vienna left yet another deeply artistic mark in me (soooo... I'm adding it to a list with London, Venice, Prague, Florence and Brussels), probably because of the pervasively enshrined Art Nouveau movement of the early 1900's. Gustav Klimt is the most prominent artist I could see there. I've seen "The Kiss" before, but seeing it printed on little notepads and t-shirts made me appreciate the beauty of the original work. I probably couldn't wait to exercise its influence on me for the first poster I made for the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at PGH.

The Three Ages of Woman by Gustav Klimt.
My brother has a copy of Taschen's inexpensive books on Klimt's works. I really tried to study what makes Klimt's technique unique-- including his love for the detail of textiles. Close-up, I have to admit they looked like a cacophony, but from afar the effect seemed orchestrated. Women were dominant figures in his paintings, so it seemed like a good match for the subject.

Unfortunately, I threw out my old sketches and early paintings for this project, I think (it may be somewhere on my hard drives, but I can't find it). But since the subject was bridging tradition and modern practice, the intricately woven Ilocos blankets of my childhood seemed like the perfect textile for this application. I scanned two of them and they became the basis for her gown.

Here is the finished painting, before it was crowded by too many details (like the organizations, venues, blah blah blah):

TRP 32: From Concept to Final Work Series 1

From among the publications committee in the Medical Students Society, we had to come up with a poster for the 32nd TRP variety show, which had a theme of "Movie Night." I knew immediately I wanted a glamorous image of an theater, with the marquee, and the red-carpet feeling. So I made a concept sketch:

However, working directly on computer wasn't a great idea. First of all, it looked like shit. No red carpet feeling. This might as well have been a depressing unpopulated discotheque. So we start from scratch, this time on paper:

I showed it over the mailing list and Winlove loved it, asking the rest if we could pursue the design. I was flattered and immediately got to work. I had obviously been greatly influenced by the work of Bert Monroy, so I bought his book to fully grasp the concepts behind photrealistic computer art. Again, I made the same mistake of working directly on the computer first, but it was a good exercise to get the techniques just right and to get a feel for the colors.

Working in a traditional manner, I made the perspective skeleton in Adobe Illustrator:

The proceeded to fill in the details.

Unfortunately, the giant TRP 32 sign was too much work and it was incredibly ugly, so I decided to change it to an easier (cheating, really) method and at the same time, make it look glamorous. So, my favorite method. Winlove made a few more suggestions about adding views of Manila in the background, hence the final product:

I hope this feature has cleared up the creative process to you guys, and shown that good design takes a lot of thought, and hard work really shows. It's not a matter of plopping down all the elements you can in Photoshop and adding a cool Filter. I hope you also had fun reading this, by the way.

A Day Without Class

I am a HUGE fan of Joan Walsh Anglund since I was a kid and owned a blanket with a drawing from her beautiful book, "A Friend is Someone Who Likes You." I made this small computer-art thingie in honor of her, and I would produce more if it was not so time-consuming.