Observation Drawing Final

All my exams are done and I’m heading out for spring break in a few hours. I haven’t had much time to get any design work done recently, but I’ve been doing a lot of drawing for my introduction to drawing class. Our final project had to be a series of at least 3 drawings (other than that the assignment was pretty open). I decided to do some figure ‘drawings’ in watercolor (which for some reason was included in the course as a drawing medium)

Here’s all four pieces together:

Here’s the studio to give some perspective:

And here’s a detail of the torso:

Click any of them to get a larger view.

New Banner!

My desire to procrastinate writing a ten page paper has lead me to design a new banner for the site. I created the octopus entirely in Photoshop, using the pen tool and the paintbrush (I’m in observational drawing now but its a slow learning process so I prefer Photoshop). Anyway, I’m still not sure about it. I don’t think its  as sophisticated as my last banner (which was a picture from a train station in Amsterdam) but maybe that’s not a bad thing. I would love to hear people’s opinions, good or bad.

Update: the header has been changed again. Here was the one I was referring to in this post:

Photos of New Zealand

My six week winter break went surprisingly quickly and somehow it is already the second week of winter term. I finally found time to put up some photos from break (The first week of term was especially hectic for some unknown reason). I spent the last two weeks of break hiking in New Zealand with my family and my boyfriend, Scott. We flew into Auckland on the North Island but then went straight to Christchurch on the South Island. We spent the trip traveling around the South Island (significantly less populated but called the mainland). I was not really prepared for the amount of hiking (or rain) we experienced. Nonetheless New Zealand is beautiful (although lacking in the wildlife department, in my opinion). Every time we would turn a corner there would be another beautiful mountain. I took over 600 pictures while we were there and I just wanted to share a few of my favorites.

I think the next few really showcase the landscape of New Zealand:

We were taken over to the start of one of our many hikes in a tiny plane. We saw some of the most incredible views from above  the river and the mountains (although the whole thing made me a bit nauseous).

This was a the view from the parking lot of a restaurant in Milford Sound, one of the most famous hiking locations in the world.

Mt. Cook was beautiful the day we arrived and the day we left but the day we were hiking in the area it poured rain harder than I have ever seen (the basement in the visitor center flooded). This picture was taken on the way in, however.

We took a cruise on the Milford Sound and the weather started off a little gloomy but nothing serious. By the time we were halfway through the cruise, the winds were blowing so badly that you had to hold on to the railing or hug the floor if you wanted to step outside. My mum pointed out to me that this photo looks like it was taken with black and white film which I think really captures the storminess of the day. Unfortunately raindrops kept attacking my lens.

This too was taken on the cruise. Our guide said he had once see a photo from a famous New Zealand landscape photographer of a waterfall being blown back upwards in the wind. He had never seen it happen himself until our Milford cruise.

Ok, this one is actually in black and white. The tops of the mountains were always covered in a layer of clouds, making them look quite mysterious.

New Zealand has these amazing ferns that started curled in a brown ball and then slowly unravel to reveal green fern leaves. I must have taken over 50 pictures of them. They were everywhere and often used as logos on gift shop products.

With the lack of native wildlife, I took advantage of every animal spotting I had. I really wanted to play with a sheep but none ever seemed interested. New Zealanders also have taken to domesticating deer. Its a very weird site to see 50 male bucks all snuggling together in an enclosed pastour.

The next three pictures I really like for their graphic quality, more than anything else.

I think this is actually my favorite of the trip. Mostly because it is just so graphic. I love the mixture of geometric shape and organic shape.

American Airlines Website Re-design

For the final project in the BU web design class we all had to find a major website that we thought could use a re-design. American Airlines wasn’t a hard choice. The website felt like a big pop-up ad (much like Ryanair’s actual service– the airline, which flies cheap throughout Europe, has ads for discount fare along the overhead bins and announces fare opportunities over the PA system.) Anyway, we spent the whole term working up to the re-design. We created competitive analyses, creative analyses, wire frames, site maps and mood boards.

Just for reference, this is the existing site that I was working with (www.aa.com):

We each created two versions and this is the one with which I am most satisfied:

A Splash of Flash

This summer I’ve been taking classes at BU that aren’t offered at Carleton. In the web design class, we’ve just finished our unit on flash. Flash has been pretty challenging to learn. However, I’m pretty proud of the simple flash personal page that I created. The only link that works right now is the ‘contact me’ (I hope to update soon, though) Take a look and tell me what you think: Flash Page