Design Principle: Project 1

21.9.2021 - 15.10.2021 (Week 6 - Week 8)
Britney Chow Pei Jun / 0350043 / BDCM
Design Principles
Lectures and Project 1

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LECTURES

Self portrait

• A self representation in the form of a drawing, painting, sculpture, design. 
• A visual depiction of the self.
• Represents the designer or artist.
• How they see themselves, what they're feeling and how they want to be seen by others.
• Not necessarily about drawing one's appearance, it's often an exercise in self-exploration. 
• Sometimes, we define ourselves by the things we own or like.

Self

• How others see me? (Physical traits and personality)
• How I see myself? 
• My experiences
• My interests
• My thoughts 

fig 1.0; Hoessein Enas Self portrait; sauce: (http://faizalsidik.blogspot.com/2015/05/hoessein-enas-dalam-koleksi-balai-seni.html)

fig 1.1; Gustave Courbet Self portrait; sauce: (https://www.wikiart.org/en/gustave-courbet)

fig 1.2; Muid Latif Self portrait; sauce: (https://www.behance.net/muidlatif)

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INSTRUCTIONS 

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PROJECT 1

Visual Research 

fig 2.1; Self portrait by Ana Kahana; sauce: (https://www.behance.net/gallery/22395267/Self-Portrait)

fig 2.2; Self portrait by Mia Ditmanson; sauce: (https://dribbble.com/shots/9525029-Self-Portrait)

I was fascinated by other people's self portrait, they attract me very much with their use of color theme and the way they draw themselves.

Idea Exploration

First, I thought of myself, I thought of my life and the things I've achieve since the day I can remember stuff. Most of the things I come up are the things that I would like to have or do. I feel like I'm lacking something, and so I went to search for the Proust questionnaire.

fig 2.3; Proust Questionnaire; sauce: (https://www.pinterest.com/pin/451274825159850672/)

I've choose a few questions and below are my answers:

Q2: What is your idea of perfect happiness?

Answer: I personally think that if I'm able to live without any constrain in life, then it is a happiness for me. I think now in this generation, people like me are always cautious with the things we do or say, no matter whoever, whenever, wherever. Able to live without having to think too hardly is something I always want to do because I'm afraid of people's expectations or views on me. Just imagine, a world where we can hang out with whoever we want, buy whatever we want with no worries on what others think, go wherever we want, I think that's a life where everyone would want to experience at least once. So, I guess to me, living freely will be my idea of perfect happiness, of course, this does not include violating my morale values and of course, the laws. 

Q7: What is your favorite journey?

Answer: I have tons of favorite journey that I would love to share with people. I'm a person who loves to travel around and look at beautiful things and relax in the nature, the night crowds and more. However, in this question, I would like to answer it as a life journey. I have been through a lot of meaningful activities and this particular activity has been one of my most tiring but fun experience! To put it simply, we have to prepare a stage performance from having nothing at all. We have to go through all the blood, sweat and tears to reach the end, and in the end not only did we learn A LOT of things, we also able successfully complete it! It is definitely unforgettable. 

Q16: Where would you like to live?

Answer: To be honest, I don't like staying at a place for too long if I could help it. I would like to think I'm an adventurous person after all! However, there are these places where, no matter where you are, you won't get tired of it at all and there's lotsa space as well as very very beautiful views! Yes, it's the sky and the ocean. If I could, I wish I could live there, away from the polluting world and enjoy life in the sea or in the sky and watch birds flying or fish swimming. 

And thus I came up with a sketch: 

fig 2.4; Britney's sketch on self portrait;

After gathering info on myself, and answering the questions, I have better understandings on myself. I tried to draw myself at a place where I would like to live (sky and sea creatures), and also at a place with nobody else but me doing the things I want and like. Some of the things I draw here also have its significant meaning, such as the cat which represents my curiosity and my desire for freedom. The plant at the corner is sweet pea, which represents traveling as I would like to travel around the world. I draw a lot of things here to make it look as if my life is plentiful (full of fun and pretty things), a life that I'm pursuing because I don't want no negativity haha! The four arms I draw here signifies the things I usually do in my daily life and it is also the things I do throughout my childhood, of course there are a lot of things still, but that's for next time. 

fig 2.5; After putting in colors self portrait; 

I used bright and vibrant colors for this portrait to provide a positive feeling because it is my one of my goal "Be positive and everything will be okay". I'm not exactly a positive person due to some past experience. However, I'm working towards it. The different skin tones here signifies my timeline of having these interests and or hobbies. The lighter it is, the younger I am. Although I'm not red headed in real life, however it is a color that represents a lot of things, adventurous and passion, something I believe I am; Anger, something I would want to avoid; Confidence and courage; something I'm working on getting!

However, I feel like it is too messy and it does not look like something I expected the longer I look at fig 2.5, so I tried to edit it a little bit, make it look a bit cleaner and more simpler. Below is the final outcome: 

fig 2.6; Final Outcome of self portrait; 

To put it simply, this self portrait of mine represents my past, my present and my future. The reason why I would draw this as my self portrait without showing my appearance is because I hope people who I will meet in the future would not just judge me through my physical appearance but would actually get to know what kind of person I am, and get to know me from there. 

fig 2.6; Final Outcome of self portrait in PDF; (15/10/21)

One can see that this person has spend a lot of effort on this design, however there’s also a lot of flaws in the design. The design feels like there’s too many things in it and perhaps one has to spend some time to actually take in the whole design and to understand it. It is not obvious what this person wants to actually express as most of them are like “hidden” meanings. For example, one couldn’t understand what the flower in the corner means unless they Google search for it.

However, one can tell that this person has a childlike mind as the things that she wants to do, or is doing or going to do holds a certain feel of “children” to it. There are some design principles used in this design as well. One of them is repetition, the way she placed the butterflies, the fishes and the clouds are almost the same. Another principle is harmony, from the repeated colors she used on the sea creatures and butterflies. One can see she has attempt to do a bit of movement there at the corner where the cat is landing from its jump, however it is not obvious at all. There’s still much to improve in this design. 

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FEEDBACK 

I didn't receive specific feedback from Dr. Charles as I has yet to finish during that time. However, Dr. Charles did say that a self portrait does not necessarily mean that we have to draw our physical appearance but what represents us instead. 

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REFLECTIONS

This project in my opinion, is one of the most fun exercise. However, it is undeniably a challenging one as well. I personally think that it is not easy to actually include a whole person in it, as in one cannot just look at a person's self portrait and determines what kind of person they are. And in this project, I feel like I'm getting ahead of myself because I got too greedy and tried to include whatever I could think of. It's like me trying to hold the whole waterfall with only cupped hands. The more I tried to hold, the more I couldn't hold.

While doing my research on the project, I found out that art is truthfully a very fascinating thing. For example, just a simple color can represent a lot of things, and a simple element can also mean a lot of things too. Thus, one can simply express who they are or what they want through these simple stuffs. And although I think a drawing cannot exactly define a person, it could still define a portion of the person's personality through the designer's art style and the elements.